Modifications for Struggling Learners

In the chapter that we read for this week, there were some useful tips that could be used when you have high performance students in your classroom. However, these strategies can also be used with struggling learners with a little modification.

The first strategy discussed was ongoing assessment. Ongoing assessments are important for every classroom. They allow the teacher to see where the students' comprehension level is. Pre-assessments provide a starting point for teachers to use. They can effectively see where more time needs to be spent on the material and where the gaps are in information. If all the students are proficient in one area, then the teacher can spend less time on this topic. But pre-assessments can also clue the teacher into things like: who can read the textbook well and who struggles with reading the textbook? A post-assessment can let teachers know not only how well the students understood the information but they also can tell teachers what teaching strategies worked well and which ones didn't. If students all did really well on one topic, it is important for the teacher to note what he/she did that day that made the information stick with the students. Post assessments can be done using exit cards, quick quizzes, or journal entries.

Another strategy that is used in Think-Pair-Share. The teacher poses an open-ended question. Then, students think about the question and spend a couple of minutes writing down their thoughts. Students then pair up and share their ideas with each other. This could be modified to use with struggling learners by pairing them with a higher performing learner. The higher performance learner could help the struggling learner to see things from a different perspective. Also, the student might respond better to another student's assistance rather than the teacher's. The teacher then calls the class back together for a class-wide discussion. During this discussion, it is important that the teacher ensures that every student participates, even the struggling ones. If they are called on, the teacher should give them an appropriate time to think and answer before just giving away the answer or calling on someone else.

Lecturing with graphic organizers is another strategy that can be beneficial to all types of learners. If the teacher hands out a graphic organizer before beginning to lecture, then students know where the lecture is headed. When completing a graphic organizer lecture, teachers should pause and take breaks and have students summarize key ideas. That way, if a struggling learner missed something, he/she will have another opportunity to get the information.

Another useful strategy is to break students into small groups based on the areas where they need more assistance. Then, the teacher can spend time with each small group and work on the areas where the students are weak or have learning gaps. This can help struggling learners because it targets the specific areas where they are having trouble.

Complex instruction can also be used. This is group work but the teacher ensures that all group members are contributing equally. This can be helpful with struggling learners because they still know that there are expectations for them to contribute to their group, but they do not need to know all of the information because their group members can help them out as well.

All of these strategies will be useful when trying to adapt a classroom to a wide-range of performance learning.