Catching Up Students Who Have Unfinished Learning
I was talking with four 2nd grade teachers last week who are very worried about how they are going to send their students to 3rd grade reading and writing "on level." Given that during first grade, the students went into lockdown for the entire fourth quarter of the year and then with the challenges of keeping kids safe this year, these teachers were feeling very defeated. They wanted to know what I thought is possible for their students with the forty days left in the year.
First, we accept what we can't control and then, with laser-like intention, we focus on strategies that have the best chance for impacting student literacy growth.
Here are 4 strategies for helping students accelerate literacy growth during the last weeks of school.
1. Narrow the curriculum focus. We must decide what is absolutely critical for students to learn before the end of the year. What are the 3 or 4 MOST important reading, foundation, and writing standards that students much absolutely master in order to be ready for the next grade? Once you have determined what are the priorities, spend most, if not all of the time left, learning, practicing, coaching, and giving students feedback to move them forward in the identified concepts, skills, and strategies. Let everything else go! Even in a great year, we can't teach and learn every standard to the same depth and we certainly can't do everything a textbook says to do. So do what is MOST important.
2. Monitor and measure student learning. Be intentional about your observations of students. Look for very specific literacy behaviors. For example, if locating text evidence is a priority, monitor this on a daily basis. Have student provide specific information from the text to support their inferences and claims during discussions and in their reading responses. Confer with each student and ask them if they are feeling very confident, somewhat confident, or not confident in locating text evidence. Ask them to provide work examples to support their confidence level. Students must be aware of what is critical to learn and they must partner with us to determine if they have achieved the learning goal.
3. Increase reading and writing volume. No one gets better at a skill or strategy without hours of practice. We want students to accumulate hours of independent reading, so have students keep track of reading minutes. During the next weeks of school, set up a reading challenge. You might use a baseball theme like "Reading All Stars." Organize the class into 4 baseball teams. Then keep score using the number of minutes each team reads. For each 10 minutes of self-selected reading, they get to go up to bat. Fourth grade teacher, Randi Anderson, has the students "spin the wheel" to see how many bases they get to (metaphorically) run. Students love the fun of the game, but most importantly, they are spending valuable time reading.
4. Build background knowledge. According to Dr. John Hattie's visible learning research, readers who establish more connections between a text and their prior knowledge produce stronger situation models, or cognitive maps of a given state of affairs. This situation model, in turn, is aimed to improve comprehension and recall.
Many of our students are lacking in background knowledge that they can utilize during reading. Spending just five minutes a day reading aloud from interesting informational texts can substantially grow students' background knowledge and vocabulary. Over the last weeks of school, ask students for 4-6 topics they'd like to know more about. This could include topics like insects, volcanos, robots, the Mohave Desert, etc. Then collect articles, texts, and videos related to the topic. Spend a week learning about each topic and provide students with additional texts and videos to explore on their own. Check out Wonderopolis and ReadWorks for topics and resources you can use.
For more ideas and strategies, join me this summer for a full day of Catching Students Ups Who Have Fallen Behind in 3-5 Grades.