Category Archives for "Struggling Students"

Three Big Mistakes that Keep You from Helping All Students Succeed

Ever wonder why the amount of effort we put into supporting students has zero effect on whether or not they fail? I mean sometimes we spend a few minutes and it is all a student needs to get back on track. Other times we spend hours and weeks of intensive support and the student STILL fails. So just […]

How To Help Struggling Students Catch Up And Keep Up Even If They Are Unmotivated, Don’t Do Homework, And Won’t Come In For Extra Help.

One of the main reasons students struggle in school is that they do not do their work. Period. So what do you do with students who are unmotivated, won’t turn in their homework, won’t come in for extra support, and won’t access any of the supports you’ve put into place for them?This was my struggle about mid-way […]

How to Support Your Struggling Learners DURING Class Without Creating Separate Lessons

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when developing a support plan for students is that they create a separate lesson plan for struggling learners, one for on-level learners, and one for students who need more challenge. That’s too much work. Supporting struggling learners shouldn’t mean that you exhaust yourself in the process. If you […]

How to Turn Your Worst Performing Students into Superstars in Just One Semester

Previously, I talked about how I discovered a “red flag” system as a way of helping me offer support for students early, before they were caught in a free-fall of failure and had given up. (You can read about my system here). It’s just one part of the Student SUCCESS Plan. So you know already that […]

How to cut your student failures in half

Note: This is Part III of a series. Read Part I and Part II  We’ve always been taught to wait until students start failing before coming up with an intervention approach. But, if you wait until students begin to fail to intervene, you’re too late.Here’s why:Students who are failing are often in fight, flight, or […]

How to Prevent Failure

[This article is Part II of a series: Read Part I: Why Remediation is keeping your students behind here]Previously, I told you about how frustrated I was with remediation and how I realized that the reason that I was so frustrated was because I was focusing on remediation which responds to failure rather than preventing […]

Why Remediation is Keeping Your Students Behind

I remember a few years ago, I started the school year frustrated. You see, the year before, I had really struggled to keep some of my students from failing. Admittedly, a lot of it was their fault – they weren’t doing their homework, they barely studied for tests, they didn’t turn in major papers. Some […]

Why Remediation Doesn’t Work

The two biggest reasons students struggle in school are that they either lack the prior knowledge or the soft skills they need to acquire and retain new information. Students who lack prior knowledge usually don’t have the vocabulary and the experiences they need to help them learn. Without understanding the vocabulary and without the necessary […]

Even If They Never Ask

I was sitting in church a few weeks ago, when a little girl of whom I am very fond sat in the pew next to me. We were in between services so after giving her a huge hug, I asked her how things were going in her new school. “Not good,” she hung her head. […]

Activating Prior Knowledge

One of the foundations of effective rigorous acquisition as well as strong support for struggling students is that teachers activate prior knowledge. Activating prior knowledge not only helps students make connections between what they know already and what they are about to learn, it helps students become mentally engaged in upcoming learning. We’ve been hearing […]