For consultant Ruth Catchen, a good STEAM program addresses all the skills related to Arts & STEM subjects to make students career and college-ready. “Use cross-curricular experiences, deep content, and real world activities to maximize learning.”
We want our students to read, comprehend, and analyze text. During the past school year, history educators Aaron Block and Jody Passanisi tried annotation as a learning strategy. Here they recount how it went in the two diverse schools where they teach.
Book Reviews / Personal Learning Networks
by MiddleWeb · Published 05/16/2014 · Last modified 05/19/2014
Organized and user friendly, Professional Learning in the Digital Age by Kristen Swanson provides educator cases, face-to-face protocols, research snippets and to-do lists to help teachers move through the process of developing their PLN, says reviewer Nicole Miller.
The topic of dictionaries came up in assorted conversations in the past few weeks, reminding Kevin Hodgson both of the power of those esteemed books of words as symbols of thought and scholarship, and the ways in which technology is completely altering the ease and means of how we find information when we need it.
STEM By Design / STEM Communications
by Anne Jolly · Published 05/04/2014 · Last modified 12/05/2019
For STEM programs to realize their ambitions, kids need to communicate with the world about their projects. Science educator Anne Jolly says social media tools can help STEM students collaborate, tap expertise, and build key communications skills.
Alternate histories / Future of History
by Jody & Shara · Published 04/27/2014 · Last modified 12/14/2019
Can speculation about alternate history and “what-if” scenarios help students sharpen their critical thinking skills? Participants in a recent Twitter hashtag chat think so, as MiddleWeb history bloggers Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters report.
Teachers can help students explore important connections across different genres and subjects using “text sets” – collections of books and other media with a common theme. In this MiddleWeb article, teacher educator Amanda Wall details an assignment creating text sets for ELA and math.
Book Reviews / Speaking and Listening Skills
by MiddleWeb · Published 04/18/2014 · Last modified 12/01/2019
Each chapter of The Language of Learning helps teachers craft lessons that teach how to have academic conversations that are clear, coherent, purposeful and well reasoned, conveying curiosity, open-mindedness and respect, says reviewer Linda Biondi.
Integrating curriculum / Kids on the Cusp
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 04/15/2014 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Applying literacy workshop principles, Mary Tarashuk discovers new ways to blend ELA & social studies content. She describes how a novel about the Old West exploits of disguised woman Charley Parkhurst increased 4th graders’ interest in American history.
Future of History / Real world applications
by Aaron Brock · Published 04/13/2014 · Last modified 12/02/2019
There’s no room in an adolescent’s world view for the loftier goals of history study, says Aaron Brock. So when teaching about American rights of assembly and petition, Brock has students write petitions about issues close to their own school lives.
