Your first year? Now’s your opportunity to create a welcoming classroom where students will feel secure, valued and successful in the days ahead. Veteran teacher Cheryl Mizerny shares ideas that have helped her realize a “shiny, happy” place to learn.
Kids on the Cusp / Summer Activities
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 08/20/2014 · Last modified 11/18/2019
Mary Tarashuk shares gems from her history curriculum treasure hunt, all discovered while surfing on the Web during her beach vacation. Her online pirate crew added to her store of resources for the year ahead and helped her strengthen her internet sea legs.
Shirley McPhillips’ Poem Central invites students to move through poetry that we might not know exactly how to teach and to live with those words on their own terms – not needing us to facilitate all meaning and experience for them, says Jenni Miller.
Professional community / Working Draft
by MiddleWeb · Published 08/13/2014 · Last modified 11/19/2019
Kevin Hodgson joined teacher playmates this summer for a wide-ranging exploration of making and connected learning that, while professional in purpose, reminded participants “of the nature of childhood inquisitiveness and the power of play.”
Editors from The Center for Courage & Renewal introduce four short essays from a new book, Teaching with Heart, each written by an educator who reflects on an inspirational poem. Re-energize yourself as you begin to prepare for the new school year!
Reviewer Tyler McBride says the authors of Uncommon Core draw on research and their classroom experience to help teachers and administrators avoid some “absurd” teaching practices implied in the Common Core standards and get CCSS implementation right.
This is a very short, very concise, highly referenced book on the incredibly important topic of adolescent development and the role of poverty. Reviewer Laura Von Staden suggests more on specific interventions would have strengthened the book.
The authors of Science Notebooks: Writing about Inquiry not only offer a practical standards-aligned guide to helping students gather and assess data in the inquiry classroom, they help teachers envision how science notebooks can promote student ownership of learning.
In this helpful how-to article Judith Wencel, founder of SUCCESS in the Middle, distills 20 years of experience effectively recruiting and preparing community tutors and mentors – dispelling the myth that “nobody will volunteer in middle schools.”
Standards-driven reading lessons often force students to “take” rather than “make” meaning from complex texts, says educator Dorothy Barnhouse. To deepen understanding, she recommends letting students first “notice” and think about the textual layers.
