How can teachers use brain-friendly strategies to help students encode, store and retrieve vocabulary words? Educator and author Marilee Sprenger shares some high-interest activities designed for each stage of learning academic words. Some just require a few minutes!
Book Reviews / Social & Emotional Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/08/2017 · Last modified 11/12/2019
Carla Tantillo Philibert’s Everyday SEL in Elementary School gives inspiring, practical advice and lessons to help educators in classrooms and schoolwide meet their students’ social and emotional needs, says upper elementary teacher Linda Biondi.
Quality Questioning Can Help Us Transform Our Classrooms provides a detailed guide for fashioning quality questions and asking them in ways to encourage student learning. Instructional Partner Debby Smith says new and veteran teachers will want to keep it at hand.
It's Not Easy Being Tween / Social-Emotional Learning
by Cheryl Mizerny · Published 06/04/2017 · Last modified 11/25/2019
With so much focus on high stakes testing, teachers recognize their students are at risk of not gaining the “soft skills” they need to succeed in school and life. Cheryl Mizerny shares her do-it-yourself solution: easy to use activities she blends into her curriculum.
Jenny Grant Rankin’s First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success is the perfect salve for the tired teacher’s soul. This short book is packed full of great ideas to relieve, rejuvenate, and energize, says teacher-librarian Rita Platt.
Close Reading the Media / Infographics
by Frank Baker · Published 05/30/2017 · Last modified 11/21/2019
Increasingly information is being conveyed in visual terms, and the flashy graphics can both clarify and mislead. Media literacy expert Frank Baker has teaching ideas to help students think more deeply about the infographics and visual data flooding our brains.
Ben Curran offers a future classic on lesson planning as a reflective, deliberate, on-going practice built with precision and thought. Teacher Linda Biondi thinks pre-service teachers, teacher educators and classroom veterans will all benefit from his practical advice.
If a school can agree to have both ELA and content area teachers use the ideas in “Strategic Journeys for Building Logical Reasoning” there is potential for students to achieve more intense thinking rather than surface learning, says reviewer Mary Langer Thompson.
You may not be able to stem the tide of Shiny New Things coming your way, but using Woodson and Frakes’ book you will be able to show which reforms are making a difference in the lives of your students and which are just passing fads, writes teacher Alex Valencic.
A book to treasure! All of Jennifer Serravallo’s engaging 300 lessons are fully developed and easily adaptable for differentiation. The premise of the book is to meet the students where they are and not to teach each of the skills in isolation, writes Linda Biondi.
