The first step in getting students additional instruction is determining when that additional instruction will happen.  There are 3 major methods teachers and schools schedule reteach opportunities.  Here are detailed descriptions of each, with step by step instructions for carrying them out.

METHOD #1: RETEACHING STUDENTS DURING EXTRA HELP CLASSES WITHIN THE SCHOOL DAY

In this model, schools schedule extra help classes right within the school day. Many schools already have extra help classes built into their schedule.  Often, before using Fill, these classes have set fixed rosters made up of the lowest performing students that were identified at the beginning of the school year.  Once schools begin using Fill, however, most decide to no longer have set rosters for these classes.  Instead, any students who failed the quiz on a given day are scheduled into these classes the next day to get additional instruction. In this model, the student roster for these classes changes every day based on who needs extra help on the most recent skill.  How are students and teachers notified of these daily schedule changes?  Lists are generated by Fill every day and those lists are emailed to teachers and posted in the hallways for students to see as they come in in the morning.  The publicly posted lists use student ID numbers instead of names in order protect student identity.  The tutorial below explains how to go about generating these lists in Fill.  Here’s how to schedule reteach opportunities during the school day, step by step:

1. DETERMINE WHEN YOU WILL HOLD EXTRA HELP CLASSES THROUGHOUT THE DAY AND WHO WILL TEACH THEM

This process will be different in different schools.  As mentioned above, some schools already have them scheduled and staffed.  Some schools have lab classes associated with their main classes and re-purpose those to have dynamic rosters.  Some schools have blocks of time where many students are in study halls or in homeroom.  Opening up an extra help class and staffing it during that time could be a good idea.  University courses use their recitation classes as the reteach class.  No matter what your situation, the goal is simple.  Find time in your schedule where students are available.  Then regularly staff and schedule extra help classes during those times.

2. GENERATE A LIST OF STUDENTS WHO FAILED TODAY’S QUIZ AND COMMUNICATE IT TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

Within Fill, click the UNITS link in the upper left.  Then click on the progress bar of the course the quiz  is in.  Then click on the progress bar of the unit the quiz is in.  Then click on the Fill button of the lesson the quiz is in.  Click Create Fill Session.  This will take you a page with a list of students who have failed the quiz.  At the bottom of the page is a drop down menu.  Select “Student Names” from the list.  Then click Print.  This will generate a PDF list of the student names.  Use your browser to download the PDF.  Then email this PDF to all teachers who need to know that these students will be attending the extra help class tomorrow instead of their regularly scheduled class.  This usually includes teachers such as study hall teachers or homeroom teachers who would normally have these students if they weren’t being scheduled into the extra help class.

Now click the back button in your browser.  This will take you back to the list of students.  In the dropdown menu, change the selection to “Student ID Numbers”.  Click Print.  This will generate a list of those same students, but using their ID numbers instead of their names.  Use your browser to print multiple copies of this list.  Now hang these lists in designated spots throughout your school so when students come in the morning they can check the lists and see their names and know that they need to go to the extra help class today instead of their regularly scheduled study hall, homeroom, etc.

Based on your schools structure, you may need to modify this procedure a bit.  In universities, for instance, student lists might be posted on their course’s webpage daily or emailed directly to students.  There are too many possibilities to consider here.  In all situations the goal is the same: determine who needs help and get those learners into the extra help classes you have in your schedule.

3. RETEACH STUDENTS

Now that you’ve identified the students who need extra help on a lesson and you’ve scheduled them into classes, it’s time to reteach them when they get to the extra-help class, and then re-assess them at the end of the class.  The goal of this step is clear and simple.  Do your best to make sure that those students can successfully perform the lesson’s skill by the end of the reteach class.  Just like any lesson, you will need to decide what instructional materials to use.  Many teachers and schools simply re-use the instructional materials they used in the initial instruction.  Others use supplementary materials from their textbook series.  Others pull resources from online.  Wherever you get the resources, make sure that they do a good job of preparing the learners to be successful on the one-question reassessment quiz you will give at the end of the class.

METHOD #2: RETEACHING STUDENTS BEFORE AND AFTER SCHOOL

In this model, teachers hold re-teach sessions at regularly scheduled times throughout the week either before or after school.  Which lessons will be retaught are decided upon and communicated to students and parents in advance and then students attend the sessions that will benefit them and are reassessed at the end of the session.  Here’s how to do it:

1. DECIDE ON A SCHEDULE FOR THE EXTRA HELP CLASSES

First, decide on how frequently you will hold the before and after school classes and who will teach them.  Will you hold them on Tuesdays and Thursdays?  Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays?  Every day?  This will depend on teacher willingness and availability.  If a school or district pays teachers for before and after school classes, it may also depend on budget.

