Maybe somebody can provide an answer to this question from Annemarie:
Q. Are there any blog posts about the faster processors, the students that just get it right away? I have this handful of students in my 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes who find the books we read super easy. I go too slowly for them. I’ve even received some reports from conferences that my class is too easy. I know there’s some info on scaffolding, but I’m not confident on how to do this. We’re shifted to standards-based grading and with that we have to write learning targets, and I realize that these particular students already totally hit my targets. So I need to write new targets for them….
A. I think that there are comments about what to do with those kids in various posts but I don’t recall one post that directly addresses it. So let’s address it here. One thing I do is just give the fast processors another book that is likely to challenge them. That’s a simple yet good response, because there is nothing more effective in language acquisition than reading. If you allowed them to sit together and read in pair or groups it would be time well spent. Coming up with activities and all just makes things more complex for you, with two classes in one, which we rarely want.
Have they bought into the idea that, during stories and all auditory work, they can’t be breaking off from the big group because they are learning when they hear the language? I ask that because then you could give them, as a reward for hanging in there with the slower auditory processors, that time in class reading as fast as they want.
I bet Michele has an idea or two – this is her area and Laurie’s. Let’s get a real good answer for Annemarie here. That’s what we do here – we help each other in real ways.