Middle grades teacher Mona Iehl wants students to be able to “see themselves in math” and be represented in the work they do together. Learn how she uses the images and words of Black Mathematicians to empower and inspire her classes to welcome and master math challenges.
Close Reading the Media / New Vocabulary
by Frank Baker · Published 01/09/2022 · Last modified 01/10/2022
Metaverse? Prebunking? Zombie claims? The rapid evolution of digital technology and methods of persuasion has unleashed a flood of words and phrases that need to be in students’ vocabularies. Media literacy expert Frank Baker offers examples from across current culture.
Book Reviews / Social & Emotional Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 01/06/2022 · Last modified 09/07/2022
Jeffrey Benson’s book is the perfect supplement to any school or district’s SEL program. The book offers ready-to-use advice for SEL implementation, writes Michael DiClemente, and will be especially welcomed by educators apprehensive about adding any more to their plate.
Co-editors John Norton and Susan Curtis highlight 15 of MiddleWeb’s most popular posts for middle level educators during the past 12 months. You’ll find articles that were new in 2021 or rediscovered and shared widely in this second “weirdest year ever.”
Middle grades teacher Kathleen Palmieri shows how Google’s Applied Digital Skills videos and lesson plans can help students in grades 5-12 tap the power of Google Docs and the Google Drive to learn portable skills like digital collaboration, file sharing, and organization.
Language specialist Tan Huynh explains how to use short teacher-made video tutorials to ‘duplicate’ yourself so you can be ‘in 20 places at once’ – responding to students’ questions during class and providing support at home and in study hall. A real help to multilinguals.
I Will Screw This Up / Real Self Care
by Dina Strasser · Published 12/15/2021 · Last modified 01/03/2022
As we encourage self-care it might not occur to educators that the concept is culturally driven and diverse. ELL teacher Dina Strasser shares resources that can help “decolonize” self-care by recognizing our students’ many differing cultural perspectives on healing and health.
Student trauma is widespread in schools today. School psychologist Katelyn Oellerich explores several actions we can take to help alleviate its ill effects – from deliberate steps to strengthen adult-student relationships to systemwide planning to improve trauma support.
When students tackle fact-rich texts, teachers may need to shift into focused instruction mode, modeling the strategic processing nonfiction readers use to make sense of new information. Cummins and Webb share a teacher-student partnership scenario.
Sketchnotes give kids the chance to express themselves with an assignment that falls in the gray area between ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect.’ Sixth grade teacher Kelly Owens explains how she and her co-teaching colleague use sketchnoting as a technique to promote growth mindset.
