26 of Our Best Posts for New MS Teachers

For well over a decade MiddleWeb has shared helpful ideas for new teachers. In this post we’ve selected recent articles along with several classics that might be MOST useful before and during your first months in the classroom.

If you have teaching experience but you’re new to the middle grades or middle school, there’s help for you too. We’ve also included MiddleWeb reviews of exceptionally “novice-friendly” books. If you don’t find what you need, browse these “new teacher”  articles here at MiddleWeb or search MiddleWeb + (your topic) in a browser.

►New Teacher Tips
In his MiddleWeb blog, BYU-Idaho teacher educator and former Kansas TOY Curtis Chandler offers  strategies he shares with beginning teachers graduating from his own program. You might start with 2 Crucial 1st Steps Will Fuel Student Success and The Bumps and Scrapes of First Year Teaching.

►Barbara Blackburn’s Best Advice for Beginning Teachers
Another wide-ranging MIddleWeb resource for new teachers and those new to the middle grades is the collection of posts by teacher/consultant/writer Barbara R. Blackburn. Great places to start are 5 Things Every New Teacher Needs to Know and 8 Strategies to Quickly Assess Prior Knowledge.

►Building Relationships with Kids from Day One
By putting strong relationships at the fore, you can cultivate an environment in which each of your students can grow. Through her years in the classroom Stephanie Farley has hit upon keys to encourage kids to thrive. At the center – kindness and getting to know each student. In a second post Farley gives new educators a head-start on effective assessment in The Year I Figured Out Student Self Assessment.

►Co-Create a Learning Culture with Students
What teachers do the first weeks of school has a dramatic effect on student engagement and achievement the rest of the year. Building a classroom culture of learning and questioning – co-created with students – paves the road to success. Author and consultant Jackie Walsh and her colleagues show us how. For more of their Making Questions Count series, click here.

►For New Teachers: How to Keep Kids on Task
Effective class management begins with dynamic planning and engagement, writes instructional specialist Miriam Plotinsky. Teachers who focus not just on delivering information but responding to student feedback in the moment can avoid “helicopter teacher” syndrome. Plotinsky tells how.

►Helping New Teachers Manage Their Students
How can seasoned educators improve teacher retention rates? By helping new colleagues address two retention factors – student behavior and classroom climate – says middle grades veteran Sharon Ratliff. “Let’s show them how to manage their school of fish without being a shark.”

►My Radical Approach to Class Management
David Finkle found that traditional class management guidelines wouldn’t work with his students. “My collaborative approach to discipline may sound too good to be true. But it’s still working, eight years into the experiment,” he writes. “Some classes respond immediately; some need time to adjust to the paradigm shift. But in the end, it nearly always works.”

►Classroom Moves That Stimulate Kids’ Learning
Whether in fall or at the beginning of the New Year, you can avoid jumping on the bandwagon of the latest decorating fad. Instead, design a place where students want to learn and grow. Your classroom environment may be one of the most powerful tools in your teaching toolbox, writes teacher and former marketer Kelly Owens. For even more design guidance, take a look at Curtis Chandler’s What Research Tells Us about Classroom Decor.

►New to Teaching and to Teaching MLs? Try This!
First and foremost, writes EL expert Valentina Gonzalez, new teachers need to view multilingualism as a student asset. Learn her five proven strategies to achieve teaching success with multilinguals, who need to be valued, respected and supported to master academic content.

►New to STEM Teaching? Five Things to Do First
Whether you’re a recent teacher ed graduate, newly emergency certified, or an experienced teacher who’s suddenly learned you’ll be teaching STEM this year, you’re in good hands with veteran STEM teacher and curriculum designer Anne Jolly. Here are her five “do this first” tips.

MiddleWeb Classics

►Laura Robb’s Back to School Tips for Newbies
When you walk into your own classroom for the first time, options (and stressors) abound. Keying in on essentials and asking for help can help new teachers build a vibrant learning space. Veteran teacher trainer Laura Robb shares newbie tips to use or adapt.

