Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues:

Many of you have shared your ideas, needs, and concerns with us as schools release their plans for the fall–remote, hybrid, or in-person. Your main focus? Will your students receive enough rigorous instruction to maintain academic progress? This year presents a unique time of need to push rigorous instruction. With many terms circulating in the media – pods, micro schools, homeschooling – it’s important to stay focused on the main priority of any academic enrichment.

Rigor in Learning
Increasing rigor for students is the core of any effective academic support. By focusing on providing high-level content, students can be successful in their high school and, later, college courses; incorporating questioning and accountability for engagement into our one-on-one or small-group instruction will then drive rigor in students’ thought processes and promote self-advocacy that can be missing in remote learning from school.

Rigorous Feedback
We know that one of the main levers in driving student learning is providing feedback and allowing students to incorporate and apply that feedback. Constructive, critical feedback is at the heart of our instruction: asking the right questions and giving students the opportunity to learn and grow through that highly personalized feedback. In both our test preparation and academic work, we use cycles of questioning and feedback to drive learning.

As students and families consider how learning will look this fall, we’re keeping an eye on rigor: how do school learning plans incorporate rigor, and how can we maintain it at high levels to ensure academic progress?

Be well,
Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO