It’s hard to ignore the gloomy headlines about “lost learning” and “Covid gaps” caused by the pandemic over the last 12 months. And rightly so, with studies showing elementary students lagging months behind in reading, as a result of missed learning.
Recently though, I read an interesting article which focused on re-evaluating the way we approach children’s learning at this critical time. The article claims that “there’s no such thing as lost learning” and suggests that we focus on something that is at the heart of what we do as teachers; that is to “start where the child is at.” In other words, rather than focusing on what may have been “lost”, let’s instead try to find out what learning has taken place and build from there.
As many of our Clicker community will attest, Clicker is a fantastic tool for helping children to revisit key concepts and reinforce gaps in their learning. They can work at their own pace, reading and writing about any topic, using personalized levels of individual support to boost their confidence and independence.
Cloze activities are a great way to assess children’s understanding and topic knowledge – and can be created in a matter of seconds! Copy any text into a Cloze Document – I used some text about earthquakes from our Find Out and Write About Natural Disasters resource on LearningGrids. Then remove random words or, as I did, keywords on which you are focusing, to check knowledge.
And here’s the “cherry on top” feature – Clicker’s powerful Analytics tool to check and analyze your learners’ work! In fact, with any Clicker Document, Analytics gives you a unique insight into each learner’s writing process and helps you make informed decisions about their current support levels and the most effective next steps. Assessment built in – perfect!
So, in the spirit of moving forward with positivity, let’s give students all the support that we can, getting them back on track for achievement and success on their rudely interrupted learning journeys. Clicker, backed up by over 2,000 free resources across the curriculum and age ranges, is here to help you – and all your learners – every step of the way!
