MiddleWeb | Middle Grades Resources

Shooting for the Sun

Read this collection of messages about student success by one of the nation's leading voices for middle grades reform.

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Classroom management tips, advice from veteran teachers, and much more.

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"Fresh...original...sensible and immediately useful" (Ellin Keene). Put Thinking to the Test shows how you can simultaneously teach reading comprehension strategies and prepare for high-stakes tests without compromising your beliefs about what's best for your students. Click here to preview the entire text online!

SOME OF OUR
FAVORITE RESOURCES

PARENTS FROM MARS, TEACHERS FROM VENUS
This Teacher Magazine essay by sixth grade teacher Bill Ferriter begins with a tongue-in-cheek proposal to "make a mint" by explaining the complex relationship between parents and teachers. "I've never met a teacher who hasn't been mystified by the actions of a parent at least once a year, and I'm pretty sure that parents can say the same about teachers. Let's face it: We're two of the most complicated groups of people to understand -- and for $29.95, I'm willing to be your guide!" Bulging cheek aside, both parents and teachers will find some excellent pointers here, plus thoughtful comments from readers.

MARCO POLO AND THINKFINITY
The MarcoPolo program, which has long provided no-cost, standards-based Internet content for the K-12 teacher and classroom, has now been integrated into the Verizon Thinkfinity search engine, making it an even more accessible and powerful resource. Check out the New Resources page for the latest contributions from teachers and curriculum developers. Or go directly to the search interface and select content and grade levels you're interested in.

TEACHER-TO-TEACHER LESSON RESOURCES
Goodness, it doesn't get much better than this. Vetted teaching ideas and lesson plans from across the curriculum, nicely organized for easy searching. Follow this link to the presentation archive for the 2007 summer Teacher To Teacher workshops, sponsored at various sites around the nation by the U.S. Department of Education. This page lists all the presentations (K-12) in alpha-order, and by clicking in the left margin, you can examine presentation-clusters by subject area and theme. Click on a specific entry and you'll be taken to a page with a brief synoposis and two PDF downloads (presentation slides and handouts). Open the presentation PDF to find an email address for the teacher-author, if you'd like to query for more information.

EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
It's becoming more and more apparent that teaching in the 21st Century will require teachers who can effectively integrate digital technologies into their daily classroom instruction. And, more importantly perhaps, include a focus on 21st Century *skills* in their curriculum planning. What do integrated lesson and unit plans look like in practice? The Northwest Educational Technology Consortium offers four examples at their website Classrooms@Work, including an eighth grade unit called "It's a Wild Ride," developed by a three-member teacher team. Don't miss this—very impressive! Click here to see other units (there's one for a 4/5 blend and one for ninth grade).

TEACH COLLABORATIVE REVISION
In our last newsletter, we mentioned Google for Educators, a site where you'll find lots of tools and projects being developed by the Internet software giant that are useful to teachers. We saved this item for special attention, because we thought it deserved a spotlight of its own. Google is partnering with Weekly Reader's Writing for Teens to help educators teach the important skill of revision “in a meaningful and practical way.” You'll find suggestions about using Google Docs to encourage peer editing and student collaboration in the revision process, plus several free articles from Writing magazine “filled with student-friendly tips and techniques.” There's also a teacher's guide with suggestions for innovative lesson plans. Smart schools are promoting writing across the curriculum — and teachers in every subject will find these resources helpful in building writing skills.

A SAFE PLACE FOR STUDENTS TO COLLABORATE ONLINE
More and more schools are eager to engage their students in online learning opportunities, but they worry about Internet safety. This site, developed by the Oracle Education Foundation, offers a free learning community environment to accredited elementary and secondary schools. Think.com is password-protected and provides a way for students to write and interact with a protected national and global audience. Compare the features at this site with IMBEE, another free and secure social networking service developed with classrooms in mind.

MIDDLEWEB CLASSIC: LOOKING AT STUDENT WORK
We first heard about the professional development strategy of "Looking at Student Work" more than a decade ago. Unlike many other PD fads, LASW is a strategy that's stood the test of time and is practiced in many successful schools. Essentially, LASW refers to a process that helps educators improve teaching and learning by reflecting together on teacher lessons and student work products. One of the best resources on this subject continues to be the LASW.org website, first constructed by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in the late 1990s and regularly updated since. It's a great place to learn more about the strategy—which, now as then, requires teachers who are willing to embrace the idea that "we learn more together than we do alone."

RICK WORMELI — DEALING WITH HOMEWORK
Read this chapter on effective middle school homework policies from Rick Wormeli's best-selling Day One and Beyond, in which he answers questions like: Is homework important? How much? How often? For what purposes? This is a small PDF file. (Thanks to Stenhouse Publishers for making this chapter available free to our readers.)

VOICES FROM THE MIDDLE GRADES
What do students in the middle grades most need from their teachers? The What Kids Can Do organization talked in depth with 40 middle school students around the country to find out. Their answers appear in a new WKCD book, Fires in the Middle School Bathroom: Teaching and Learning According to Middle Grades Students by Kathleen Cushman and Laura Rogers. The first-person answers kids gave are "piercing, funny, eloquent, and revealing." You can read excerpts, and the authors' reflections, in this feature article at the WKCD website.

