Summer offers time for middle schoolers to select books they’ll enjoy. Media literacy facilitator Jennifer Sniadecki sees a role for picture books to engage them. Diving into several genres, she describes books that will catch their attention. Spiders and memory jars, anyone?
Teachers Samantha Layne and Susanne Croasdaile introduce a new UDL-friendly tool to promote higher thinking, using a model-building strategy. TPRY helps students break down visual content, analyze it, and even build their own visual texts. See a food web modeling example.
History & social studies / Resources
by Susan Curtis · Published 02/10/2024 · Last modified 02/21/2024
African Americans faced severe repression when Carter G. Woodson established Negro History Week in 1926. In this updated MiddleWeb resource, we share links that trace the impact of African Americans in politics, arts and sciences, and report on the call to teach Black history throughout the school year.
With so many daily classes, the working memories of adolescents get overloaded. Their evolving brains have not yet developed fluent coping strategies. To teach students to handle all the inflow, two experts share UDL strategies that build executive function and self-regulation.
Interactive student notebooks are a great way to reduce the amount of time your students spend on screens, writes middle school ELA teacher Jenna Smith. Her step-by-step example of a week-long literature study – plus how-to tips and lessons learned – make it easy to get started.
Author and master teacher Debbie Silver begins her case for spirit-building humor and laughter in classrooms and schools with a personal story from her years as a middle level educator. “Pay attention to how much you laugh together. Teachers and school leaders who laugh, last.”
Lauren Buell’s 8th grade ELA team works with students on a comprehensive unit that helps all participants develop speaking, listening, writing, reading and life skills as they prepare end-of-year TED-style talks. She shares the unit’s impact once students enter high school.
Given the challenges educators are facing today, Silver and Berckemeyer’s new edition of Deliberate Optimism could not be more timely. Kathie Palmieri finds lots to like, including a new focus on mental health, Silver’s humor, and the message that teachers “have to take our power back.”
With examples from all levels of education, The New Classroom Instruction That Works is a useful tool for beginning teachers and lifelong educators alike. Goodwin and Rouleau capture proven researched-based strategies for every classroom, writes teacher leader Hannah Mickey.
Students in the middle grades think in polarities and will go to great lengths to avoid embarrassment, writes author and school counselor Phyllis Fagell. But with the right supports, they can learn to take risks – asking questions, joining discussions and learning more.
