Reteaching Plan for Project Based Assessment

Remediation and re-teaching are important aspects to planning instruction. While we must plan for students to succeed, in some cases they may need some review and remediation. Here is my re-teaching plan for my environmental pbl.

Re-Teaching Plan for Environmental Change Project Based Learning

As in the table above, there are a number of potential issues that can occur for students during their activity. Students may not learn from the assignment, not participate, do well in one area but not another or may not be challenged enough. Students may exhibit any combination of these problems, so this plan will endeavour to combat multiple potential issues. The rubric, monitoring and feedback plan will identify these potential problems as they come up, and this re-teaching plan will help address the problems.

Students that didn't learn:

For students that are struggling to learn, I will build schema and use a variety of methods to help students understand the material. Students may struggle with researching for the project, creating their writing components and being able to present their findings. They may require additional time spent re-teaching vocabulary and review, as well as frequent checks for understanding. Breaking the research into smaller chunks could help with learning new material and vocabulary. Students that did not learn may also run into additional problems with participation. It could be helpful to have them pair up with students that are excelling, so they can learn the material in a buddy system. For students that did not learn the material because they are not challenged enough, they could be given differentiated material to work with that would engage them by challenging them. Since students will be given research topics as starting points, I can help guide them towards more graded material if they are struggling, or in the case of students that are not challenged, I can give them more complex problems to deal with. Additionally, we can brainstorm topics they find interesting that would be more likely to hold their interest rather than the ones I originally supplied. By being flexible on research topics, I can differentiate for students depending on their needs.

Students that didn't participate:

Students may not participate because they do not feel comfortable with the material. It’s important to discern what is the root cause preventing students from participating fully. Students that are struggling with participation may benefit from peer coaching, so I will monitor how students are doing in group activities and make adjustments accordingly to encourage student participation. Additionally, students that do not participate fully may need more help with understanding and utilising cooperative learning strategies. I will spend extra time going over how students should participate (review classroom norms and expectations) and model the type of participation behaviour that they should have. If students are not participating because they did not fully learn the material, additional reviews will be done to help them get comfortable with the topic. Additionally, my rubric includes an element of peer review which will be incorporated into the research component of the project early on. If students are having difficulty with participation, I will be able to intervene and help them adjust.

Students that did well in one area, but not another:

By monitoring the project and breaking each piece into chunks, the teacher and student will be able to identify areas of improvement. If a student is doing well in one area, but not another, additional time and review can be spent on areas where the student needs improvement most. Peer coaching can also help students with filling the gaps as they work together collaboratively for certain areas of the project.

Students that weren't challenged enough:

For students that require extra challenge, the project is open-ended in terms of the student’s ability to choose research topics (within the scope of the project), allowing for students to grapple with more complex problems and topics if they wish. Since the project revolves around educating others about environmental change, we can dive a bit deeper into this concept. Rather than just exploring environmental problems, they can research other related topics that might affect why people are struggling to do anything to prevent catastrophic climate change; for instance, they can research psychology, global economics, national policy and other reasons alongside the environmental factors. They will also be allowed to create more extensions of their findings, and this variety will allow them to feel further challenged by coming up with different, innovative ways to present their findings. Alongside differentiated material, students that are excelling can also benefit by acting as peer coaches to help them develop interpersonal skills and challenge their mastery of the material.

Conclusion:

There are a number of overlaps when it comes to reteaching, so diagnosing the root cause is vital. The peer review really helped me to appreciate this, and also made me think about specificity in designing activities to handle these various issues. We had similar strategies, particularly in building schema, differentiation, and peer coaching, which are powerful methods for both re-teaching and assessment. I also learned that I should account for the students who do not need re-teaching, and that these students can be involved as part of the peer-coaching process or given extension projects to keep them engaged.

References:

6 Strategies for Reteaching. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14, 2021, from https://www.classroomtestedresources.com/2017/01/6-strategies-for-reteaching.html