Shawn+Kelly

=__ Helping the Struggling Student: A Variety of Different Methods and Perspectives To Close The Learning Gap  __=



__**Purpose:**__
===The purpose of this webpage is to provide teachers, parents, and students with a resource where they can obtain useful tips and strategies to implement in their child (or student's) educational experience to assist them with when they are struggling to learn. Every child has the potential and the ability to learn, its just that in today's world, we are all so unique, and thus we also must realize that we all tend to learn differently as well. Below are a collection of some of the resources that I found that I hope will help you in assisting your struggling student and uncovering ways for them to learn so that they are not "left behind".=== = The Associate for Supervision & Curriculum=

Last year one of my professor’s in grad school required all of her students to join ASCD. At first, I thought that it was a complete waste of my money, but then I realized the access to a plethora of information about a variety of subjects that plague schools, teachers, administrators, and students on a daily basis. Below are some examples of articles that I’ve taken from the ASCD database that discuss different techniques to reach students who may be struggling in school for a variety of different reasons. We have to keep in mind that every student is unique, and therefore, not every method that we try is necessarily going to work for them. By Rick Stiggins This article offers a very interesting and unique perspective about the assessments that we use in our classroom as seen through the eyes of a struggling student. In it, the authors mentions that all too often, as teachers we get caught up in the types of assessments that only suit or please us, and are not in any way geared towards the strengths of our students. He touches upon the point that the mission and vision statements of schools have changed, and that today, the overarching goal in our schools is for **//__all__//** students to experience success in their own education. Therefore, assessments need to move from the traditional perspective that their purpose is to verify learning – to something more modern where assessments support student learning. The author includes an interesting chart that documents the “winning” and “losing” streaks that students can have through their assessments in school, and the types of feelings, especially the negative attitudes that can develop from falling in pitfalls of losing streaks. This article is great at raising the awareness of what teachers should consider when they are creating assessments for their students. They should be designed to foster and support student learning, and that they should serve the students, and not us. I think that the idea that this article carries is in direct alignment with helping a teacher who may have students that are struggling in their classes to avoid the pitfalls of losing streaks in their classrooms by thinking about assessments from a different perspective. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/may07/vol64/num08/Assessment_Through_the_Student's_Eyes.aspx
 * __ Assessment Through the Student’s Eyes __**

**__GEAR UP For College__** By Heather K. Sheridan Thomas GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) is a program that is funded through grants and is designed to increase the level of preparation for low income and minority students across the United States. So far, the program has impacted over one million students in thirty six states across the country. The program starts off with students in 6th grade, following them all the way up through high school, and enables them to experience a variety of different learning opportunities along their educational journey in a variety of different formats such as field trips, workshops, and summer work programs. The heart of the program though is the mentoring and tutoring that both graduate and undergraduate students provide for these young middle and high school students. Here, the tutors build up personal relationships with their mentees, and attempt to motivate the students to strive to do their best so that they too may be able to have the same experiences that these college students are having. From the standpoint of attempting to bridge the learning gap between low and high functioning students, I feel that this type of program might be a way to captivate the interest of a student who might be struggling in school and feel that they have no realistic chance of ever getting into college. It is these types of students who need the type of early intervention that a program like GEAR UP provides in order to get these students off the wrong track, and back onto the right one, leaving them with a feeling of satisfaction that they too can get into college. Below is a link to the article. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/summer06/vol63/num09/GEAR_UP_for_College.aspx


 * __A YouTube Video - "Already Left Behind"__**

This video chronicles teachers and students of a small Minnesota Charter School that is comprised of many students who have struggled on standardized tests and the traditional model of education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3uifxR_QF8 This next article comes from the online source Education World. It's free, and has a variety of different topics for educators to get information about.

