Teachers are playing catch-up with third graders who were in kindergarten when the pandemic started.
She hopes it will be enough. The school year has been a race to prepare her students for future classes, where reading well is a gateway to learning everything else.SLOW PROGRESS
To inject fun into the lesson, Gilbert-Jackson turns it into a quiz game. The students perk up as they race to set up their laptops.Students have to choose between “teach” and “teatch.”Says Gilbert-Jackson: “I don't know why I'm hearing so many yeses when only half got it right."As the first semester draws to a close, 14 of her 19 students aren’t meeting expectations for reading. That includes Michael.
Now, midway through third grade, he is reading like a mid-year first grader — two years behind where he’s supposed to be. But, says Gilbert-Jackson, it's progress. “You can see the wheels turning," she says. “Sometimes he’ll draw a blank, but he’s still trying.” That's an important inflection point. Until the end of third grade, students generally receive guidance from teachers to perfect their literacy. After that, students are expected to read more challenging texts in all of their subjects and to improve reading skills on their own. Researchers have found students who don’t read fluently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out or not finish high school on time. And if a student fails to graduate, the risks increase.
The other girl whose mother likely did her schoolwork during online learning is reading at the level of a beginning first grader. Gilbert-Jackson worries about her. “Let’s say she does go to fourth grade: Nobody is going to read anything to her,” she says. “I don’t want to set them up for failure.”Good options are few. On paper, Atlanta’s district policy is to promote elementary school students who “master” reading, math and other subjects.
Before leaving for Christmas vacation, Gilbert-Jackson started reaching out to students’ parents to talk about how their children were progressing and “what may or may not happen” with their prospects for fourth grade. Though it’s rare, she tells them she could recommend holding back a student or a parent could request it.
One day in late February, Gilbert-Jackson asks her students to revise a narrative they’d each been writing about a glowing rock. Most get to work quickly.
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