What is learning loss and how to address it?
Learning loss refers to the decline or setback in academic progress experienced by students, often resulting from extended periods away from traditional learning environments such as classrooms. To address learning loss effectively, educators can consider implementing the following strategies:
1) Assessment: Conducting diagnostic assessments to identify areas of weakness and gaps in learning.
2) Individualized Support: Providing targeted interventions and personalized learning plans to address specific areas of need for each student.
3) Engagement Strategies: Utilizing interactive and hands-on teaching methods to enhance student engagement and motivation.
4) Remedial Instruction: Offering additional tutoring, remedial classes, or online resources to reinforce foundational concepts and skills.
5) Collaboration: Collaborating with parents, caregivers, and community stakeholders to support student learning both inside and outside the classroom.
6) Flexible Learning Models: Implementing flexible scheduling and learning models to accommodate diverse learning styles and individual needs.
7) Social-Emotional Support: Prioritizing social-emotional learning and mental health support to help students cope with challenges and build resilience.
8) Continuous Monitoring: Continuously monitoring student progress and adjusting instruction as needed to ensure ongoing academic growth and success.
Six strategies to apply and deal with “Learning Loss”
Let’s talk about strategies for mitigating learning loss so students can get back some semblance of normalcy and make notable learning gains despite the pandemic.
So, how can schools and teachers address the issue of “learning loss” in a constructive way?
What strategies can help students readjust to school life and combat learning loss stemming from the pandemic?
1. Measuring the “Gaps” Adjusting instruction to accommodate children’s learning requirements and focusing on important foundational skills is required. As schools reopen, it is essential to monitor students’ learning levels.
Targeting instruction to a child’s learning level, such as grouping children by level all day or part of the day, has been found to be cost-effective in helping children catch up. Attaining foundational literacy and numeracy for all children must become an immediate national mission.
2. Teaching core skills using “Bridge” content Bridging is a well-intended strategy of teaching old and new material that focuses on regular review of specific topics over the course of 6-week or
so. This assumes a strong foundation of structured education for all children who are now years behind their expected learning levels and require targeted interventions to catch up on what they learned in the previous class and how. “Bridge” content, a remedial step, is a different way of dealing with lost learning and ensuring that all students have a strong foundation for future learning.
3. Emphasising content that are prerequisites to future learning.The first thing you should do as a teacher is to identify missed learning standards and all content that is a prerequisite to further learning. It’s possible that students didn’t fully comprehend the material. A student, for example, will not succeed in basic English unless he or she first masters grammar.
4. Creating a different schedule, reshaping curriculum. Let’s start by grouping children by learning and competency and altering assessments from common grade-level exams to measurements of proficiency and skills.
Try to craft a completely different schedule for the first few months of the school year with longer blocks for addressing missed learning standards and content that are prerequisites for future learning.
For courses like math, where prior-year knowledge is a core prerequisite for future learning, extra instructional time will be needed for all students to cover missing chapters or acquire missed ideas alongside the current year curriculum.
5. Being flexible: Whether a teacher may be working to reach students in the classroom, in a remote setting, or perhaps a combination of the two, changes to the learning environment can impact each student’s learning path in different ways and the right educational technology can help educators in facilitating learning, no matter when or where it happens.
6. Adding more quality teachers: Not only do schools require more infrastructure, but they also need more quality teachers. The teacher shortage is real, and it has serious ramifications. India’s enduring ‘crisis of learning’ can only be resolved if schools seriously consider this.
Instability in the workplace has a negative impact on student achievement and reduces teacher effectiveness and quality. Getting more teachers on board is critical to accomplishing this. We need to invest in teachers’ professional development and use technology to enhance their skills and do their jobs better.