STEM By Design / STEM Summer Activities
by Anne Jolly · Published 06/01/2014 · Last modified 12/10/2019
How to STEM the summer learning slide? MiddleWeb’s Anne Jolly offers a great collection of ideas and resources that can help parents and educators keep kids tuned into math, science and engineering topics until the school doors open again this fall.
It’s hard to put down Readers Front & Center: Helping All Students Engage with Complex Texts, says our reviewer. Dorothy Barnhouse shows teachers how to focus on the reader, not the text, by using conferencing, questioning & other student-centered strategies.
Book Reviews / Vocabulary Instruction
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/01/2014 · Last modified 12/05/2019
While introducing vocabulary takes only a few minutes, true comprehension requires time. What’s a teacher to do? Reviewer Beth Morrow suggests picking up a copy of Marilee Sprenger’s Vocab Rehab for a succinct guide to research based activities.
Kids on the Cusp / Teaching writing
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 05/27/2014 · Last modified 11/30/2019
Having helped her students visualize scenes and characters during read alouds, Mary Tarashuk tries the same idea with writing. She and her students “write aloud” as they create text to match the opening illustrations from The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Then they envision their own stories.
STEM By Design / STEM Misconceptions
by Anne Jolly · Published 05/18/2014 · Last modified 11/28/2019
STEM doesn’t deserve some of the fallout that’s pummeled it of late. What’s an education initiative devoted to correcting deficiencies in education to do? Anne Jolly takes on some of the jaw-dropping attacks and works to set the record straight.
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.
Kids on the Cusp / Passion-based Learning
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 04/27/2014 · Last modified 12/15/2019
Upper elementary teacher Mary Tarashuk – who has always viewed “teach” as an action verb – is learning to step back and let students pursue their interests and passions more often, with the help of laptops & content-specific anchor activities.
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.
