One convention of most curricula is to end a “unit” of information with some form of an assessment. While this is pretty much always a great idea, there are inevitably going to be parts of the curriculum that the students as a whole understand better than others. Sometimes these holes can be tricky to anticipate, but there are ways to handle them once they are uncovered.

First of all, the passage of time does not make a concept easier for subsequent classes to understand. If a concept gave one class as a whole a lot of trouble, then chances are the next several classes will also struggle with the topic. Keep this in mind, and consider spending more class time on this particular concept.

Furthermore, it is typical for material to be cumulatively assessed and then not touched upon for a significant amount of time, until it is needed again. While this is structurally logical, consider taking half of a class period after a formative assessment to go over any particularly challenging concepts a second time, to help said concepts stick in your students’ heads. This is particularly important in math and science classes where later material is heavily reliant on earlier material. For instance, how can a chemistry class understand bonding if they don’t understand what valence electrons are? If you have pinpointed a particular topic within a curricular unit that is particularly difficult for your students to understand, odds are more students will miss questions on an assessment that deal with that topic. As you hand back a formative assessment, go over these “most frequently missed” questions with your students as a reinforcement of this particularly challenging material. You may be saving yourself a lot of grief later when your students understand the fundamentals so much better.