Healthy Teaching / It's Not Easy Being Tween
by Cheryl Mizerny · Published 08/26/2018 · Last modified 11/24/2019
In a post that’s jam-packed with teaching ideas, veteran middle grades educator Cheryl Mizerny declares her intention to keep her classes “on the move” more often this fall, using a variety of strategies for individual, group, whole class and whole room activities.
As summer flirts with Labor Day, Laurie Lichtenstein recalls the joys of being her “Summer Me” – a time for long walks and paddling trips, reading books and ignoring lists. As school dreams begin again, she relishes her last August days and plans for another great year.
The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide offers abundant ideas to help navigate the ever changing world of the classroom. Reviewer Linda Biondi notes it is designed to help ease the pressures and demands of day-to-day teaching for new and veteran teachers alike.
The power of Genius Hour comes from sparking wonder, encouraging deep learning, and facilitating sharing so students can make public their new knowledge, creation, or innovation, locally and world wide. GH champions Denise Krebs and Gallit Zvi describe good ways to share.
A new school year brings excitement and organizational challenges. Expert Frank Buck suggests ways to streamline online communications, simplify classroom policies through teacher collaboration, and help kids develop as responsible members of a purposeful community.
Rebecca Crockett’s one-size-fits-all math station rotations weren’t meeting the needs of all her students. In Math Workstations in Action she found a clear explanation and a set of steps to organize workstations around needed fluencies and to gauge student progress.
What STEM lessons will you try with students this year? There’s no one, die-cut STEM curriculum that every classroom should be using, says Anne Jolly. But as teachers search for, adapt, or design projects, it helps to consider what an “ideal” STEM lesson might look like.
Adolescents need ongoing opportunities to think deeply about what honesty and integrity mean to them and to help them align their choices with their beliefs. Debbie Silver shares ways to counter cultural and classroom messages that might make kids feel it’s okay to cheat.
In Mindsets and Moves, Gravity Goldberg shows how to change mindsets in our classrooms and how to move students from reading as work to reading as a pathway to learning. Educator Laura Von Staden recommends this well-written, thought-provoking book.
Every summer educators ask these questions: (1) How can we lessen summer learning loss? and (2) How can we help build students’ SEL skills? Sarah Tantillo and Meredith Murray share the story of a Summer Bridge program and some useful resources to address both questions.
