So how do you give more swings at the bat? Most of my teaching experience has been at the middle school level with some high school teaching mixed in for good measure. I have had little experience as a teacher in the elementary level. So I will offer some ideas at the MS and HS level if you have some suggestions at the elementary level, I would love for you to share them.

If we had all the time in the world, this might not be such a big issue. Just take your time, offer various practice opportunities of different degrees of complexity. But most of us these days meet with our students for four or five class periods a week. Most of us have state mandated curriculum that must be completed by schools end (in reality about a month before schools end when the tests are given). Time is always and issue and we must be come very efficient in our teaching. A way to break out is to extend the classroom through the use of an online class web page. Whether you use Edline or Moodle or your own webpage you can provide your students with another look at the course material.

What do you post to these classroom extensions? You can place your notes, so students who could not follow the class lecture may be able to review it again. You can place any presentations you make to class, students can then review them again at their own pace. You can have a wiki or forum where students can post questions whenever they occur to them and get answers at any time. You can video tape a lab, or create a screencast or podcast of the lecture or class activities. Teachers can post a list of alternative reading or websites for further information. Additional questions or practice problems can be posted. These resources can be of different content and skill levels based on the different learners in a class. There can be links to online activities, games, simulations and tutorials. In our district we subscribe to United Streaming, teachers could post a list of suggested videos and students could go the United Streaming to view them.

Ideally as teachers discovered new things the list of links and resources would grow. As a teacher gave their assessments through out a unit, they may prescribe some of the resources or activities for a student to work on based on the result of an assessment. Once a list of resources is availalble the teacher can more easily provided the correct material for a student who has difficulty reading and the one who is in need of enrichment. What would be even better is if teachers shared what they already have in place, the list would take no time to create.