To guide middle grades students into paying more attention to poetry β and reconsidering their often negative attitudes about reading and writing poems β author and teacher Linda Rief suggests kids create heart books, do quickwrites and illustrate lines of their own work.
In Becoming Active Citizens Tom Driscoll and Shawn W. McCusker offer a compendium of the latest approaches and ideas in civic education. Their ideas equip teachers across academic disciplines with the tools to navigate this ever-changing landscape, writes Sarah Cooper.
Help your middle graders grow academically and behaviorally with these monthly SEL themes and activities developed by middle school teacher leader Kasey Short and her counseling colleague Janani Buford. Just right for busy teachers to incorporate into their advisories!
While coping strategies can help those facing burnout, teaching careers are more sustainable when educators also slash workload and stress-inducers. Jenny Grant Rankin looks at the burnout pandemic and urges teachers to reduce grading and focus on planning quality lessons.
Literacy champions Lynne Dorfman and Aileen Hower join childrenβs author Frank Murphy in a frank, well-informed review of the book banning controversy. Students need books that help them see themselves and understand others. βThe opposite of censorship is intellectual freedom.β
Many school problems are social at their core. When teachers and counselors give students a leadership role in normalizing the problems β making them accessible and resolvable β the community culture improves for everyone, says national counseling leader Jean Peterson.
Language specialist Tan Huynh offers a framework called the 3 Cβs of Equity β Community, Curriculum and Culture β to guide schools on the journey to provide an equitable learning experience for their multilingual learners. To start, avoid deficit-based models that segregate.
A new school year can be filled with excitement β and stress. 5th grade teacher Kathie Palmieri suggests you SOAR into fall as you plan your structure and organization, assess your classroom, review and reset so you and your students can take flight in a welcoming environment.
When Curtis Chandler began ‘longboarding’ to work, he endured a newbieβs trial-by-fire. After many bruises he took a friendβs words to heart and opened to the learning experience. The tips he shares here can help beginning teachers “embrace the challenging reality of our profession.”
Math students in the middle grades want the truth: “Why should math matter to me?” To show them, curriculum leader Christian Polizzi suggests making real-world connections, asking students for examples in their own lives, and having them create βpersonalizedβ math problems.
