Why are some students left behind
In this pre-cal 11 class, some students are facing a tremendous difficulty because they don’t give this course their best try, and the reason for that may be they don’t understand how important this course is. For a while, I keep receiving some very 'basic' type of questions from few students, which kind of confused me because those questions are not challenging and Ms.Wagner has certainly go over it. My first thought was that they don’t understand the teacher’s interpretation; however, after few sentences of brief explanation, they can figure out the right answer without having me finish my sentence. Later during the class time, while the teacher is teaching, I observe on those students and discovered that they are not tent to listen to the class. They whether day dreaming or dawdling. Those students are very smart, their minds are brilliant; as you can see, some of them are able to figure out the answer with few clues. The only difference between them and those ‘stong’students is that they don’t give the course a try. Therefore, I believe I can draw a conclusion to say that some students are not quite successful is because they don’t know to do the right thing at right time. For these students, it's important to let them know how important math is. So, my strategy is to try to let them deal with some more math application problems that deal with real life situations. The second scenario occurs much more frequently than the other two scenarios, which is that the left behind students don’t know how to study efficiently. There are many students, including myself sometimes, working quite hard but end up with very little progress. It’s not because either their minds are not brilliant or they are not trying hard, it’s because the way they study is incorrect.There is a student in the class I assist with, he is very smart, he takes notes during the class and he tries to finish some work problems at the end of the class. This student seems to process all the good qualities of a‘strong’ student, however, based on my understanding to him, I know that once he gets back home he plays television games all the way from 4:00 p.m. to bed time. He may think he learnt enough for this course, he may also think that he has paid a concerted amount of efforts to this course. However what he doesn’t know is, math is a course that requires tones practice done, in order to achieve the level of ‘truly understanding’. Therefore, he doesn't achieve the score that he thinks he deserves. For these kind of students, I think I can share them some of my experience, let them set up a goal, and making up a regiment, and follow it without exceptions.
The second scenario occurs very frequently, which is that left behind students are having difficulty with the language. Unlike the above two, this time, the student has the intension to study and may know how to study correctly. However, language studying is an onerable process that takes a tremendous of time to master. Therefore, it can be one of the hardest scenarios to deal with. I know a student in our class, he/she is very introversial toward the class since she /he has troubles with the language. After a brief conversation, I learnt that it was his first year in Canada. Thus, i decided to provided him assistances in the language that he speaking. I think that's the only way for him to catch up the class.