= Documents you'll find right here on MiddleWeb
= A good link we've checked out ourselves

SEE ALSO: "Curriculum Strategies"

AND SEE: "The First Days of Middle School"

Classroom Leadership On-Line
This excellent resource is a companion to ASCD's "Classroom Leadership" publication. The focus is on short but meaty articles written for front-line teachers. This link leads to the index -- sample some issues!

Poetry about Middle Grades Teaching
David Puckett's sensitivity, intelligence, and humor make this collection of poems about teaching in the middle grades -- "Reflections from a Teacher's Heart" -- a rare treat. Every teacher's lounge should have one! Read some samples and find out how to order.

Team Teaching and the First-Year Middle Grades Teacher
A first-year middle school teacher describes how team teaching has been a success. "If there's a problem I have been wrestling with, Team Collaboration is a good place to get feedback and get the perspective of longevity to balance my neophyte viewpoint." (Schools in the Middle, May/June 1999)

Exploring Assumptions about Intelligence in the Middle Grades
"Exploring beliefs and assumptions about intelligence is an important task for a faculty to undertake," says John D'Aura, principal of Wellesley (Mass.) Middle School. "Over the course of 10 years at our school, we have discovered that our perspectives on intelligence can powerfully influence significant aspects of schooling." (Schools in the Middle, May/June 1999)

Teachers Evaluating Teachers
"New Goals for Teachers" (Education Update, March 1999) describes the experiences of a group of teachers who have chosen to be evaluated through a "collaborative peer review" process. Their three-part evaluation process is similar to clinical supervision in that observations are sandwiched between pre- and post-observation conferences. The principal facilitates by hiring substitutes so that her teachers can observe one another -- and monitors the process to ensure that it contributes to the teachers' professional growth.

How Colleagues Can Be Critical and Remain Friends
When teachers regularly get honest, says this article in the May 1998 issue of HORACE, supportive feedback from valued peers, not only does their own practice benefit, but student achievement goes up, too. "School change cannot succeed without sturdy, ongoing, reflective relationships among the people most directly involved." The full text of "How Friends Can Be Critical As Schools Make Essential Changes" is available.

Using Action Research in the Self-Renewing School
Several chapters from Emily F. Calhoun's book on action research are posted at the ASCD website. Read the opening sections and decide for yourself whether you'd like to purchase the entire book. To view all the selections available at the site, go to: http://www.ascd.org/books/list.html.

TEACHERS TALKING ABOUT CLASSROOM ISSUES
This link will carry you to our "In Case You Missed It..." page, where we include pertinent conversation about teaching and learning from the Internet. You'll find compilations of discussions about grading policies, advisor-advisee programs, middle school-high school alliances, collaborative learning, and many other topics. We'll continue to post interesting "e-mail talk" from the Middle-L listserve and other sources here, so watch for updates!

Teaching in the Standards-Based Classroom
The Winter 1998 issue of "Changing Schools in Long Beach" profiles the efforts of three teachers (social studies, language arts, and math) to redesign teaching and learning around standards. Also see our profiles of standards-based classrooms in Louisville, Kentucky.

Resolving Conflicts in School Planning
Resolving conflicts is really about how to get people to recognize that their individual interest may not be what's best for the whole school, say staff developers in this NSDC "Tools for Schools" article. "Common Goals Override Individual Interests" offers a concise summary of conflict resolution techniques and a step-by-step process that site-based councils and school committees can use to "get to yes."

Refinishing the department chair
Leaders in this school district are asking middle school department chairs to assume new leadership roles in standards-based reform. Old and new job descriptions

Preparing for Effective Student Teaching
This special issue of "Teacher Talk," an on-line magazine produced for secondary teachers by the University of Indiana, will be useful to students about to do their student teaching and to faculty and school-based mentors who are working with pre-service teachers.

Substitute Teacher Sites
This collection of resources for long- and short-term subs will also be of interest to new and limited-experience teachers.

Examining Student Work
The history team at Hoover Middle School in Long Beach, California meets weekly to scrutinize student work and their own lessons -- a process that team leader Mary Massich describes as "the most powerful experience in my professional life." Read a story about the Hoover team's work, listen in on an actual "critical friends" session, examine the student work yourself, and review the Hoover teachers' tips for other teachers who want to start their own collaborative groups.

"Middle Grades Research"
A collection of articles published by Phi Delta KAPPAN last spring. The report summarizes data from several years of middle-grades research supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Lilly Endowment Inc. "The findings from this treasure trove of data on the variables that account for middle-level students' performance and achievement have been long-awaited by teachers, administrators, and curriculum directors across the nation," the KAPPAN says.

Action Research and Reflective Practice
"I'm trying to use action research to promote more thoughtful, reflective teaching practice, more dialogue and collaborative action among teachers, more passion and commitment as a teacher," writes one member of the Appalachian Educational Laboratory's action research listserve. "The focus is the classroom. I see action research as reflective practice -- you think about what you're doing and what's happening, try to make sense of it and see how things might be improved." Sign up for listserve and search the list's archives. View an impressive list of action research abstracts from the Madison, WI schools, including many middle school projects. Also check out the Ohio Literacy Research Center's "Guidelines for Planning Action Research Projects." and a report on action research in the Southeast by the SERVE education laboratory.

What Works Best in Reading Instruction?
Read this excellent series of articles by former California state superintendent Bill Honig on the converging research about reading at the AASA website.

"Looping" saves time, raises achievement
Looping, the practice of having students stay with a teacher for more than one year, is gaining popularity, according to Education Week. Looping helps build stronger relationships between teachers and student and shorten the amount of time required at the beginning of school year for teachers and students to "get acquainted." Other strengths cited by teachers and administrators utilizing this practice include: reduced discipline problems and the reduction of the need for a student to repeat a grade.

This teacher has her professional portfolio on-line
Tracy Harkins Ross created a portfolio that includes lessons, her assessment philosophy, and other information and let potential employers know about it. She based her portfolio on the standards of the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program. It worked!

A Full Measure of Teaching
This article profiles teachers in two Chattanooga, Tennessee classrooms. One classroom is filled with love and low expectations. The other is led by a teacher unafraid to challenge all of her students to learn at high levels.

Traditional Teaching
This short piece describes an hour of teaching that will be all too familiar to readers who spend much time in the classrooms of low-performing middle schools.

Struggling to Teach at Alton Park
"The class took on an aspect that we often see as teachers and schools try to raise the level of academic conversation with their students: the lessons often turn into self-esteem sessions aimed at convincing students they're as good as anybody. And there's nothing wrong with self-esteem. Combine a good dose of self-esteem with a solid academic base and you can go a long way."

Failing Grades for Late Assignments: Teaching Responsibility or Giving Permission to Fail? (a thought-provoking discussion from the Middle-L listserve for teachers)

Teacher Mentoring -- A critical review of research and practice. ERIC Digest.

Collaborative Planning Time Strategies -- This page"is dedicated to the idea that teachers need collaborative time with their peers and that this time already exist within the school day through creative scheduling."

Taking Teaching Seriously -- Meeting the challenge of instructional improvement. ERIC Digest.

Middle School Comic Relief -- A selection of "beguiling answers" to science questions.