What’s the best way to help students who are several grade levels behind? It might sound like a simple question, but as evidenced by disappointing NAEP scores released last week, the answer is complicated, and we obviously haven’t yet figured it out. It boils down to a question about how students spend the majority of their time in school, with some saying it should almost entirely be on rigorous grade-level content regardless of student readiness for that material, and still others who insist that the solution is to meet students where they are and personalize learning to build and grow their skills toward rigor. So which is it? Rigor or personalized learning? Just ask Dr. Seuss.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
This might be a quote from Oh! The Places You’ll Go!, a children’s book by Dr. Seuss, but it can certainly be applied here. If we want to help students who are several grade levels behind, the focus cannot be on rigor or personalized learning, but achieving a “Great Balancing Act” between the two. But how? With the help of Dr. Seuss, I’ll highlight three key strategies utilized by the Learn4Life network of schools that have proven successful in supporting middle school and high school students who are several grade levels behind.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
Dr. Seuss knew when writing these words that you can unleash power in people by empowering them to make choices, set goals, and steer themselves toward them. At Learn4Life, we also know this to be true and have developed a student-centric personalized learning model that allows students to determine the schedules that work best for them, and—with guidance and support from teachers—choose from available instructional models, including one-on-one, small group, online, career and technical education, dual enrollment, or experiential learning. When a student enrolls, they work with their teacher to develop an individualized academic plan that is designed to address their unique and diverse learning needs, acknowledge their strengths and interests, and align them with their long-term goals for success in life.
As a primary step in the process, each student is assessed with the NWEA MAP assessment, and this score is used to help create a truly individualized learning plan, connecting them to appropriately challenging courses and informing decisions around referrals to intervention programs that will be necessary for them to be successful in accessing rigorous grade-level content. For example, let’s say that a student, Annie, has NWEA results that show she is really strong in reading and writing and she decides to take an advanced English course online. However, she needs more support in math so she chooses a small group instruction course where she can get additional support in order to fill the gaps and accelerate her toward independently working on rigorous grade-level content. Our personalized learning approach ensures that students feel empowered and have a specific plan for reaching their goals, which increases their engagement and decreases frustration as they work to close gaps in skills and knowledge that have caused them to fall behind.
You won’t lag behind,
because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang
and you’ll soon take the lead.
Not only do we work with each student to create an individualized academic plan, but another key component in the model is that of mastery-based learning. For students who are several grade levels behind, the traditional model of assigning four or more core academic subjects to students to work on simultaneously can be very overwhelming. Our response is to assign two core courses at a time, so the learner’s attention is more focused. Students take formative assessments at the end of each course module and must demonstrate a minimum level of mastery to earn a grade for the module. Failed modules are assigned again, and students are given additional re-teaching and intervention activities such as small group instruction, tutoring, or the use of technology tools like Math180 and Read180. When students are setting their own pace and not stuck in the pace of a traditional classroom filled with thirty of their peers, they are no longer held back from moving ahead and no longer pushed forward without having attained mastery. In this type of environment where students are all working on different content at different times, students feel less of the social stigma attached with “lagging behind” because, as Dr. Seuss says, they “have the speed.” Being open year-round is another important component that help students stay engaged and make progress during the summer so each can “pass the whole gang and soon take the lead.”
And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
As Dr. Seuss wisely states, “un-slumping yourself is not easily done.” The reality is that many students who fall behind in school do so because they are experiencing real and challenging things outside of school and often find themselves facing those things seemingly alone. When a student enrolls at Learn4Life, they receive consistent and caring one-to-one engagement with their supervising teacher, which is essential to supporting them as they overcome barriers and develop a plan of action that leads to goal attainment. We strive to remove as many barriers to attending school as possible, providing school supplies, meals, a bus pass or outside services like counseling, stress management, or coping skills. Hunger, homelessness, abuse, illness, bullying, and violence have traumatized many of our students. Our curriculum is infused with trauma-informed practices, and our teachers know that traumatized children who thrive have people in their lives that encourage them and believe in their potential. For many of our students, we are that support, and we make sure that this is a constant part of their experience here. Academic growth will only be as successful as the underlying work of addressing students’ more basic needs.
While the work in catching up students who are below grade level is not easy, there are some simple truths from Dr. Seuss that can help guide us as we push forward in this work. By developing personalized learning plans for students, we help them to develop agency and (with guidance from a teacher) “steer themselves any direction they choose.” Utilizing a mastery-based model where students are able to move at their own pace and receive additional supports needed to access rigorous grade-level content means that we ensure that they “won’t lag behind because they’ll have the speed.” Lastly, a trauma-informed approach and strong one-to-one relationship-building with a supervising teacher gives students a mentor so they never do the work on “un-slumping themselves” alone. These may be fairly broad conceptual strategies, but we believe that they lay a foundation that helps us ensure that more students also find this last piece of Dr. Seuss wisdom to be true:
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!”
