Dive Brief:
- Students who miss more than an occasional day of class often need extra support when they return to school. Chronic or prolonged absences require thoughtful consideration from educators to ensure learners have time and resources to catch up to their peers.
- Educators can construct lessons for all students in a way that also works for students who may have an extended absence, said Barbara Blackburn, an author, consultant and former educator. She suggests designing lessons that include extra support and scaffolding options that include, for example, videos.
- “When I think about students who are absent, I'm just going to automatically use those support strategies,” Blackburn said. “So for someone who missed three days, it's not a matter of, ‘Do they need to watch the video for background knowledge?’ Yes, they do, because they weren't here for the classroom discussion.”
Dive Insight:
When it comes to extended absences, a student's family should also be involved, Blackburn said. Knowing why a student is absent — such as illness or because of the death of a loved one — can help educators understand how much extra work they can handle to get back on track.
That information also allows educators to know if a student needs other additional supports from the school, such as assistance from a guidance counselor.
Blackburn also encourages educators to involve other students in a class for support. If a student has missed something she calls a “prerequisite skill,” Blackburn will have a class spend a few minutes writing down key things they learned in the past week. She then gives these "cheat sheets" to the student who missed these lessons and encourages them to turn to those materials as part of the process of reacclimating to being in class.
By including the student’s peers, the entire class ends up feeling they can lean on each other throughout their learning process, Blackburn said.
“What I'm also doing there is I'm sending the message that we're all in this together,” she said. “When somebody's out, we're all going to help each other catch up. I think that works very nicely.”
