How Do I Move At-Risk Students Forward Quickly and Effectively?

Barbara McSwain
Mar 30, 2009

The school leader today needs a vision of success for students, staff and community. School leaders must recognize that students today are entering school with greater needs that require definitive skills from teachers. Administrators need to be able to accurately assess those needs and to provide the necessary professional development for teachers to meet those needs in a timely manner.  Exemplary leaders have implemented and given their teachers professional development in strategies that "Catch Kids Up". These strategies include Acceleration, Scaffolding, and Differentiated Assignments. This article is addressing the first of these strategies, Acceleration. None of these strategies can be used effectively without addressing vocabulary. 

Louisa Moats states that students are "vocabulary poor." Yet, often our solution to teaching vocabulary is to send them down the hall to a resource teacher to remediate vocabulary, while other students are learning grade level appropriate words. The students return to class and discover that they are further behind than when they left at the beginning of the period. There is a solution to this problem. We know that remediation alone does not work. If it did, every child in America would be on grade level. We must look at what successful schools are doing.

One of the researched based practices that has been recognized in exemplary schools is previewing. Previewing, which is not pre-teaching includes specific strategies that must be used with "at risk students". Students are taught key vocabulary using researched based strategies (i.e. Frayer, word map) prior to the teaching of the lesson. Learning key vocabulary is important to acquiring foundational knowledge, so that students can "hook" to the learning of new knowledge. This is a recognized need in social studies and science classes that are loaded with vocabulary.   However, the need is equally as great in math classes. Often students are given vocabulary at the same time they are trying to learn the mathematical process. The result is that the information is too overwhelming for the students and they stop trying. Acceleration provides a time to motivate students. This is when the teachers encourage the students to be excited about the new information that they will be learning. There is nothing like success to build motivation.
 
Many educators have become confused about Discovery Learning. One discovers concepts and issues foundational knowledge. One does not discover foundational knowledge, like vocabulary. It is imperative that students have the opportunity to be explicitly taught vocabulary and have multiple opportunities for engagement with the words in order to make the words their own in conversation and writing. Acceleration provides opportunities for key vocabulary engagement during previewing and then again during the teaching strategies portion of the lesson.

One of the top researched based instructional strategies is the use of advance organizers. The only difference between an advance organizer and a graphic organizer is when it is given to the student. If a student is given a graphic organizer prior to using it in the lesson, it becomes an advance organizer. "At risk" students often do not understand the structure of a graphic organizer. This inhibits their use of it for learning. Therefore, to Accelerate their learning, the structure of a graphic organizer is previewed by using content that is very familiar to the student. Later this same graphic organizer will be used during the lesson with grade level content to lift out key concepts and ideas. The Student Learning Map is used as an advance organizer. Teachers preview the Unit Essential Question, Key Learning and major Concepts that the students will be using in the unit. Through the use of the Student Learning Map, students are able to "see" connections in the learning.
 
Teachers should assess to see if students have background knowledge of the upcoming content. If background knowledge is present, teachers will link to the students' prior knowledge and then hook to the new information. When background knowledge is not present, teachers Accelerate learning by stopping to create or build it. This may be done by reading a story, showing a picture or watching a short video clip. The brain is a pattern seeking device. Anytime new information is received it immediately begins to search for associations that can be made with previous knowledge. It is imperative that educators have strategies that can be used with students to create background knowledge.

Learning-Focused addresses two models for Acceleration. The first model is the teacher model. Teachers may use acceleration prior to teaching a new unit/lesson through the Launch of the unit or during activating of the lesson. The second model is a school model. The school model utilizes time periods before, during, and after school that may be in place (i.e. study halls, Acceleration Labs, remediation periods, after school programs, Saturday classes and summer school). Both models include the following components for Acceleration:  previewing key vocabulary, previewing Student Learning Maps, and linking to prior knowledge (building/creating prior knowledge, if necessary, prior to linking).

One of my favorite stories is about an 8th grade teacher who responded after implementing Acceleration, "It was a miracle, just a miracle!"  This is a miracle that occurred when purpose and previewing collided.

"How do I move at risk students forward quickly and effectively?" We now know that this can be answered effectively via Acceleration strategies. We are not doing away with remediation but recognize that remediation alone cannot "catch kids up." Acceleration in combination with remediation is a most effective strategy!

See Catching Kids Up for more ideas on this subject.