To help in assessing students’ digital stories, Katie Caprino and Alyssa Marzili share tips on ways to engage middle graders in thinking about their stories’ purpose, genre, tone and audience, how to structure peer feedback, and how to use digital tools for ongoing evaluation.
If you’re looking for a way to engage your students in deep mathematical thinking as soon as they walk into class, give math warm-ups a try. Middle grades teacher Mona Iehl lays out the elements of eye-catching warm-ups and how to make them work for your kids.
To help middle graders learn and practice social and emotional skills, teacher and Director of Studies Kasey Short offers ways to incorporate SEL across the content areas, from considering the motivations of historical figures to creating reality-based math word problems.
Middle grades teacher Kathleen Palmieri is taking advantage of her students’ growing comfort level with online apps to set up interactive notebooks in Google Jamboard and use Google Slides to simplify the process. She includes all her steps plus extra tips and resource links.
Digital storytelling lets student writers share their own characters who come to life, engage in dialogue, and move around the setting. Best of all, it helps middle grades teachers reach all types of learners. Sam Weigle and Katie Caprino offer examples and suggested tools.
In the 1970s Anne Jolly took a break from science research to spend a year teaching middle school. How hard could it be? A lifetime later, she shares her story of continuous professional growth as she learned to engage her “mysterious, amazing” students in true STEM learning.
By linking bite-sized birthday bios and quirky facts to the daily calendar, Anne Anderson shows how we can engage minds, encourage dreams and capture curiosity. Have fun with your students while reinforcing skills and vocabulary and sharing a bit of learning they’ll love.
Back to School / Wide Open Learning
by Megan Kelly · Published 08/22/2021 · Last modified 09/19/2021
Sharing Identity Slides can be the first step in building a classroom community of acceptance, risk-taking, growth, and reflection. Megan Kelly is excited that she and her sixth graders can start on that path with a simple activity that also assesses skills in three areas.
What does instructional rigor look like in the middle school classroom? Teaching consultant and bestselling author Barbara Blackburn offers examples of lessons that reach for the top of Bloom’s and DoK – in social studies, math, electives, the arts, English/ELA, and science.
When the goal of argumentation is to learn from each other, the task becomes less competitive and more enriching. SS/ELA teacher Megan Kelly uses games to help students build socratic skills as they consider perspectives, identify their audiences, and argue with insight.
