By Joe Cuccurullo
Students have returned to in-person learning, and thankfully, classrooms remain open. Our Holly Springs community and its surrounding areas, continue to deliver in-person instruction unabated, which is a welcome return to normalcy for thousands of parents and students. With widespread, full-time remote learning seemingly behind us, parents no longer must manage their careers while wearing the hat of part-time teacher-in-training. Gone are the days of work-from-home parents frantically attempting to reconnect their child’s computer to a remote classroom while simultaneously listening to a business Zoom meeting through their air pods. A welcome relief to many parents, especially those who no longer wish to teach themselves the “new way to multiply.”
However, the return to in-person learning is exposing deficits created by remote learning for many students. The impact of “learning loss” from pandemic closures is now grossly evident to parents of students of all ages. Moreover, it is particularly apparent when analyzing the performance of our youngest learners. Many emerging readers had significant difficulty learning to read through a computer screen. Students who entered Kindergarten, first grade, or second grade in a remote setting are, in many cases, reading below grade level at a far greater rate when compared with students before the 2020 closures.
Parents are requesting independent reading evaluations, concerned about their child’s current reading level, with far greater frequency than previous years. Many students in first and second grade, who traditionally need less instruction in reading skills like phonetic awareness, decoding, and fluency, are now presenting with reading difficulties at a far higher rate than usual. As the owner of a learning center, I find many parents are inquiring whether their student has a reading disability while simultaneously wondering if it is an after-effect of remote learning or something more concerning. Add in the fact that most parents will attest that it is incredibly challenging to teach their own child. The frustration factor is high when parents attempt to provide serious instruction.
Additionally, maintaining focus in the home learning environment is also challenging for many parents between the everyday distractions of doorbells, dog barks, phone rings, and Amazon deliveries. It is also common that children are more willing to challenge their parents than teachers or tutors. Chances are, if you are a parent, you may at one point be sternly told by your child, “That’s not the way my teacher showed us to do it.” With great conviction, they remind you that you know nothing! At this point, parents simultaneously feel frustrated and helpless, knowing they can deliver some instructional support but unaware of how to convince their child that they do, indeed, know “something!” Nevertheless, when parents and students fail to reach common ground, only two choices remain: Ask the school for additional support or seek the assistance of a tutor. The right choice is dependent upon the child, their educational history, and the resources of the school they attend.
What are some of the most common areas of concern for elementary-aged students?
Reading is the foundation for all subjects, whether ELA, social studies, science, or math; reading effectively is essential for classroom success. The most requested subject for tutoring year over year is math. Yet when we evaluate the student, reading comprehension is more of a contributing factor to math issues in the K-5 levels than the math itself. Deciphering what a word problem is asking is usually the number one issue for many students. They become lost in the wording yet are more likely to correctly work out a problem when it is number centered instead of word-based. If your student struggles with word problems, there is a possibility that an underlying reading issue is a contributing factor.
Standard 5th, 6th, and 7th-grade math concepts like long division, finding equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions, scale factor, and evaluating ratios and proportions are all multiplication-based. Without knowing multiplication facts, these concepts become ever more challenging. Students improve their math grades by memorizing their 1-12 multiplication facts. Often, students understand how to solve a problem but fall flat when working out the arithmetic.
Parents should know that many reading and math problems at the upper elementary and early middle school levels are often foundational, which under ordinary circumstances is common but today is even more prevalent considering the disruptions over the last two years.
What are some strategies parents can implement when working with elementary aged students?
Parents who read at home with their students often choose books instead of shorter passages. The idea of becoming lost in a story and its imaginary elements sometimes doesn’t resonate with reluctant or struggling readers. In such cases, students will go through the motions of reading, but when asked a comprehension question they focus on one detail instead of the main idea of the chapter they just read. Teaching main idea is a fundamental reading skill, it is even one we work on diligently with our upper-level SAT students. The fact that we often see SAT students incorrectly identifying the main idea of an SAT passage or paragraph highlights the fact that the skill is often underdeveloped in the lower grades. Try using shorter more concise reading passages at home instead of chapter books. Ask the student what the passage was about. If they provide you with a singular detail, encourage them to “pinch out.” Use the analogy of zooming in on an iPad or iPhone screen. You pinch in to see one specific part of the page, but if you pinch out, you can see the whole page. It is a familiar act that can correlate to the concept they need to understand.
Additionally, shorter reading passages work best with reluctant readers. Passages that are easier than a student usually sees are better (short term) to help build their confidence. Encourage students who are reading a lower-level reading passage to maintain fluency: the rhythm of their voice when they read aloud, which should be smooth not choppy.
For students struggling with addition, subtraction, and multiplication it is best to institute some strategies for solving equations. Counting on fingers is fine for emerging learners, but once they start the 4th and 5th grade levels the process of finger counting is too time consuming. For addition and subtraction try to introduce the concept of using counting by tens as a base for addition and subtraction instead of by ones. For example, when students are asked the following subtraction problem, “What is 86 – 27 equal to?” students will set up the problem vertically and proceed to borrow and carry—the traditional approach we learned as students. A perfect strategy and working math on paper is a great way to keep their attention focused on the problem at hand. However, when subtraction must take place as part of long division, strong mental arithmetic skills will make them more efficient. In the case of the above problem, students could count down using tens. Subtract 3 tens and add 3 back to the final answer. With multiplication, students generally struggle with the 6-,7-, and 8-times tables, yet when they need to figure out 8 x 7 they begin by starting with 8×1, then 8×2. Encourage your student to start with 8×5 and use repeated addition to find the multiplication fact they need. Most students master the 5- and 10-times tables early; let them use that to their advantage.
While remote learning contributed to some learning loss, many of the issues will improve over time as students remain in school consistently, schools have the opportunity to remediate, and private providers step in with individualized support. Using an experienced tutor, even in the short term, really is an excellent way to supplement a student’s classroom learning and rebuild any foundations that were not fully developed during remote learning.
Joseph Cuccurullo, MPA, MSEd
Co-Founder Resource Room Learning Center
2100 Crossway Lane, Holly Springs, NC 27540
