Recognizing the gap between formal curriculum standards and the emotional and organizational hurdles of writing, Matt Renwick shares some of his ideas for student-centered strategies that acknowledge these challenges and equip students with tools they need to overcome them.
Academic success relies on students taking charge of their learning. To achieve that goal, kids must learn to organize and study effectively. G/T Facilitator Sharon Ratliff shares strategies she uses to introduce and implant essential study skills in the middle school years.
Marilyn Pryle’s five crucial questions help students become critical readers in the Age of Disinformation as they learn to look more deeply into any text, in any form, and see the influences around it, the voices and sponsors, the craft and rhetoric, the intent and message.
Resources / Summer Reading & Learning
by Susan Curtis · Published 03/31/2024 · Last modified 05/07/2024
How can teachers help students enjoy reading and learning during summer following another challenging year? Visit MiddleWeb’s expanded resource for Summer 2023, where you’ll find teacher ideas and heaps of book and online suggestions.
Whether summer means it’s time to relax, bolster your professional know-how, improve your bank balance, or reconsider your profession, we have suggestions from your educator colleagues and other sources that can help. Plan now!
Whether read individually or as a group study, Melissa Collins’ book will help educators understand the growth cycle of a teacher leader and to reflect on their own experiences. Collins includes teacher leader roles beyond the classroom, notes reviewer Stacy Haynes-Moore.
Students need to know what to expect when they enter our classrooms, writes teacher Kelly Owens. Consistency on the front end paves the way for more student autonomy and engagement throughout the lesson. Three tips can help teachers achieve “the loyalty to learning we want!”
Women’s history is no longer in hiding, thanks to scholars who are documenting women’s impact on society. Middle grades teachers can help their students trace that history with these resources, just updated and expanded, for Women’s History Month and beyond.
Responding to text can take many forms, write literacy experts Brenda Krupp, Lynne Dorfman and Aileen Hower. Teachers want to encourage sincere, honest responses where students share their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and insights about the fiction and nonfiction they read.
In his fourth post in a series exploring ways that digital literacy impacts teaching and learning in the middle grades, Jason DeHart considers a wide range of digital texts (including music, visuals, film, video) and notes changing trends in engagement among his students.
