Helping Your Student Get Back on Pace

What do you do if your student gets behind pace in a course? Here are some tips to help your student get back on track.

1. Make a goal with your student to get caught up in one week. Sit down with your student and pull up their To-Do List in the course they are behind pace. Count how many items they are past due on, and how many things they have to do during the week to stay current. Divide the total by 5 (because there are five days in a week). The answer is the number of activities/assignments they must complete each day to be caught up in a week. Get out five post-it notes or note cards and label each one with a day of the week. For each day of the week, list the assignments, the student must complete that day. Post the cards or post-it notes in a visible spot at your student’s work station.
2. If your student is behind pace in more than one course, make a goal to get caught up one course at a time focusing on one week at a time or to get caught up in all courses at once, depending on how far behind they are.
3. Discuss with your student a list of consequences for when they get behind in a course, for example, loss of free tech time, television time, phone, etc. Enforce the rules and give out the consequence. Remind them that they will get their privileges back when they are back on pace in their course.
4. Check-in with your student multiple times during the day to make sure they are staying on task and focusing on getting caught up.