My biggest surprise about being in the classroom and working with students is how many individual students need one-one-one time. My classroom has students ranging in cognitive abilities; some students excel at math, others excel at reading and writing, and some students are having difficulties all around. This reminds me of my own lessons that I taught. I often felt that by continuing with the unit, I was leaving others behind; some students were absent for a previous lesson, some students were pulled out to see a reading specialist, and others didn’t understand the lesson 100%, which was my objective.
The G.L.A.D strategy says teach to the highest capable students, catch up the lower level students later. Which leaves me questioning…when do I catch these students up when the rest of the class, or at least the highest capable that are moving on with me and my lessons? Do I catch them up during future lessons, thus resulting in a prolonged game of catch up, or do I catch these students up in the form of extra homework… but is that really fair to send kids home with “extra” homework just because I didn’t give them the proper scaffolding to meet their need initially? I am left perplexed and unsure. This surprise has lead me to dig deeper to discover the answer. It is assumed by most teachers that these students will “eventually catch up”, but I ask when? Is this another way to push the issue under the rug? I am hoping that these next two quarters will help me answer this question and help me develop new ideas to solve this never ending cycle.
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I too have struggled with this idea of not leaving students behind. I find it is especially hard to catch kids up on days when they are absent, especially when we are only there a couple mornings a week. I don't think that GLAD really says we should 'catch the lower students up later,' rather I thought it said teach to the highest and re-teach to the lower level students. I know this seems similar, but really as I started to think about it and contemplate the differences between these two statements I found that they really were different. You are right; teachers can't and shouldn't play a constant game of catch up. We shouldn't purposely leave the lower level students behind from the very beginning. The way I interpreted it, this idea focused on teaching and re-teaching an idea. Setting the bar high and then providing students with authentic and repetitious learning experiences that have multiple aspects that appeal to many different learning styles provides for learning in all students. Teachers have to play enough catch up as it is, there is no reason why a teacher should purposely place the burden of playing catch up upon themselves, not to mention stifle a student's learning on purpose with the risk that by putting them behind you might never be able to catch them up as well or to the same point as the other students in your class. GLAD really focuses on the idea of continuing to teach and re-teach to all students so that they all can learn to understand and think about the information from the lesson on deeper levels.
I agree with Jessica's interpretation of how GLAD believes in teaching to all students. I really like that GLAD allows for students that understand the concepts to go further with them and also provides scaffolding for those that need it. In situations where I have students falling behind I would not give extra homework because that would feel like a punishment for not understanding a lesson. I usually have my higher achieving students work on their own so that I can work in small groups with the ones that need additional instruction. I am glad that we have an entire year to see how our CT's deal with these same issues so that we will have some ideas going forward.
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