2. DECIDE ON A FORMAT FOR THE EXTRA HELP CLASSES

Once you’ve decided on a schedule, decide on a format for each class.  Will you reteach a single lesson on each day or will you try to fit in two lessons?  The answer to this question might change over time and depend on the difficulty of recent lessons.  If there are two lessons that are easier to reteach, you might want to reteach both in the same class.  If a lesson is difficult to reteach, it might be best to dedicate one whole class to it.  Over time, getting a feel for making this decision day-to-day will become easier.

3. AGREE ON A SYSTEM FOR DECIDING WHICH LESSONS WILL BE RETAUGHT EACH DAY

There are two main systems for doing this.  Both are described below. 

SYSTEM 1: ALWAYS RETEACH THE LESSON THAT WAS ASSESSED THE DAY BEFORE

For instance, let’s say that you’ve set up before school reteach classes on Tuesday’s and Thursdays.  On Monday, students were assessed on a recent lesson in their regular class.  For Tuesday’s before-school reteach, you would reteach the lesson that was assessed on Monday.  At Thursday’s reteach class, you would reteach the lesson that was assessed on Wednesday.

There are two advantages to this system.  One advantage is that it is very predictable and easy to manage.  There is no work involved in deciding which lesson to reteach and there is no advanced notice required for parents.  Since parents and students can see which lesson their child was assessed on every day, they will also know which lesson will be assessed the next day.  Another advantage is that it is timely.  It gets learners caught up on a recent lesson as fast as possible: the next day.

One disadvantage to this system is that it might not reteach the most missed lessons.  Of the 5 lessons that are taught in a week, the odds that the most missed ones will always fall on Mondays and Wednesdays (in this example) is low.

SYSTEM 2: RETEACH THE MOST MISSED LESSONS FROM THE PREVIOUS WEEK

For instance, let’s again say that you’ve set up before school reteach classes on Tuesday’s and Thursdays.  At the end of the day on Friday the week before, you would look in Fill for the two lessons that had the lowest level of mastery from that week.  Then you would decide to reteach those two lessons.  Here’s how to find those lessons in Fill:

Within Fill, click the UNITS link in the upper left.  Then click on the progress bar of the desired course.  Then click on the progress bar of the unit the lessons are in.  You will now be shown all of the lessons in that unit along with the percentage of students who have mastered them.  Look at the five lessons that are from the week under consideration and identify the two that have the lowest level of mastery.  Those will be the ones you will reteach.

The are two advantages to this system.  First, it allows you to remediate the most missed lessons.  Second, it allows you to determine which lessons will be retaught well in advance so they can be communicated to all the stakeholders sooner.

There are two disadvantages to this system.  First, it takes longer to reteach students on lessons, since the reteaching won’t happen until the next week.  The other minor disadvantage is that it takes an extra planning step of identifying the lowest performing lessons each week.

4. DECIDE HOW YOU WILL COMMUNICATE WHICH LESSONS WILL BE RETAUGHT ON WHICH DAYS TO PARENTS AND STUDENTS

Students and parents will want to know which lessons will be retaught, and on which days, ahead of time so they can decide if they will benefit from coming.  This is usually done one of two ways: either by posting the information on the school website or parent portal, or by sending out regular emails to parents and students.  The more advanced notice they have, the better.

5. RETEACH STUDENTS

Now that you’ve identified the students who need extra help on a lesson and you’ve scheduled classes for them to come and get additional instruction, it’s time to reteach them when they get to the extra-help class, and then re-assess them at the end of the class.  The goal of this step is clear and simple.  Do your best to make sure that those students can successfully perform the lesson’s skill by the end of the reteach class.  Just like any lesson, you will need to decide what instructional materials to use.  Many teachers and schools simply re-use the instructional materials they used in the initial instruction.  Others use supplementary materials from their textbook series.  Others pull resources from online.  Wherever you get the resources, make sure that they do a good job of preparing the learners to be successful on the one-question reassessment quiz you will give at the end of the class.

METHOD #3: STUDENTS RELEARN OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL AND GET REQUIZZED IN SCHOOL

In this model, Fill’s role is to inform students and/or their parents about which lessons they still haven’t mastered.  Then, students and parents focus their re-teach and re-learn efforts on those lessons in preparation for re-quiz events, where students have the opportunity to retake a quiz for that lesson at designated times before, during, or after school to prove their mastery.  This is accomplished in four steps:

1. Motivate students to relearn skills by incorporating Fill mastery levels into your grading system.
2. Schedule and staff proctored re-quiz opportunities where students can retake quizzes to update their mastery levels in Fill.
3. Train students on how to properly prepare for a re-quiz opportunity
4. Train proctors on how to properly administer re-quiz opportunities
5. Execute the re-quiz opportunities.

