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.
Teaching children how to meaningfully participate in math conversations can be daunting, say educators Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz. The authors of Intentional Talk share four principles to help teachers lead deeper, more productive discussions.
It’s hard to put down Readers Front & Center: Helping All Students Engage with Complex Texts, says our reviewer. Dorothy Barnhouse shows teachers how to focus on the reader, not the text, by using conferencing, questioning & other student-centered strategies.
Book Reviews / Vocabulary Instruction
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/01/2014 · Last modified 12/05/2019
While introducing vocabulary takes only a few minutes, true comprehension requires time. What’s a teacher to do? Reviewer Beth Morrow suggests picking up a copy of Marilee Sprenger’s Vocab Rehab for a succinct guide to research based activities.
Social Media / Two Teachers in the Room
by Elizabeth Stein · Published 05/18/2014 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Elizabeth Stein constantly searches for professional development opportunities to strengthen co-teaching. Her district offers excellent PD, and she values virtual colleagues she’s found online. Lately her favorite PD comes with her own hashtag: #coteachat.
When sixth grade ELA teacher Kevin Hodgson’s students were asked to help pilot new paper circuitry learning tools developed at the MIT Media Lab, they chose to illuminate haiku poems about light. The technology draws on the work of Jie Qi, a mechanical engineer and MIT doctoral student known for her work with electrified paper.
Book Reviews / Personal Learning Networks
by MiddleWeb · Published 05/16/2014 · Last modified 05/19/2014
Organized and user friendly, Professional Learning in the Digital Age by Kristen Swanson provides educator cases, face-to-face protocols, research snippets and to-do lists to help teachers move through the process of developing their PLN, says reviewer Nicole Miller.
Future of History / Teaching strategies
by Aaron Brock · Published 05/11/2014 · Last modified 11/12/2019
While inner-city history teacher Aaron Brock agrees that lecture has been chronically abused in the middle grades, he uses short flexible lectures and image-heavy slides to help prepare students for deeper learning in his diverse classroom.
The topic of dictionaries came up in assorted conversations in the past few weeks, reminding Kevin Hodgson both of the power of those esteemed books of words as symbols of thought and scholarship, and the ways in which technology is completely altering the ease and means of how we find information when we need it.
In a 7th grade classroom where students are used to sharing ownership and know how to think on their feet, what does the teacher do when he asks a question and there’s absolute silence? Bill Ivey’s solution: Smile at all the parents in the room and trust the kids.
