For Megan Kelly’s Ancient Civilizations unit, Grade 7 gamers played her “Ancient” adaptation of Apples to Apples (see her tips), Galactic Mappers and Inhabitation. Along the way they created continents and civilizations, and learned systems thinking and plenty of content.
Instead of continuing our 130 years of running every public school student through the system in the same way at the same time, Alex Valencic believes we need to shift our efforts to acknowledging individuality, independence, and innovation through mastery learning.
Close Reading the Media / Internet Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 01/26/2021 · Last modified 02/13/2021
New studies continue to reveal that many students cannot evaluate internet information for truthfulness, writes media literacy expert Frank W Baker. “It has become a crisis in American education,” he says, as disinformation becomes industrialized and “truth decay” spreads.
Jason DeHart knows the unique characteristics of visual literature can grab kids’ attention. He shares ideas from his research and middle school teaching experience about using comics and graphic novels in the classroom – and includes lots of winning titles for grades 4-8.
Differentiating Instruction with Menus: Literature (3-5) provides a variety of excellent activities to involve students in thoughtful and purposeful engagement with and response to texts. Some teachers may wish to substitute more diverse texts, writes Sarah Pennington.
On her first day back Michelle Russell surveyed her students, looking for ways to improve her online teaching and – most of all – to find out how they’re doing in these difficult times. Some of their answers surprised her, and she’ll be more aware and proactive going forward.
Borrowing books from class and school libraries is less common during the pandemic. Kathie Palmieri encourages her students to read using a Bitmoji Virtual Classroom Library, Virtual Book Tasting Rooms, Flipgrid, and Mentimeter. How-to tips and book sources included!
Purposeful gaming is a natural complement to learning, writes award-winning middle school history teacher Jennifer Ingold. She shares one of her creations – American Modernization Monopoly – in this fully illustrated “why and how” post, complete with SEL and assessment notes.
Using the ideas in The Literacy Workshop: Where Reading and Writing Converge can transform literacy teaching, writes Linda Biondi. The authors offer an easy-to-follow, research-based guide as teachers journey into making a dual reading-writing workshop a reality.
Copious fiction and nonfiction reading can make most teachers better teachers, writes principal and former reading specialist and librarian Rita Platt, by modeling the joy and power of reading in our own lives. Rita shares two dozen multi-genre favorites she read this year.