Here’s how to facilitate this:

1. MOTIVATE STUDENTS TO RELEARN SKILLS

This step is most commonly accomplished by incorporating students’ Fill mastery levels into their grades.  Although this can be done in many ways, one method has proven to be effective in most cases.  Here’s a description of this popular Fill grading scheme:

In this method, teachers input a final grade at the end of each unit.

GRADE FOR EACH UNIT

For the unit grade, teachers announce to students that they will be getting a grade for each unit.  This grade will be based directly on the percentage of lessons within the unit the student has mastered.  The teacher decides upon and announces how much the grade will be worth compared to other grades in the course.  The teacher then announces a date that the grade will be input.  The date should be a week or two after the unit is over.  With a deadline date for the unit in place, students are motivated to relearn unmastered skills for the unit and attend re-quiz opportunities to update their mastery before the grade for that unit closes.  Here is an example of how this might look in a specific classroom:

Mrs. Heick is finishing up her math unit on Linear Functions.  The test on the unit, which is worth 100 points, is scheduled for Thursday, November 12.  She announces that students will be receiving a 50 point grade for their mastery within Fill for the unit on Monday, November 23, 11 days after the test.  Since this is their first time getting such a grade, she shows them how it will be calculated.  She tells them that it will be based on the percentage of lessons they have shown mastery on for that unit.  Since the grade is out of 50, cutting their percentage in half will tell them their grade out of 50.  For example, if you’ve mastered 86% of the lessons in the unit, you would receive a score of 43 out of 50.

Here’s how to find out what percentage of lessons within a unit each student has mastered:

Within Fill, click the UNITS link in the upper left.  Then click the progress bar of the course the unit is in.  Then click the Fill Button for the unit you want to see students’ mastery of.  Click List of Students.  This will show you an ordered list of students, sorted by the percentage of lessons they have mastered within that unit.

2. SCHEDULE AND STAFF PROCTORED RE-QUIZ OPPORTUNITIES

Even though students will be self-studying or getting help from parents or tutors in this method, they will still be taking the follow-up quizzes in school so their mastery level can be updated in a proctored environment.  These can take place before school, during school, or after school.  They can be staffed with teachers, but can also be staffed with other school personnel such as teaching assistants or aides.  You can hold them every day or only on certain days of the week.  Here are two examples of how different schools have chosen to schedule and staff these re-quiz opportunities:

Example #1

Jefferson High School begins their school day at 7:45 AM.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they allow students to come in before school from 7:15 AM – 7:45 AM to retake Fill quizzes in the computer lab.  This works for them because, even prior to using Fill, 6th grade teacher was already responsible for overseeing the computer lab as his 6th assignment. That teacher is responsible for pushing the Fill quizzes and proctoring on those days.

Example #2

Henderson Elementary has four 3rd grade classes.  All four classes have a “flex block” at the same time, from 10:20 – 11:00 AM, where students attend specials and individualized services on different letter days.  They have decided to allow students who don’t have a special or individual service on a given day to re-take Fill quizzes during this block.  These quizzes are administered and proctored by the teacher aide already in the classroom.

How you and your school schedule and staff these opportunities will vary widely and depend on your unique schedule and staff.

3. TRAIN STUDENTS ON HOW TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR A RE-QUIZ SESSION

In order to properly prepare for a re-quiz session, students should do 4 things:

1.  Identify which lessons they wish to be re-quizzed on.

Here’s how they should do it:

When logged in as a student, click the UNITS link in the upper left.  Then click on the progress bar of the course that the lessons are in.  Then click on the progress bar of the unit the lessons are in.  This will show you a list of lessons within that unit.  Each lesson’s progress bar will either be full or empty.  A full progress bar indicates that the lesson has been mastered.  An empty progress bar indicates that the lesson has yet to be mastered.  The lessons with empty progress bars are the ones that should be focused on and relearned.

*NOTE: When logged in as a student, the page that you see by default is the Quiz History page.  This shows recent quizzes the student has taken in chronological order, with the most recent being at the top.  This is not the best place to keep track of mastery of lessons, since the progress bars don’t represent lessons, they represent quizzes.  If, for instance, a student gets an initial quiz wrong, but then takes a second quiz on that lesson and gets it right, the progress bar for the first quiz will not get filled up.  Instead, a new progress bar will be added to the quiz history that will be filled up.  The progress bar for the lesson, however, will change from empty to filled.  That’s why looking at the lesson progress bars is the proper way to see current level of mastery.

2.  Do some additional learning of the material in that lesson.

The best way is usually for the student to go back to the original learning materials from class.  They can study the notes again, retry examples and get help from parents or tutors.  The goal is simple.  The student should do whatever it takes to prepare themselves to successfully complete a quiz on that material in a testing environment.

