Who is a slow learner?
A slow learner can be described as a student who has the ability to learn necessary academic skills, but at a rate and depth below average when compared to their peers. In order to grasp new concepts, a slow learner needs more time, a number of repetitions, patience and often more resources from teachers to be successful. In children with this condition, reasoning skills are typically delayed, which makes new concepts difficult to learn and grasp. The Health Site
To help a slow learner to get a good and suitable grade is what makes a good teacher.
Teaching is a challenging profession that requires a lot of patience, innovation and motivation from the teachers in order to bring about an all-round development among their students.
Inside the classroom there will be a mixed section of learners based on their level of intelligence and performance criteria.
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It is among these learners, there will be some who cannot cope up with the lessons taught inside the classroom as their peers do and hence these learners are tagged as the slow learners. Hence here comes the greatest challenge for a good teacher to guide and help the slow learners improve in fetching good grades and come out with flying colors.
A good student can always get good grades on his own merits which require very little effort on the teacher’s part.
But to help a slow learner fetch a good and suitable grade is a challenge that marks the qualities of a good teacher. Since, being a teacher myself I too have faced such problems inside my classroom and here are some ways that I had adopted in order to help a slow learner achieve good grades and graduate successfully from his School.
Slow learners are very sensitive and self conscious as they are very well aware of their weakness in comparison with the fast learners. So the first responsibility of the teacher is to build up confidence among these learners and make them believe that they are no less than others. Encouraging words and phrases may bring about a positive impact on the slow learners and will boost them to perform better.
Teachers are first required to find out the main reason behind the learner’s weak performance and also to study those areas minutely where she needs to work upon in order to guide the slow learner to perform well. She needs to interact with the slow learners more often so that she can keep a record of every movement of the learner and adopt ways in which the slow learner can be guided.
Extra care and practice should be given to the slow learners as compared to their peers. If need be the teacher can take extra classes or may allow the learner to come to her place so that she may work out the areas of concern along with these learners. The teacher may utilize some of her time to do a good deal of research in order to find out simple ways of helping these slow learners to study in an easy and simple way. She might set mock tests for the learners or give them simple home assignments which are interesting and related to the lessons completed inside the classroom.
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Inside the classroom she must never make the slow learner feel neglected or unwanted as it might create a feeling of inferiority among these learners which might lay an effect on their grades. She must pay equal attention to these learners and may make them sit in the first row if possible.
Special programs with the help of the audio-visual aids, graphics, displays, reference books, online material and worksheets must be created for these slow learners and also cumulative records must be maintained by the teachers in order to keep a track of the learner’s progress. This cumulative record is mandatory for the teacher to maintain as she will know how the slow learner is responding to her ways of teaching. If she finds any area where the learner has not made much improvement then she can change her ways of teaching and try out another way that might be proved comfortable for the learner.
A teacher needs to be a friend to these learners on whom they can fall back upon. These learners cannot express themselves fully to their peers or to their parents and hence needs somebody whom they can rely upon. Hence it is up to the teacher to fill up that vacuum and enhance these slow learners’ all round development. Although the effort from the teacher’s end is simple, yet the result at the end of the day is great enough to make a teacher feel proud of herself as well as her learners who had managed to overcome their weakness and come out with flying colors
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