A WONDERFUL TOOL TO CONNECT WITH PARENTS
Here's a MiddleWeb beginning-of-the-year classic. "This is the most valuable thing I've ever done with my students," one middle school teacher wrote about the "Million Words" assignment. "I've built an instant bond with parents," said another. Here's how it works: The teacher sends a note home with students asking parents to "tell us about your child in a million words or less." Just about every teacher on the MiddleWeb Listserv who tried this idea was amazed by the breadth and depth of the response and the valuable insights they gained into their students' lives. Read this archived conversation, which includes a link to one teacher's actual letter to parents. ALSO see this Education World story which describes the activity and includes some cautions

SUCCESS IN THE MIDDLE
A major publication from the National Middle School Association sets forth an ambitious agenda "to raise academic achievement and support for 10- to 15-year-olds as they move through the exciting but challenging transitions of early adolescence." The report, Success in the Middle: A Policymaker's Guide to Achieving Quality Middle Level Education, details the steps necessary to implement a coordinated and strategic plan and calls for "financial and policy support from all levels of government" to help educators strengthen middle grades education.

MIDDLE SCHOOL COUNSELING – "LISTENING FOR DIFFERENCES"
As a middle school counselor, Marcia Rogat has learned that it's important to "listen for differences" and to teach students to be good listeners, too. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Margaret Wheatley, Rogat works with groups of kids in the aftermath of "scrapes and scuffles" to "gently introduce the possibility that every person in the room has a rightful place in our community." (Middle Ground, April 2006)

FROM ZERO TO SIXTY
A middle schooler does not turn in his project. You record a zero in the gradebook. When it comes time to determine the student's end-of-grading-period mark, you have to make a decision: Do you keep the zero or turn it into a 50, 60, or 70 to make the grading scale fair? Teacher/author Rick Wormeli explores this common grading dilemma in this article from NMSA's Middle Ground (February 2006). Wormeli's position: "We are not giving students something for doing nothing. We're adjusting the grade intervals so that any averaging we do is mathematically justified."

DESCRIBE THE MIDDLE PERFECT SCHOOL
Here's another classic article—this one at the Education World website—in which a middle grades teacher invites her students to "describe the perfect middle school." Among their answers: More technology, smaller teacher-student ratios, more electives, and a later starting time. Teacher Sue Chanda says the exercise "helped strengthen the teacher-student bond" in her classes. One student wrote: ""I can only dream of the perfect school, because there will probably never be a perfect school. Of course, it's not impossible and hopefully someone will read this and change some schools to get closer to perfect."

GENERATION M
A study by the Kellogg Foundation, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds, examines the impact of a media-saturated environment on the lives of young people. As the Web increasingly becomes an interactive medium, adolescents are also becoming providers of web content and members of vast Internet communities. What are the implications for teaching and learning? Follow the link above to access the full report. And read a research summary, with a special focus on findings about middle school-aged children.

ALGEBASICS
Not long after an 8th grade math teacher told us about this site, it was reviewed by the wonderful Internet Scout Project. Here's some of what they had to say: "Under the motto 'Show me how, now!', Algebasics is a fine online mathematics instructional resource that takes young and old alike through the basics of algebra." It's free and will come in handy if you're busy with small-group instruction!

TEACHING THE TWEENS
Middle-grades students are ready for new challenges, if we give them the social support they need, says Donna Marie San Antonio in the lead article of Educational Leadership's special issue on "Teaching the Tweens" (April 2006). Those responsible for teaching middle-grades students take comfort in knowing that the contradictory behavior of middle schoolers is developmentally necessary and that some struggle is normal, she writes. "Still, we wonder how to balance academic and social support to encourage and guide children during these years." Don't miss this important article, "Broadening the World of Early Adolescents."

CURRICULUM MAPPING
Subscriber Karen Morrissey, a middle school humanities teacher in Connecticut, shares a great site for schools and teams interested in mapping out their curriculum with an eye on alignment and improvement. It's one of several excellent webpages offered to fellow educators by The Greece NY school system. As the site notes, "curriculum maps are valuable planning tools for teachers, helping them to begin with the end in mind and chart a course for the year." You'll find a wonderful collection of templates, tools, and resources that can help you get serious about that curriculum mapping project you've been circling warily.

WRITER'S MODELS FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL
Is your school focused on writing across the curriculum? Are you a teacher with writing instruction as part of your teaching duties? You'll LOVE this Writer's Model website sponsored by textbook publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston. You'll find grade-appropriate writing samples for more than 20 kinds of writing, including book reports, research papers, autobiography, cause and effect, personal narrative, and persuasive essay. Each Writer's Model is a full-length model paper, with interactive notes to help students make their writing stronger. Thre's also a detailed, printable Writer's Guide for each model. If you can't load a model due to the Flash player, try clicking on the "View Printable" button. It should open a copy as a PDF file. Designed so students can use independently.

ONLINE HISTORY INVESTIGATIONS
"With increasing demands on teachers to cover an ever-expanding content base, teachers simply lack the time to devote to sustained investigations in the classroom," say the authors of this article from Learning and Leading with Technology (May 2006). They've designed the Historical Scene Investigation "to address these pragmatic classroom concerns and to help bridge the gap between the potential of Web-based historical documents and the theoretical frameworks that guide historical thinking." The instructional model is not only highly engaging but scaffolds the analysis process for students. As the article notes, nine activities centering primarily on U.S. history have been developed to date (including "When Elvis Met Nixon"), with accompanying teacher materials. These activities are available at the HSI website at no cost.

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