3.  Fill out a Fill Re-Quiz Form for each lesson they wish to be re-quizzed on.

To keep things organized for the proctor, each student needs to bring a Fill Re-Quiz Form for each lesson they wish to be re-quizzed on at that session.  The Fill Re-Quiz Form serves two purposes.  By filling out the heading, the student clearly communicates to the proctor exactly which lesson they need to be re-quizzed on.  Secondly, their is space on the Re-Quiz Form for students to show any work associated with taking the quiz.  At the end of the re-quiz opportunity, the student will hand in the Re-Quiz form to the proctor, who will give it to the teacher to grade. There are two versions of the Fill Re-Quiz Form, one is a half sheet version and the other is a full sheet version.  The only difference between the two is the amount of space the form allows for students to show their work.  The student should anticipate the amount of work they will need to show and use the appropriate form.  Both forms are linked below this section.

The Fill Re-Quiz From should be filled out before attending the session so that no time is wasted at the session.  To fill it out properly, the student should put their name, their teacher’s name, the class section they are in, the name of the unit the lesson is in, and the name of the lesson, the the appropriate heading slots.  They should then bring this form to the re-quiz opportunity that they attend and give it to the proctor, who will, in turn, give them the proper quiz to re-take.

4.  Select a date to attend a Re-Quiz Session.

Students and/or their parents should consult the schedule of re-quiz opportunities that you have posted and pick a date that works for them.

4. TRAIN PROCTORS ON HOW TO PROPERLY ADMINISTER RE-QUIZ OPPORTUNITIES

During re-quiz opportunities, proctors are responsible for determining which lessons each student needs to be re-quizzed on.  Then they need to provide those students with those quizzes and proctoring their taking of them.  This can be challenging, since there could potentially be many students attending who all need to take different quizzes.  Here is the step-by-step directions to making this a smooth process:

1. Establish an order in which students will be served.

Each student needs to be handled individually, so an order needs to be established.  This can be done by having students sign in or by having them line up.  If students sign in, they can then be called up one by one to get their quiz.

2. Collect the first student’s Fill Re-Quiz Form and use it to identify the quiz the student need to re-take.

The first student will hand you a Fill Re-Quiz Form with the heading filled out.  You will now use the information on the form to do two things: 1) determine which quiz the student has already taken for the lesson they are being re-quizzed on; and 2) Locate and find the re-quiz for them to take.  To determine which quiz the student has already taken for the lesson they are being re-quizzed on, first click the CLASSES link in the upper right.  Then click on the progress bar for the course that the lesson is in.  Then click on progress bar for the class section that the student is in.  Then click on the progress bar for the student.  Then click on the progress bar for the unit the lesson is in.  Then click on the progress bar for the lesson that is being re-quizzed.  This will take you to a page that shows all of the quizzes that are available for that lesson.  Each quiz name will either be dark blue and hyperlinked, or black and not hyperlinked.  You will be able to tell if the quiz name is hyperlinked by hovering your mouse over it and seeing if it is a link.  Any quiz whose name is dark blue and hyperlinked, the student has already taken and cannot take again.  Any quiz whose name is blank and not hyperlinked the student has not yet taken.  Select any one of those.  Write the name of the quiz on the “Quiz:” line in the “TEACHER USE ONLY” section of the Fill Re-Quiz Form.  

3. Find and print the quiz for the student.

Navigate to the shared folder system that your school has set up for storing Fill quizzes.  Double click on the folder for the course that the quiz is in.  Then double click on the folder for the unit the quiz is in.  Then double click on the lesson the quiz is in.  Finally, double click on the quiz document itself to open it.  Print the quiz and hand it to the student.  Instruct them to complete the quiz, showing their work and recording their answers on either the quiz paper itself or on the Fill Re-Quiz form.  Assign them a place to sit and work independently.  Instruct them to staple the quiz paper to the Fill Re-Quiz form  and hand the stapled packet back to you when they are done.

4. Repeat steps 2-3 for all students.

5. Return student re-quizzes to the appropriate teachers.

Since re-quiz opportunities are often open to anyone, the re-quizzes that you’ve collected likely need to be given to a number of different teachers in order for the results to be recorded.  To do this, take all the papers and sort them into piles based on which teacher is listed on the Fill Re-Quiz Form.  Then deliver each pile to the proper teacher by putting them in that teacher’s mailbox, or by any other method you have arranged.

5. EXECUTE THE RE-QUIZ OPPORTUNITES

Now that you’ve motivated students to re-learn skills, scheduled and staffed re-quiz opportunities, trained students and proctors in how to properly prepare for and execute a re-quiz opportunity, all that is left to do is execute the plan!