How to Support Struggling Students
Of all the challenging moments in teaching, it can be one of the most memorable: A student is marooned and bewildered in a lesson. You, the teacher, must find a way—carefully and intentionally—to bring back that student to the path of learning.
Robyn Jackson and Claire Lambert know that pressure and have fought to help those lost students. Both are former teachers and authors of the new tool How to Support Struggling Students, the first in ASCD's new Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching workbook series. Based on Jackson’s bestselling book, Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching, each workbook in the new series will delve more deeply into the seven principles Jackson uses to describe mastery teaching.
How to Support Struggling Students examines the principles of supporting students before, during, and after instruction. It isn't all about the content. "We are not only obligated to teach our discipline; we are also obligated to teach students strategies that will make them more successful in our discipline," Jackson says.
Developing a plan for ongoing support in the classroom is not easy, and disruptions can come from all sides. But Jackson and Lambert know that the better prepared a teacher can be to know how to adjust to meet the students' needs, the closer that teacher is to becoming a master. The authors walk the reader through reflective activities and checkpoints to design a proactive plan for student support:
- Effective support is repeated, focused, systematic, and temporary.
- Effective support provides clear directions and keeps the big picture central to students.
- Effective support makes the path to mastery clear and is progressive.
Read a sample chapter and let us know what you think of the first workbook in this new series.
