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How to Help Struggling Students..

dibblenancy

Quora Question: How might the education system be redesigned to better accommodate different learning styles and paces, particularly for students who struggle with traditional teaching methods?


My Response:


Good question.


It was an ongoing challenge for me as a teacher to do my best to accommodate different learning styles and paces. This issue has not been addressed effectively systemically in my opinion, yet.


However, individual teachers have used specific strategies to help all of their students grow and learn. Of all the strategies that I will list below, one of the most effective was peer tutoring. I had, on average, 35–38 chemistry students per period. Chemistry is difficult for many students and there was only one of me so…..having my students help each other was fantastic.


After each new concept there would always be at least 10–15% of the students that would understand the idea (say.. balancing chemical equations). I would stop after introducing and explaining the idea, then have my students grab my larger white boards and the students that understood the concept would go from table to table helping other students.

I then asked my students to “pay it forward.” What I mean by this is that once a student, helped by a peer tutor, understood the concept, it was their job to go explain it to someone else.


This worked SO well because students were more open to being helped by another student instead of having me explain it again in some other way. Students often find another way to explain that I didn’t think of. (Hard on my “teacher ego” at first).


 I LOVED watching a room full of students help each other. In this way I was able to move through my chemistry curriculum much faster than previously, student’s grades went up and their benchmark test scores went WAY up!


Here are some strategies that I found to be effective:


  1. Project-based learning-well-designed projects with some student choice of topic within the standards allow students with different learning styles and paces to succeed.

  2. Small group discussions-If the instructor ensures that these discussions are held with a round-table format (each students speaks in turn-no interrupting and all must say something) then this strategy helps all students with different learning styles/paces.

  3. Debates-carefully designed debates and well-structured debates allow all students to participate and learn.

  4. Games-learning through game-playing is not only fun, it helps students with different learning styles/paces to be successful.

  5. Socratic Seminars-These can be very, very good if they are well-structured and managed.

  6. Peer Tutoring and Editing-If the instructor has a scoring guide and teachers students how to use it, then peer editing and tutoring helps struggling students do well. I have been amazed at how successful this strategy is.


Final Thought: Enjoy trying new teaching strategies. If they don’t go swimmingly the first few times that is o.k. You’ll learn from each time you try, you’ll modify your plan and each time the new, brave, bold strategy will get better because you’ll be learning from experience.

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