Future of History / Word Choice
by Lauren S. Brown · Published 08/14/2019 · Last modified 06/24/2020
American Indian or Native American? Latina or Latino or Latinx? African American or Black? History teacher Lauren Brown shares activities and resources she uses to help students understand the background and history of such naming choices and why it’s important to teach.
If we want our students to be readers, we have to let them read, writes principal and reading teacher Rita Platt. We have to give them time for the kind of reading that is guided by curiosity, joy, and love of story. Platt shows exactly how her school made this work.
Over a career of teaching, mentoring and networking with novices, Barbara Blackburn has learned five key lessons about being a new teacher. Here she takes the butterflies churning in newbies’ insides and suggests ways to line them up in formation for a strong first year.
Close Reading the Media is an incredible resource for middle or high school humanities teachers teaching students how to think critically about the media, writes teacher Stephanie Leary, noting it is packed with informative, fun, and thought-provoking topics and ideas.
Close Reading the Media / News Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 08/07/2019 · Last modified 11/20/2019
With the 2020 election underway fake news and deceptive social media posts and imagery are expected to become commonplace. Media literacy expert Frank Baker offers a lesson to help our always-connected students acquire some of the “healthy skepticism” skills they’ll need.
6th grade teacher Amanda Xavier was skeptical when colleague Rose Reissman suggested a Mary Poppins book study, but their multimedia approach was a hit. “If a very old fashioned nanny can bring smiles and make modern kids sit up in class and take note, I say, ‘Cheerio’!”
Being a teacher who writes is the secret to being a successful teacher of writers! To help up your game, consultant and author Stacey Shubitz suggests ways to share your own writing in class with students and offers hints on how to develop and stimulate a personal writing habit.
Bridging the gap between “real STEM study” and how school stakeholders may understand it is a doable task for teachers, says expert Anne Jolly. She offers some elevator-speech essentials to get you started (and perhaps avoid that virtual lab that could be in your future).
Jennifer Serravallo’s new book on reading conferences is a must-have if you’re ready to up your teaching game during independent reading time, writes Rita Platt. Her organized approach and bonus online resources provide everything teachers need to have quality conferences.
In a few weeks, new middle schoolers will encounter challenges unlike any they’ve seen before: a half-dozen teachers making daily assignments, new afterschool choices, more homework. How’s a kid to keep track of it all? Always-organized Frank Buck suggests consolidation.
