How to Support Struggling Students

If we want our students to succeed, we cannot afford to leave to chance what happens when they do not learn.In this guide, Robyn R. Jackson and Claire Lambert take you step by step through the process of providing proactive and progressive learning support―what great teachers do to ensure that all students receive the right kind of assistance and to get those who are struggling back on track before they get frustrated and give up. Here, you'll learn how to:

• Support students before instruction through acceleration practices, including activating background knowledge, providing advance organizers, and focusing on key vocabulary.
• Support students during instruction by distinguishing between productive and destructive struggle, establishing ""red flags"" to alert you when a student's learning is headed off course, and delivering targeted interventions that quickly put struggling students back on the path to mastery.
• Support students after instruction by providing appropriate remediation for the few students who have not achieved mastery.
• Create a comprehensive, progressive support plan tailored to your classroom content and the students you teach.

Every teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of practice and support. Each how-to guide in the Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series focuses on one of the seven mastery principles introduced in Robyn R. Jackson's best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching. The guides' self-assessments, worksheets, planning templates, process outlines, checklists, links to online resources, suggested activities, and prompts for reflection help teachers of all experience levels apply the principles to address everyday classroom challenges and build their overall mastery mindset.