Slow It Down

I teach a blended schedule, which means that I teach some classes year long and some for only a semester. One of the reasons that I do not like the block semester classes is that the content is complicated and I can't force feed it for an hour and forty-five minutes every day. It's too much and the students zone out and are easily overwhelmed. This is coupled with the need to teach all the standards in the 18 weeks alotted. The students feel overwhelmed with my pace and I feel like the end of the semester is fast approaching and I've got a lot more material to cover. This week, I wish I could have a do-over with the rate in which I covered one of our units. I'm pushing them along and they are not understanding it like they need to. Some of them will be able to memorize the material for a test but only a few are going to walk away with real comprehension.  If I could change something this week, I would slow down my instruction. Maybe I wouldn't get to every standard, but at least I would know that whatever standards they were exposed to they truly understood.