Working in low-resource contexts, teachers research and share how to include weaker students, give them a sense of achievement and increase their confidence levels. 

In this video, Zainab Rao and Gulnaz Mondegarian from Pakistan and Rupinder Dhaliwal from India give practical suggestions on how to handle weaker students.

As Zainab points out, students who have not achieved are often still promoted to the next grade and cannot keep up with the others. This poses a challenge to teachers as they attempt to balance the learning needs of students with varying levels and abilities. In order to motivate all learners, the group suggests task differentiation.

This way, teachers can take into account learner differences, ensure all students achieve and raise confidence levels. This approach can also be applied to assessment. As Gulnaz explains, teachers can design papers which contain questions for below-average, average and above-average students. A lack of concentration is another common complaint, but, as Rupinder points out, it is up to teachers to plan lessons carefully and avoid monotony by including short, engaging activities which appeal to a range of learning styles and needs.

As the group suggests, an inclusive and differentiated approach together with careful lesson planning can give weaker students not only a sense of achievement but maybe a chance to catch up.

Reflection and discussion

One of the purposes of these resources is to help you with your own teacher development in related contexts. The questions in task 1 and task 2 are designed for you to think about and discuss with colleagues, either informally or as part of your formal professional development.

If this video is not available for viewing in your location, please click here

Comments

Submitted by Trinh Thi Xuan Mai on Wed, 10/06/2021 - 03:42

Task 1 :

From my point of view, task differentiation is extremely effective and useful in helping learners achieve in writing. Infact, this can build learners' confidence, maintain learners' concentration as well as increase their engagement.

Task 2:

Students may not have fault when not paying attention in classroom. There are many reasons for that:

- learners' lack of background knowlegde

- learners are not motivated

- lesson is not interesting

-weaker students are dominated by better ones

-teacher does not plan the lesson appropriately

-learners have different learing goal and style

I have realised that I have not considered these factors properly when planning my lessons.

In my opinion, teachers have to consider these factors carefully when planning lessons and make every efforts to invest in the lessons to make sure that our lessons engaging.

Submitted by mangalaprathaban on Fri, 12/09/2016 - 10:07

It is certainly easy to talk about something which attracts their attention especially about a recent local news,song,folk tale,zen story,joke or an activity. We might consider different tasks for varying levels of learner proficiency by keeping in mind their learning potential and learning difficulty. Most of our rural learners may not be ready to listen to monotonous lectures as teachers ought to reflect upon participative learning processes on a range of micro-skills.It is high time to devise new strategies to teach even our old lessons in grammar by coming up with innovative and digitised multimedia learning materials or courseware.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight