One of my most memorable meet-your-new-teacher day moments came in 2015. After nine years out of the classroom, I was brimming with excitement as I met my 5th grade students and their families for the upcoming year. It was mostly pretty typical - lots of smiles, handshakes, introductions, and paperwork.
What wasn’t typical was the introduction I got to a student who I’ll call “April.” April’s parents asked if they could have a few minutes of my time to explain her school experience last year:
“We thought you should know that we home-schooled her last year. She did
great, except we didn’t teach her math. At all. She hasn’t done math for a year.”
I smiled, I told April how excited I was to meet her, and thanked the family for coming and for telling me about her 4th grade year.
I also lied to them. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out and she won’t miss a beat,” I reassured them. I should never have promised them that. I certainly was not sure that it would turn out ok. There is a famous saying attributed to economist Thomas Sowell that goes like this: “If you want to help someone, tell them the truth. If you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear.”
The second open house ended, I went to Google to try to figure out what to do. I came across a concept called “accelerated learning” that, if you’re an educator, you’ve either started to hear a lot recently or you’re about to. Accelerated learning is a strategy for helping students catch up who have major gaps in their learning from prior years, as April did.
So I tried it. And it worked. As I wrote in a recent post, students who fall behind rarely catch up, and we have a WHOLE lot of students who fell behind last year. Accelerated learning is the best idea I know of for helping them efficiently and productively. Here’s what I’ve learned about it that I think would be helpful to know in a year where it is probably going to be the #1 buzzword in education. 1 - Accelerated Learning Isn't What It Sounds Like You’re going to hear this sentence a lot soon, if you haven’t already: “students don’t need remediation, they need acceleration.” (See, look.) The thing is, accelerated learning (the buzzword, at least), actually is remediation. Accelerated learning has nothing to do with going faster or farther in a class than would normally happen. It isn’t accelerating from the starting line, it is accelerating to the starting line. I wish proponents of accelerated learning would stop using that “students don’t need remediation” line. They ABSOLUTELY need remediation. In fact, as I’ve written, it is the one thing lagging students need most and the one thing we are least likely to provide. That’s not my idea, either - it's all over the research (link 1 link 2). Accelerated learning focuses on remediating only what kids need and only when they need it. That’s the difference. Rather than trying to back-fill all the missed learning we might deem important from previous years, we limit remediation to what is needed for today, or for this week, or for this unit. And that’s it. For example, in fifth grade, I had to teach April how to divide 
even though, by skipping 4th grade, she hadn’t learned how to divide, say,
So I taught her that. Not everything from 4th grade. Not everything she ever would have learned about division. Just what she needed, and not until she needed it. I accelerated April to the starting line by teaching her just enough to access what was coming.
2 - Accelerated Learning Gives Every Student the Opportunity to Learn On Grade Level I had some options when it came to teaching April in 5th grade:
I frequently reference a major recent research finding titled The Opportunity Myth, and it is relevant yet again here. The study found that thousands of students across the US are behind not because of poverty or because "they don't care," but because we never give them the chance to catch up. There is an overwhelming tendency when students have fallen behind - or even when they are simply placed in classes with other students who are perceived to have fallen behind - for them to receive low-level, unengaging, “just-the-basics” instruction. “These kids can’t handle anything more,” goes the thinking.
Students absolutely have to have the chance to learn on grade level. Sure, not every student will rise to that standard, but they deserve the chance. If students are given engaging classes with challenging content, most will rise to on-grade-level proficiency. If students are NOT given that chance, none of them will reach that level. Even the students who make all A’s are losing.
Accelerated learning is a route to giving students the opportunity they deserve to get - or stay - on track. As I described before, they’re given just the remediation they need right now that gives them the chance to do what a student their age should be able to do. 3. Previewing > Reviewing April didn’t learn any 4th grade math as a 4th grader. She didn’t learn much 4th grade math as a 5th grader, either. As I said before, I only taught her what she needed from 4th grade, and I only taught it to her when she needed it. But there was one other piece to the puzzle: previewing. Every Monday, April came to school early. On those Monday mornings, I pre-taught her all the concepts coming up the week ahead. I had initially planned to use these sessions to review 4th grade content with her, but fortunately my principal at the time encouraged me to change course and preview instead. Boy, did it help. It helped for two main reasons:
When it comes to catching students up, previewing > reviewing. What About This Year? This year, more students than ever will be showing up with major learning gaps from the prior year - maybe their fault, maybe not. Personally, I’m going to be taking what I learned from teaching April and trying to apply it with a full class. Previewing - especially in math - is going to be vital. In past years I’ve used a flipped classroom model to introduce new math topics, and I think that recorded lessons are going to be a big part of the previewing puzzle. After all of last year’s learning with technology, this is a great year to make recorded lessons a part of the “regular” school experience. They’re going to be a great way to make content available early and often without losing my mind.
I’m proud to say that April finished 5th grade in great shape. I didn’t know accelerated learning would work, but based on my experience implementing it with her, I can’t recommend it highly enough for the challenging year ahead. I suspect you’re going to hear a lot about it this year. Don’t dismiss it as another one-year teaching fad. Three steps to getting students back on track:
Students who fall behind rarely catch up. Let’s make that a thing of the past. 
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About MeI'm an award-winning teacher in Atlanta with experience teaching at every level from elementary school to college. Categories
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