One of the big problem that every school faces is the difficulty to deal with the slow learners. These learners also have an impact on the low result of National Achievement Test .The teachers have their big headache over these children. These pupils cannot cope with the lessons taught as their peers do. Even they want to do homework and class work , they cannot understand the topics and they cannot do complex problems and work very slowly. They lose track of time and cannot transfer what they have learned from one task to another well. They do not easily master skills that are academic in nature, such as the times tables or spelling rules. They have short attention span and poor concentration skills.Slow learners initially want to learn, but have a problem with the process. In this case ,the following statements may help the teachers and administrators to improve the skills of the slow learners.First, Psychological Analysis and Problem solution-The more and more we think about the child the more we get the solution. Firstly,we have to search the problem area of the child. The problem of the child may be his family or friends or his personal condition. If we go for personal asking questions as a relative of his own, then we can be assured about getting some difficulties for which the child is not reading. Then we, from our level will try to get solution of this problem. Second, Guidance from his level-Child has a level of his own. Level of understanding is different from one child to another. The weak child more often can’t understand the studies because he has not understood the previous formula/concept in the previous classes. How can he understand the concept of grade five if he has not understood the simple concept of lower grades. That’s why the child should be personally taught from his understanding level. Next, Encouragement in small success-The greatest factor for the success of the life of the child is his encouragement. If we try to find out the strengths of the weak child then we come across some of them. If we try to applaud him with encouraging words and give confidence he definitely feels his importance & worth. Once the child has grown his confidence means he will definitely improve. The most important cause of his weakness is we; the teachers always give importance to the good children and neglect the weaker in the class. Encouragement can change the whole personality of a child. Fixing the goal &and Prescribing a Time table-The child should be persuaded to make a time table for the study purpose. Sometimes some children have no goal regarding study. The teacher should observe those children and inspire them to fix the goal for the life and help him to make a time table for every day work so that the child will be captured through the time table to do the things at write time.Another is giving memory tips-More often the child forgets what ever he learns. That’s why he loses his confidence on him and differentiates between him & the good students. The teacher’s role is to give the tips such as ‘how to recall’, ‘in which way to write systematically’, ‘when to learn’, ‘how to learn’ etc.Then , giving importance in the class-It’s always seen that the class room teaching goes on with the direction and understanding of the strong children. But if the average children do not understand your teaching and you are just running towards the completion of syllabus then the whole teaching is a futile one. Some times it’s very urgent to go near the weak child and ask personally whether he has understood or not. Here the teacher’s asking approach should be very polite. Lastly, Self reading method-Most of the weak children are found that they neglect self reading. They may have the language understanding problem for which they do not take interest to read. If the teacher freely tells the child to come at home or to him in extra time for understanding the key words then little the child will take interest to self reading. Then definitely he improves himself slowly. Some questions can be given time to time to engage the learner in the habit of study. That is a practice which can enable the student to come across the learning point at a regular basis.Basically the teachers have lots of tasks to do aside from teaching. They have lesson plans, instructional materials to be accomplished . Besides, lots of reports to be submitted. But, the weak children they are handling need special attention that is personally to take up the child’s difficulty. If we give 1hour extra time for the weak children then definitely they will improve. Because Lastly, creating confidence level in his interest areas-The teacher should observe the child and secretly know the interest areas of the child. Even if the child plays, act, does some work the teacher/parent should find out his interest/specialty. Because, every child is special. The encouragement can be started from the child’s interest areas. When the child builds his confidence in his interest area then we can expand and inspire the same confidence in other areas also.
By: Elizabeth L. Rodriguez | Teacher III | Samal North Elementary School Samal, Bataan
