Dealing with students who are behind – and late work

    It’s the bane of our existence.  Some schools require teachers to accept late work right up until the end of the marking period, while others just say, you earned a zero.  While my school’s formal policy is late = zero, I’m a bit more lenient.  I work with mostly middle schoolers, who often find organization a personal challenge.  I also have students who get sick.

    One would think that online work would be perfect for these students – since they can make it up from home.  But some just don’t do it, while some are too ill.  Meanwhile, the rest of the class has moved on.  What’s showing on the class Moodle then changes, and that’s the problem.

     From a purely practical standpoint, I have found it really helps my students if I place what we’re working on front and center with clear instructions about what we’re doing right now.  This is extra work for me, but the payoff has been worth it in students 1) doing what I want 2) without asking constant “what are we doing” questions. I already organize work by units, and put those most current closest to the “top” of the Moodle.  Middle schoolers don’t have the patience to weed through the typical Moodle scroll-of-death list of dozens of activities, forums, and resources. 

    The problem comes when I de-clutter, by making earlier activities disappear. (I want to use the activities next year, so I don’t delete them.)  Now that those activities are effectively gone from a student’s point of view, what does the returning student then do?  I can either “forgive” the assignments, because they don’t show any more, or I have to find a way to give the student that work. 

    In the K12 world, kids get seriously ill and then come back to school to continue the school year.  It’s not like 8- or 16 week college level courses, where students who missed too much of class often just have to repeat the course another semester.  In K12, we really want to avoid making a child needlessly repeat an entire year of work.  Even if students only miss two weeks of work, they will then need to do current work, plus catch up on all class work and homework that was missed, in multiple subjects.  Catching up can take awhile.

    While I still require the reading and writing assignments be made up, I’ve been forgiving old discussions.  Let’s face it – there is no discussion if you’re the only one “talking.”  So perhaps the solution there is to ask the student to read the discussion postings, then write a response to them.  Aha!  Thank you, blog, for helping me find my way to that solution.

Shoveling around snow days

    As we begin snow day number four, or is it five, I wanted to share with you a way to keep your classes moving forward.  Regardless of whether you have Edline, Moodle, a class webpage, or another online resource like these, you probably already have a way to manage snow days online.
photo © 2010 Mike Procario | more info (via: Wylio)


1.    Communicate your expectations.  Let students know in class, and parents know via email, that you will be posting work which you expect students to do whenever there is a snow day.  If you live in an area with spotty electrical/internet service, let parents know this is contingent on your having service. 

2.    Decide what you want students to accomplish and gather the necessary resources for them to use.  Some examples:

• Background reading.  Since students may not have texts at home with them (or may say they don’t), provide other readings.  Textbook publishers frequently have rich resources available.  So much material is available online that you are likely to be able to find a number of interesting articles for your students to read which relate to what you’re doing right now in class.  If you keep these links bookmarked or in a Word document, these will be readily available.  Even if you forgot your list at school, a few minutes of Googling is likely to help bring up at least some of what you want.
• Activities.  Ask thought-provoking questions.  Don’t do spit-back questions-at-the-end-of-the-chapter.  You have a great opportunity for students to pause and think.  Ask questions like: Why do you think X is taking place? What would happen if Y changed?   Those great questions you never have enough time for in class.
• Online resources.  You always wanted to take the class to the computer lab to look at that great math website, or science videos website, or primary sources website.  Consider also:  what do you want students to do with this resource? Explore, experiment, evaluate?  Caveat:  If this was a website you wanted students using under supervision, don’t use it for a snow day.  Unless you want parent complains, don’t link to YouTube, where students are only one click away from inappropriate content. Of course, students go there themselves, but why set yourself up?
• PowerPoints.  Some teachers/texts have PowerPoint presentations of key material.  You may wish to post these, especially in AP classes. 
• Activities. Discussion.  See this post about how to set up a discussion in Edline.  I much prefer Moodle discussions which are easier to set up and provide more variety.

3.    Tell students what you want them to do today, on the snow day. 

• In Edline, the easiest way to do this is in News.  Click on the pen & paper icon to the right of News.  Click on Add, then add content as you usually do.  I make the title explicit:  Snow Day – January 21.  I usually just select Enter Text by Hand.  Be specific.  If you have study guides, assignment sheets you refer to, be sure these have already been uploaded to the Content section of your Edline page.  You can include any links to readings or resources as part of what you’re writing.  If you are using the same directions for more than one class, select the other classes you want and click Save. 
• In Moodle, I place the directions (in a label) so they are the first thing students see after they login.

4.    Communicate your expectations to parents and students.  Send an email (my school uses Edline for this) to all parents and students in each class, reminding them that you’ve got work for the day posted, and where it is.  Not all students check their email, but adults are more likely to, and parents want their kids learning. 

5.    When school starts again, discuss the work.  The first time, a fair number of students will not have done the work, but participation improves with experience.

Questions

1.    What about power outages and dropped internet service?  Be understanding, but treat the work like class work that was missed due to a sick day and needs to be made up.

2.    What about the kid who says s/he forgot the password and couldn’t login?  Really?  This is where due dates and assignments are posted, but the kid suddenly forgot the password? And didn’t ask parents – who also have an account – for assistance?  Treat this as class work that has to be made up.

3.    What about kids/parents who forgot about the work entirely?  Treat this as class work that was missed due to a sick day.  If it has to be made up, the student is less likely to forget next time.

4.    What if I don’t have power/internet service?  Don’t beat yourself up.  You probably have bigger difficulties to cope with than a missed day of classes.

Comments, suggestions, additions welcome.  This is cross-posted to http://franblo.edublogs.org/2011/01/21/shoveling-around-snow-days/