When I first started teaching, I had never really thought about what I would do if I had students who fell behind, took longer to complete work, or just tended to lag or “straggle in” after assignment deadlines. I guess it should’ve been obvious that this would be an issue, but it was never covered in my university teaching courses!
We’ve all experienced the challenge of helping students who lag behind their peers. Whether it’s during a lengthy project, a more challenging unit, or with all sorts of assignments and essays throughout the school year, some learners struggle to keep pace. I’ve put together the main reasons I’ve noticed kids fall behind and strategies to help them catch up or stay on track!
Understanding Why Students Fall Behind
Anxiety and Nervousness
When faced with significant assignments worth many points or projects that include public speaking, anxiety can paralyze students. Signs include excessive reassurance-seeking (“Is this okay?”), catastrophizing about consequences, or freezing up entirely. These students perceive the stakes as much higher than they actually are.
Strategy: Emphasize that school is a place for practice and learning, not perfection. Reduce pressure by highlighting the “completion” aspects of grading rather than focusing solely on quality. Explain that just DOING the thing opens up 70+ percent of the points (or whatever it is for your grading rubric). Tell them that you are NOT grading harshly, but that you grade with a mindset of REWARDING them for what they did WELL.
Feeling Overwhelmed
Some students shut down when confronted with multi-step projects or lengthy assignments. The sheer volume of work or number of components feels insurmountable, leading to complaints that it’s “too much” or resistance to even starting.
Strategy: Make and print a project calendar, and make sure everyone has it (or show it up on the board regularly). Revisit this project calendar OFTEN with the class to show how you’ve intentionally broken down the assignment into manageable pieces. Encourage students to think about ONE step at a time & not worry about what’s coming next. You can also offer modified goals. For example, if 6 sources for a paper seems impossible, suggest that the student start with just 2. Remind him or her that partial completion earns more points than no attempt at all.
Lack of Confidence
Past negative experiences in your subject area can create students who believe they “can’t do it.” These learners often mask insecurity with complaints about unclear directions or the pointlessness of assignments. They’ll say, “None of this makes sense.” or “This is stupid.”
Strategy: Model, model, model. Show examples of your own work, provide exemplars, and occasionally sit one-on-one with these kids to work through initial steps together. Build up their confidence through small wins: “See? You’ve already completed the first part! This is really good!” Try to encourage them when you can with things like verbal praise & stickers for completion. (My highschoolers LOVE stickers. Trust me on this!)
Perfectionism
Perfectionists would rather submit nothing than submit something they think is flawed. They get stuck on early stages, continuously revising rather than progressing, or you’ll notice they’re always requesting new materials or deleting their entire page to start over.
Strategy: Emphasize progress over perfection. Clarify that in chunked projects or longer assignments, moving forward is what earns points. (If you can offer completion points for “steps along the way” on long stuff, this can motivate perfectionists to actually finish steps and move ahead.) Create a safety net by assuring them that “good enough” truly is sufficient to succeed and that you are NOT grading for perfection anyway. Explain how it’s more important to move through the steps, have a finished product, and then revise/edit at the end because turning in nothing = zero points, and turning in something = points. It helps if these kids can see how your rubric is NOT looking for perfection for the 5/5 score (or whatever it is). My rubrics leave room for some errors EVEN in the “exceeds” column of a “meets, needs, exceeds” rubric!
Confusion About Expectations
Some students sit & do nothing simply because they don’t understand what to do. They may have missed instructions, zoned out during explanations, or feel lost about quality or quantity expectations & not want to ask you. Often, they’ve been yelled at before for “not listening” & missing instructions.
Strategy: Whether they were not listening or just didn’t get it, it doesn’t really matter. Try not to get hung up on whether or not they were listening during the instructions, and just deal with the issue at hand. It’s better to approach these kids with kindness in case they WERE listening; you don’t want to accuse them of zoning out or being on their phones when they WEREN’T and further add to their negative feelings about school! Instead, provide visual reminders of daily goals on the board. Recap your instructions frequently, and maintain a resource (like a completed “dummy packet” or “sample essay”) that students can reference as a model of what they are supposed to be doing. Be explicit about what constitutes acceptable work, and ALWAYS be willing to answer “I don’t get what I’m supposed to do” in SOME way. You don’t have to repeat yourself: you could point them to the steps on the board or point them to the model assignment!
Poor Time Management
The teenage brain often struggles with long-term planning. Many students falsely believe they have “plenty of time,” prioritize immediate deadlines in other subjects, or simply lack the executive functioning skills to pace themselves appropriately. With longer assignments/projects in my class, I often see students trying to study for a Spanish test next period, or rushing through their math homework that’s due at the end of the school day while they are meant to be working on the next step in OUR class. These are clues that these students have poor time management skills and don’t grasp that the time I’M giving them in class is NEEDED to finish MY class assignment on time!
