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I'm currently facing this problem as a volunteer. I'm teaching coding to my son's 4th grade classroom and there are about 5 or so kids out of 30 who finish ever

I'm currently facing this problem as a volunteer. I'm teaching coding to my son's 4th grade classroom and there are about 5 or so kids out of 30 who finish everything assigned really fast and have to wait for the others to catchup. On the other end of the spectrum, there are aoubt 4-5 kids who need some extra help while the rest of the class has moved on. I'm not a teacher by profession but this little volunteer effort has given me a lot of appreciation for how hard the teacher's job is (and also what a insufferable little snot I must have been as a kid)

csa 10y ago
For the fast kids, create your lessons with extensions. You can google it for more details on how to do this skillfully, but an extension is basically building something extra onto your first task. Note that good extensions are not busy work -- they typically either lead to the creation of a cool product or they introduce a new and related concept. Either way, good extensions are ones that motivate the middle kids to try to get to the extensions phase. For the extra-help kids, the best thing to do during class is to have them work with a friend who got it. Sometimes their peers can communicate the key ideas better than you can. After the class, you can review the problematic ideas with them and/or give them extra problems for them to work on (if they are interested). You will win them over if you can review those extra problems with them at a later time (e.g., before the next class).