Close Reading the Media / News Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 08/28/2017 · Last modified 12/03/2019
How do today’s students access news and what do they understand about its origins? In his Close Reading the Media column, expert Frank W. Baker offers ideas and activities for engaging students in critical thinking about how they share and consume news in social media.
Marilyn Pryle’s 50 Writing Activities for Meeting Higher Standards provides educators across content areas with opportunities to teach writing in a logical, fun, and research-based way. The fully developed lessons take Writers Workshop to the next level, says Linda Biondi.
If you are a STEM teacher, you’ve likely made productive teamwork one of your goals. Just as likely, you’ve probably learned that simply putting kids in groups does not automatically make this happen. Anne Jolly shares a step by step process to build successful teams.
Mary Tarashuk is counting on Peter Brown’s fiction picture books to enliven her 4th graders’ adaptation to their new classroom and their first science unit on animal and plant adaptation. The Global Read Aloud, featuring Brown’s Roz the Wild Robot, is in the wings.
Heart of the School / Social Justice
by Rita Platt · Published 08/14/2017 · Last modified 12/10/2019
In her first post at a new MiddleWeb blog, “Heart of the School,” teacher-librarian Rita Platt responds to a weekend of civil strife and a deepening discussion about race and diversity in America with eight steps she believes can promote social justice through education.
It's Not Easy Being Tween / Social-Emotional Learning
by Cheryl Mizerny · Published 08/13/2017 · Last modified 11/24/2019
Cheryl Mizerny resolves to spend this school year cultivating a culture of kindness among her middle level students as she joins with them to create The Kind Classroom. Summer reading and listening have helped lay the groundwork for her comprehensive SEL approach.
Do you want a book filled with lesson plans that you can use the next day or something based in theory that will inform your teaching decisions along the way? Pam Hamilton writes you can have it both ways in these fiction and nonfiction guides by Gravity Goldberg and Renee Houser.
This is a needed, practical book for superintendents, school leaders, and others who want to know how districts work and how these key figures should function in terms of school governance and working relationships, says retired principal Mary Langer Thompson.
We might think a new school year should start off with solemnity. But that’s not the message teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron has garnered from her survey of 6-12th graders across the country. Students learn more when teachers share their humanity and their humor ASAP.
As the new school year approaches, explore a selection of digital tools recommended by teacher educator Curtis Chandler that can help you streamline lesson planning, create secure class websites, connect with families, and gather information on how your new students like to learn.
