Podcast n°3: How to engage underperforming students?

This video is about Cochrane Collegiate Academy, Charlotte NC, and it shows how the school have faced problems concerning underperforming results and students. For about 8 or 9 years, they were considered as a failing school so they knew they had a restruction in order to keep the school open, according to Shana Oliver, an Academic Facilitator in Cochrane Collegiate Academy.

The big part of what they do is a professional development and training as a very specific on in answering the skills set.

According to the American Institutes for Research (2007), it has been said that teachers who received at least 49 hours of professional development per year could be expected to boost their students achievement by about 21%. For Cochrane Collegiate Academy, teachers receive about 90 hours of professional development!

The aim of Shana Oliver's job is to provide to teachers with professional development strategies, that they can learning here throught modeling, throught expriences and take those out to their students to help them to be successful in the classroom.

As Shana Oliver presents, there are non-negotiables rules that they apply, they are classroom practices.

Here are the non-negotiables rules:

• The essential question: is the big question students have to be able to answer at the end of the lesson, so teachers can know if the students got it or did not get it !!!
• The activiting strategy: the thing that get students motivated by the lesson to want them to learn what teachers teach them.


• Limited lecture: Research says that students can only keep their attention spend for their age plus 2 or 3 minutes, so teachers have to give students doing something after this time.

• Graphic Organiser: give opportunity to students to conceptualize whatever information teachers give them and that does not happen with lots of notes, pages and pages, copies...

Learning focus and non-negotiables have been very successful for this school because it allows students to collaborate and teachers to involve and engage them.

In the 2006/2007 school year, the school were listed in one of the most performing schools in the State of North Carolina. According to the Principal of Cochrane Collegiate Academy, this what making a difference in their students lives.

As far as i'm concerned, I can tell that it is a lot more easier to learn something when it is ludic or relating to an activity because it is easier to keep ourselves concentrated on the thing we have to learn. Also, according to my schoolboy and student's experience, I really disapprove "brainwashing" lessons with lots of notes, pages and pages to read and to know because it is actually demotivating and boring at the end and even after the first 15 minutes class ! However, sometimes we can't really do something about because it is maybe the way that some teachers want we to learn and activities are sometimes not really adequate to the subject. I think it is really necessary to give ludic relating activities with the lesson that the teacher wants we to get especially in primary schools and junior high schools because pupils need to be really concentrated and captivated to get ready learning something, otherwise it could be really disastrous at the end, I mean they can be completely discouraged by school.

To conclude, I really like the way you teach in "Méthodologie class" because you give us ludic activities, the class is in a really pleasant atmosphere and you have a very good and easy relational with students.