lower students

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lower students
By lynn

I know exactly what you mean. I teach 4th graders. This years group is so low. Last year we had an above average group. I spent the first 8 weeks of school just trying to get students to get into a routine and follow
directions. I found that you have to give only 1 direction at a time and repeat, repeat and repeat. Repetition is the key. They still don't all know their multiplication tables. We have done a variety of games. I think this helps. Multiplication bingo, baseball, beat the clock,etc. We game I do with my group is use a beach ball and everyone stands up. You toss the beach ball to a student

and give them a fact such as 6 x 6; they are to respond with the answer, 36. If they miss it, they sit down and write that fact 10 times. The students love it. Now with language. Forget the book. There are a variety resources on the internet and books for ideas on teaching the basics. Tell the kids you not using the books gets their attention for awhile. Something different! I assume you are teaching basic grammar and perhaps writing in you English curriculum. I concentrate on 1 part of speech at a time. Then, focus on how the parts of speech work together in a sentence. Gradually working my way up to putting them all together and writing sentences into a paragraph. We have state testing each spring. when I changed and stopped doing the book thing, my scores went up. I used newspapers alot. Different activities. I have trouble doing the group activities. But i'm trying just partners now. Maybe by the end of the year we can do group activities. I had another thought. It was really hard for me to come down to the students level when I was used to higher students. But it was recommended to me to start doing lessons all together. So if your only option is the language book perhaps you could do some lessons all together. For example,
Verbs. I'm going to write a sentence on the board and you(students) are going to write it as I write it. Then, when it's written. Ask students to underline the verb in the sentence. Go through the lesson writing the sentences on the board or overhead as they write them on the paper. When finished. Everyone is finished. They feel success and it's a building block to following directions! Good Luck!