Taken from Education World By Kathleen Modenbach http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr412.shtml As teachers, we’ve all had our share of students we’ll never forget – either because they were that impressive, or, because they were that difficult to reach. Teacher Kathleen Modenbach recalls three students of hers who were very hard to reach, and discusses some of the techniques that she utilized to help get through to them. Some of the strategies that she suggests are simple things that some of us would probably never have thought of such as moving a student from a large class size to a one that has a smaller one where they can get more individualized attention. Here, she made sure to go out of her way and provide the students with more individual level and got to know them on more of a personal level. This article reminds us that when a student is struggling, that we don’t have to necessarily reinvent the wheel in order to find effective ways to get through to them. **__Education Trust__** - A Comprehensive Study and Report Of How Some High Schools Boost Student Achievment The trust is an organization that aims at improving student achievement at all levels of the educational process, ranging from pre-k through college. In the two studies and reports that the Trust compiled, they looked at the difference that exists between //high impact schools// vs. //high performing schools//. The report looks at the support systems that both types of schools provide for their students, noticing that in many of the high impact schools that they study, detailed and highly organized "early warning" systems were already designed to catch students before they fail something. It also found that many of the high impact schools offered struggling students with extra help and instructional time in math and english classes to help try to keep them in alignment with their college prep requirements.
 * __ Reaching the Hard to Reach Student __**

I thought that this report offers a compelling comparison about what schools who are deemed to be high impact schools can offer for its students who may be struggling as opposed to schools that we traditionally view as high performing that often overlook these types of students.

http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Press+Room/High+School+2005.htm

An interesting book about improving student understandings...

By Betty K. Garner
 * __Getting To Got It! Helping Struggling Students Learn__ [[image:http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413ybRnHGVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg width="150" height="123" align="right" caption="Getting to Got It! Helping Struggling Students Learn How to Learn" link="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1416606084/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books"]]**

I didn't read this book myself, but from looking at the abstract on amazon.com and also reading some of the book reviews that people who have read the book themselves have said about it, it seems like it has some really interesting and useful information in it. I'll leave you with a book review that one teacher said about some of the strategies that she implemented with one of her students that she tutored in the summer.

//"This book will change your life. It offers practical help for students, teachers, and parents. IT WORKS! I tutored this summer using strategies and activities from Garner's book; one student told her parents, "I think differently now." This is the best tool I've put in my teaching tool belt. I'm grateful to Betty Garner for her research!" - P. Eblen (Iowa)//

The book is very cost efficient and can be purchased on Amazon.com for around $12. I just ordered myself a copy.

[|http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Helping-Struggling-Students-Learn/dp/**1416606084**]


 * __How Can Parents and Teachers Work Together to Help Struggling Students?__**

I found an interesting article in published in Parenthood Magazine that discusses this very topic. It suggests that parents need to take an obvious interest and dedicate time out of each day to work with their child who might be struggling. The article also suggests things such as having parents contact their child's teacher to discuss what their goals might be, as well as working together with their child and his/her teacher to develop an action plan to put into place. It's a great resource for teachers to refer to that are interested in working with the parents of their struggling students, of for parents whose child might be struggling to refer to as well.

http://www.parenthood.com/article-topics/article-topics.php?Article_ID=9242

=ERIC - Education Resources Information Center=

ERIC is a great FREE database that you can search educational journals and articles on just about any topic you can think of. The only down side is that sometimes, it's tough to find the access to full text articles. Nevertheless, I was able to find one about strategies that can be used to help students, particularly high school students, who are having difficulty reading. This next article comes from REL - Regional Educational Laboratory.

"Using Strategy Instruction to Help Struggling High Schoolers Understand What They Read"

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/34/e7/e3.pdf

This article touches upon an issue that as teachers, regardless of what subject/content level we may be responsible for covering, is a common problem in all of our classrooms which is reading comprehension. The study is actually a regional one covering the central part of the country where teachers uncovered that using peer assistance or mentoring programs had a significant impact on reading comprehension amongst their struggling students. Improvement in student's reading comprehension using peer assistance programs improved the greatest using the following three strategies: 1, Reading passages aloud with partner modeling and coaching 2. Asking and answering questions with partner after reading each paragraph 3. Predicting and confirming or disconfirming what would happen next in the passage with partner

Sometimes as teachers, we forget that one of our greatest assets can often be our students themselves. This article is a great reminder of strategies that are simple which we as teachers can use to facilitate and foster reading comprehension amongst all of our students, whether they are struggling or not.