In this article in Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, Cathy Martin (Denver Public Schools) says many students have entered the 2020-21 school year with "unfinished learning" from interrupted instruction in the spring - "prerequisite skills and concepts that are essential for student engagement in grade-level content that students do not have yet."
Some pars of the previous year's curriculum are more important to success this year than others. Martin believes the best mindset for addressing the 2020-21 school year is not remediation, but accelerating unfinished learning. There's a key difference between the two, she says "Remediation is based on a mistaken belief that students need to master everything they missed before they are able to engage in grade-level content. Thus, remediation focuses on students' learning gaps from a deficit-based mindset and then drills students on isolated skills and topics that have little connection with current grade-level content." This backwards-looking approach results in deceleration and widening achievement gaps.
Acceleration, by contrast, "prepares students for success in the present - this week on this content, "addressing incomplete understanding in the context of the current grade's standards, and treating students with an asset-based mindset. The two key steps: first, selecting "just in time" skills and concepts relevant to current units, with clear connections between the previous year's curriculum and 2020-21 content and skills. Second, giving informal, teacher-created just-in-time assessment tasks that tell how far instruction has to "back up" to fill in gaps in skills and knowledge. Then teachers can launch instruction that catches students up and prepares them for successful grade-level work.
"Accelerating Unfinished Learning" by Cathy Martin in Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, October 2020 (Vol 113, #10, pp.774-76); Martin is at cathymartin90@gmail.com .
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