Articles / Back to School / Mentoring
by MiddleWeb · Published 08/20/2023 · Last modified 07/17/2024
How can seasoned educators improve teacher retention rates? By helping new colleagues address two retention factors – student behavior and classroom climate – says middle grades veteran Sharon Ratliff. “Let’s show them how to manage their school of fish without being a shark.”
History & social studies / Resources
by Susan Curtis · Published 07/14/2023 · Last modified 08/14/2023
As the twenty-second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, help students born as much as a decade later understand the attacks and their impacts on us since that tragic day. We’ve gathered teaching resources from many sources.
Teachers want to create a space for their students to speak with authenticity and agency, writes author and English teacher Marilyn Pryle. She and 7th grade teacher Sharon Ratliff share ways to use Pryle’s Reading Responses strategy to deepen student thinking about literature.
Social studies teacher Megan Kelly and her students start each class with Canva-created Questions of the Day and continue Canva-assisted learning with topic explorations, visual formative assessments, student-made reports, infographics and more. All with the free version!
Even if middle school students have no idea what careers they want to pursue, computer science helps them acquire skills they’ll need to be successful. Learn how 7th and 8th grade CS teacher Crystal Kistler uses coding and project learning to broaden their knowledge base.
In Identity Affirming Classrooms: Spaces that Center Humanity, Erica Buchanan-Rivera provides teachers with the background knowledge, reflection tools and actionable practices needed to create identity-aware, student-centered environments. For all educators, says Katie Durkin.
Questioning for Formative Feedback by Jackie Acree Walsh is full of insightful, thought provoking, and practical ways to infuse a classroom with formative questioning, encourage dialogue, and lead to deeper learning for students. A great professional learning adventure!
Teacher educator Curtis Chandler guides us through Global Pandemics, a “fantastic” free Chrome app that transports teachers and students back in time to the lives, choices, and dilemmas faced by individuals during some of the most severe plagues and pandemics in history.
Class Apps / Formative Assessment
by Curtis Chandler · Published 04/04/2022 · Last modified 04/16/2024
One of the few silver linings to teaching in the pandemic has been a boost in teachers’ familiarity with and use of some pretty incredible tools, each designed to make it simple to gather evidence of learning with ease and efficiency. Curtis Chandler shares six favorites.
Ideally, the “you do together” phase of GRR is a student-led experience that acts as a catalyst for learning. But how often does this kind of student interaction really happen in classrooms? Cummins and Webb consider what teachers can do to foster true collaboration.
