Wordl clouds are everywhere, in every color and size. Middle grades teacher and Scholastic author Marilyn Pryle shows 10 ways word clouds made from free generators on the web can be crafted into powerful literacy teaching tools, using the right prompts and directions.
Hands-on learning can spark students’ imagination when school moves outdoors. It can also increase engagement & improve academic performance. Teachers and administrators from coast to coast are finding ways to open doors to Nature.
Research Projects / Working Draft
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 03/06/2016 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Text sets can help kids enrich their studies in any content area. MS teacher Kevin Hodgson tells how teachers are using Library of Congress primary resources to create engaging text sets that help students contextualize the present by exploring the past.
Book Reviews / Student Driven Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/25/2016 · Last modified 11/29/2019
Every time Elisa Waingort opens Leaders of Their Own Learning, she finds another simple but brilliant suggestion to improve her teaching and the learning of her students. She recommends repeated reading of this fully resourced guide to student-driven learning and assessment.
Being a school leader is incredibly demanding, requiring principals to stay current on education trends while managing day to day operations. Williamson and Blackburn share five actionable trends they’ve observed in their work with middle grades leaders.
Genius Hour gives students the opportunity to be autonomous in their learning. Sometimes, though, they need a little start-up help. Experts Gallit Zvi and Denise Krebs share lots of starter ideas for students and classrooms and urge readers to add their own.
Rubrics are important tools, says author and veteran MS educator Elyse Scott, but teachers need a more whole-student approach to formative assessment and feedback — one that attends “to that most basic need of young adolescents: one-on-one communication.”
Remember AAA’s Triptiks – the travel resource kits put together for members? If so, you have some inkling of consultant Mike Fisher’s idea to rev up mid-grades curriculum across content areas by having students create their own project-specific learning journeys.
Connecting Your Students with the World encourages teachers to step out of their comfort zones and incorporate do-able collaborative online projects to improve communications and encourage both student and teacher creativity, says MS educator Jennifer Wirtz.
Building a STEM Program / STEM By Design
by Anne Jolly · Published 02/02/2016 · Last modified 11/23/2019
STEM courses don’t belong in silos. Anne Jolly recommends bringing science, technology, engineering and math together in class to help students understand how the disciplines work together in the real world. She includes questions to pose about your STEM program.
