We are now in Week 7 of the school year and the novelty of a new year has definitely worn off for both the students and the teachers. Last Friday, progress reports went home and we are now able to fill our extra time slots with students that are in need of some additional support. A lot of this time involves focusing on skills that are not being absorbed during classroom instruction. The other most important aspect of this extra time, is completing assignments that just don't seem to get done at home.
Several of the students have already been flagged for consistently "forgetting" to bring back homework or bringing it back incomplete or significantly wrong. The main goal in these extra sessions as a whole is to bring grades up as the first report card period reaches its half way mark. By focusing on skills that the student is particularly struggling with, we are able to bring up a low grade with little consequence to the student. For example, if we have a 1st grader struggling with spelling and they improve their spelling scores, there is a likely possibility that their reading scores will improve. My theory, as I'm sure others share (or hope they do) is that if a student has problems sounding out a word or spelling it, than they may not be able to read it. If they have a better understanding of words in isolation that they can read more fluently, and therefore ultimately have an improved comprehension of the material. Since skills build on eachother the simple effort of strengthening the weakest block in the tower can really make a difference.
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