►The 7 Questions Your Middle School Students Ask First
First day routines evolve over the years, says veteran teacher Cheryl Mizerny, but she has found that addressing seven questions most students bring to class will help them feel welcome and excited about learning. A student advisory panel supports her observations.

►Eight Things I Know for Sure about Middle School Kids
Middle school students are a unique breed, says educator and consultant Jennifer Gonzalez, and they need teachers who are tuned in to the intense dichotomies of adolescent life and learning. She offers teachers new to the middle level eight helpful tips.

►Ten Ways to Sabotage Your Classroom Management
Even with all the usual basics in place, the small things novice teachers do could be wreaking havoc on their whole classroom management system. In a second post by Jennifer Gonzalez, she identifies unproductive habits, along with more effective alternatives, in one of MiddleWeb’s most popular article ever.

►Quick Tips for New Teachers – Managing Your Time
If you are a beginning teacher wondering about time, Julia Thompson has created a collection of quick tips that can help you maximize every minute at school, minimize the time you spend working at home, and keep from sabotaging your own strategies. She provides more helpful suggestions in an earlier post,  How to Build a Close-Knit Classroom Community.

►Five Special Strategies for Teaching Tweens
The developmental needs of tweens are unique, and flourishing as a middle grades teacher requires special skills. Teaching expert Rick Wormeli offers five customized strategies that are attuned to the particular requirements of the adolescent brain.

►Ten Ways We Can Help Tweens Feel Included
It’s hard to strike a balance between nurturing a middle schooler and fostering independence, but they need both from adults in their lives as they toggle between childhood and adolescence. Author and middle school counselor Phyllis Fagell shares 10 ways we can help.

►What Will You Say? The Power of Teachers’ Words
Author and veteran teacher Debbie Silver examines effective feedback, motivational praise, and the power inherent in the words teachers say to students about their work. Silver – whose other posts for MiddleWeb include Humor in Our Schools Heals and Engages Us and Should You Become a Middle School Teacher? – offers numerous examples of what teachers should and shouldn’t say. Great newbie advice!

►How to Create an Effective Teaching Plan
The most effective teachers know that if you want to have a great lesson, you need to plan a great lesson, say experts Todd Whitaker and Annette Breaux. Novice teachers will appreciate the authors’ handy planning checklist. Bonus download: How to overplan!

►Three Questions New Teachers Always Ask
We asked Annette Breaux to write about three of the most pressing questions new teachers have in the weeks (and months) before they open their classroom doors to students for the first time. Here’s her advice on discipline, classroom management, and daily procedures.

►What Matters Most for Co-teaching Success
Whether you began the school year weeks ago or you’re just launching, it’s time to consider what you hold most important when you think about a successful co-teaching partnership. Author and co-teaching coach Elizabeth Stein shares an experience from her own career that unwrapped three essentials.

►Refreshing Advice for New History Teachers
When Lauren Brown left her history classroom and became a teacher educator, she always shared a page of advice when pre-service teachers finished her course. Three years after returning to middle school, Brown updates her tips with fresh insights from the front lines.

Reviews of Books for New Teachers

• The New Classroom Instruction That Works: The Best Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement (Bryan Goodwin and Kristin Rouleau with Cheryl Abla, Karen Baptiste, Tonia Gibson, and Michele Kimball)
• Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Creating a Dynamic Classroom (Serena Pariser and Victoria Lentfer)
• We Belong: 50 Strategies to Create Community and Revolutionize Classroom Management (Laurie Barron and Patti Kinney)
• The New Teacher’s Guide to Overcoming Common Challenges: Curated Advice from Award-Winning Teachers (Anna M. Quinzio-Zafran and Elizabeth A. Wilkins)
• Your First Year: How to Survive and Thrive as a New Teacher (Todd, Katherine & Madeline Whitaker)
• Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Raising and Teaching Self-Motivated Learners, K-12, 2^nd edition (Debbie Silver)
• Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom (2^nd edition) (Rick Wormeli)
• The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools & Activities for Meeting the Challenges of Each School Day, 4th Edition (Julia Thompson)

Explore more of our book reviews here. And have a great start to a great first year!