Strategy: Implement regular check-ins during class time. This could be asking them something like, “Raise your hand if you are to X point in the steps by now?” or it could be actual checking of each kid’s progress (for completion points) at certain times in the period or throughout a longer unit. Make privileges (like phone use or working on other subjects) contingent on meeting soft (or hard) deadlines for the current project in YOUR class. Also, realize that you need to chunk longer assignments FOR the kids because most of them can’t do that themselves yet. If you have a big paper or something like a speech/presentation/group project, break up the process into parts, work through them in class, and have “checks for completion” after an appropriate amount of time for each chunk of the process. Give them a unit calendar with all the soft & hard deadlines on it as well.
Distraction and Boredom
In today’s technology-saturated environment, maintaining focus is increasingly difficult for students. If the phone’s calling from their pocket, they may be too distracted to pay attention to what’s going on in class. Others may find the subject matter unengaging or fail to see its relevance to their lives & check out for those reasons.
Strategy: Try to break work sessions into shorter chunks with clear deliverables. Instead of explaining 45-minutes’ worth of work at the start and then having them get to it, explain 5-10 minutes worth, have them do that, and then come back together to explain the next 10-20 minutes’ worth of work. Try to have some kind of check in, transition, or movement every 15-20 minutes (with high schoolers). I’ll sometimes have them working on something for a full 30-40 minutes, but even then, I’ll break it up by giving them a little stretch/chat break in the middle. You can also help head off some of the distraction and boredom by making attempts to connect your content to students’ interests & lives whenever possible, thinking about ways that what you’re doing is relevant to them, and stressing those connections frequently. Another good strategy is to incorporate choice to increase engagement. For chronically distracted students, consider proximity seating or regular check-ins to redirect their attention.
External Life Challenges
Students dealing with family issues, mental health concerns, housing insecurity, or other serious challenges may struggle to prioritize schoolwork. Frequent absences compound these difficulties by creating knowledge gaps & making it hard for them to keep up with what’s going on in class.
Strategy: Make sure you have unit calendars available to all students, and build flexibility into your deadlines when possible. I often have a bunch of soft deadlines for the “steps” in a process, and then a hard deadline where all those steps need to be checked off. Consider how you’ll deal with things like extensions and absences. It works for me to give them a day +1 for absences (so if they were gone Monday, they have until the end of the school day on Wednesday to make up what they missed, and if they missed Monday and Tuesday, they have until the end of the day Friday to make up what they missed). I also offer extensions (that we talk about & determine a due date) for students experiencing hardship, and they know they just need to ask me via email or in person, and we’ll figure it out. Another thing you can do is create simplified “catch-up” plans for returning students rather than expecting them to complete everything they missed (especially if they missed more than 3 days of class or are experiencing a life hardship situation). Consider what’s truly essential for course progression and what can be modified or eliminated, and then explain to the student what you need him or her to do to be caught up.
Supporting Students
Regardless of why students lag behind, these ideas can help!
- Maintain high expectations while offering scaffolded support. Don’t lower your standards, but do provide clearer pathways to success.
- Break work into manageable chunks with frequent checkpoints and feedback opportunities.
- Celebrate progress to build momentum and confidence. Check in when you can, ask to see where they’re at, and PRAISE what they HAVE done in a genunine, heartfelt manner. Don’t draw attention to them, but do encourage them.
- Communicate clearly and repeatedly about expectations, deadlines, and assessment criteria. Use unit calendars, verbal repetition, and list steps for the day on the board (and what the specific expectations for the day are).
- Prioritize relationship-building with struggling students; they’re more likely to persist when they feel you’re invested in their success. When possible, sit next to them and chat, get to know them, and help them work toward completion.
- Try to pinpoint the problem. What works for one struggling student may not work for another. Are they straggling because they fear failure? They’re confused? They’re disengaged? They don’t have time management skills? Try to tailor your approach to the reason they’re falling behind with their work.
- Create a classroom culture where asking for help is normalized and valued. Emphasize that you WANT to help them, and you WILL answer their questions without making them feel bad.
Remember that students who lag behind are often highly aware of and embarrassed about their situation. Your approach should preserve their dignity while providing the structure they need to succeed. Try to offer supports that will help them, but provide those supports to EVERYONE (like unit calendars, repeating directions, and doing progress checks). Don’t draw attention to any special help you do offer to that student one-on-one. Instead, build in time to help EVERYONE, and circulate the room, sitting by & chatting with multiple kids, not just the ones who are behind. By identifying specific barriers to completion and addressing them directly, you can help transform many stragglers into successful learners.
Most importantly, don’t take student resistance personally. When a student says, “This is stupid” or “I can’t do this,” they’re often expressing fear rather than defiance. Responding with patience rather than frustration can make all the difference in helping them move forward!
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