18th May 2012 13:05
By Blue Tutors
Why isn’t my student improving?
It can be the case occasionally that a student simply stops improving. This has happened with one of mine recently, a boy who had progressed leaps and bounds in the first few months of coming to me. It has been very sad to witness and especially now in the run up to exams when he has finally started to realise that he ought to have worked much harder for the last few months. So, what to do?
Firstly, I got his parents on board. I rang them and explained I had concerns over the effort their child was putting into his lessons. I asked them if there were any underlying reasons that his performance might not be interesting to him anymore. His best friend had recently died and this naturally had affected how he felt about his lessons.
Secondly, I explained to the student that I was concerned about his recent progress, or lack of, and when I got no evidence of greater effort in the next week’s homework I upped the ante, pointing out the grade he would now expect.
Thirdly, I went back to basics. His sentences had become unwieldy careering on into nonsense. I asked him to hand write his homework, only allowing one sentence in ten to go over the length of a line.
Although the first two actions produced a response in that my student began to get concerned about his grade and seem as though he was working harder, it was only when I went back to basics that I actually saw any improvement in his work. It seems that, given all the trauma of his friend’s death, and his subsequent lack of interest, he had simply forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.
My point: sometimes you need to go backwards to move forwards.