Resilience is the ability to effectively handle pressure and to overcome failure. It’s a characteristic that many of our struggling students do not bring to the classroom, yet it is one that we can teach. Barbara Blackburn shares five strategies that can help.
When spring fever rises and summer still seems far away, newbie and veteran teachers alike may feel they’re losing their focus and their students are drifting. Check out Elyse Scott’s five regrouping and re-energizing strategies and “do what’s right for the kids.”
Using observer-centered Instructional Rounds, teachers at Mrachek Middle School in Aurora CO are focused on finding the personalized methods to engage every student equitably and effectively. After two years, the effort is producing solid results and some epiphanies.
If bibliotherapy is an effective way to ease the growing pains of adolescents, writes 7th grade teacher Laurie Lichtenstein, The Outsiders is “the gold standard of therapy in middle grades literature.” It’s the only whole class novel she teaches each year.
Students’ teaching and learning recently came together in Allison Fink’s health classes. Working in groups to decide lesson goal, content and presentation, her students also helped develop rubrics and reflected on their work. A project for your classroom?
What’s one of the best things a school day can offer? Exposure to newly learned words – provided that exposure is in context, well-timed, multisensory, and question-based. Literacy expert Amy Benjamin suggests five ways to achieve these “durable learning” goals.
Frank Buck remembers the joy of playing the Tonette with 4th grade classmates. Today, any teacher with access to a set of iPads and a free app can introduce all students to elements of music, enjoy the kids’ hands-on sound experiments, and build engagement and a more vibrant classroom culture.
Articles / Book Reviews / Reading / Whole Novels
by MiddleWeb · Published 03/16/2017 · Last modified 07/07/2024
Ariel Sacks’ Whole Novels for the Whole Class is “the ultimate teacher-friendly manual for accommodating all students around a single book,” says ELA veteran Mary Tedrow, who finds Sacks’ practical specificity convincing and her confidence infectious.
Explaining that middle school is “the unspoken linchpin in establishing a positive trajectory for career and college success,” Principal Robert Messia shares eight tested strategies for helping students understand and begin to prepare for the possibilities ahead.
MS librarian Rachel Grover’s favorite role is instructional partner, working with teachers across disciplines to extend and enhance the curriculum. Using examples from her practice, Grover describes how skilled librarians can boost student (and teacher) learning.
