by Rick Wormeli

Rick Wormeli is the author of six respected books in the teaching field, and an internationally known speaker on middle-level education, classroom assessment, innovation, and teacher professionalism. Before becoming a teaching coach and consultant, Rick was an award-winning middle school teacher in Virginia for more than 20 years. This article is excerpted from The Collected Writings of Rick Wormeli (So Far).

Effective instruction for 12-year-olds looks different from effective instruction for 8-year-olds or 17-year-olds. Combine the developmental needs of typical tweens and the wildly varying needs of individuals within this age group, and you can see that flourishing as a middle grades teacher requires special skills. It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds, however. There are some common sense basics that serve students well.

The five strategies described here revolve around the principles of differentiated instruction, which does not always involve individualized instruction. Teachers who differentiate instruction simply do what’s fair and developmentally appropriate for students when the “regular” instruction doesn’t meet their needs.

Strategy 1: Teach to Developmental Needs

Reports from the Carnegie Corporation (Jackson & Davis, 2000) and the National Middle School Association (2003), as well as the expertise of veteran middle school teachers, point to seven conditions that young adolescents crave: competence and achievement; opportunities for self-definition; creative expression; physical activity; positive social interactions with adults and peers; structure and clear limits; and meaningful participation in family, school, and community.

No matter how creatively we teach—and no matter how earnestly we engage in differentiated instruction, authentic assessment, and character education—the effects will be significantly muted if we don’t create an environment that responds to students’ developmental needs. Different students will require different degrees of attention regarding each of these factors.

Take tweens’ need for physical movement. It’s not enough for tweens to move between classes every 50 minutes (or every 80 minutes on a block schedule). Effective tween instruction incorporates movement every 10 to 15 minutes. So we ask all students to get up and walk across the room to turn in their papers, not just have one student collect the papers while the rest of them sit passively. We let students process information physically from time to time: for example, by using the ceiling as a massive, organizer matrix and asking students to hold cards with information for each matrix cell and stand under the proper location as indicated on the ceiling. We use flexible grouping, which allows students to move about the room to work with different partners.

Every topic in the curriculum can be turned into a physical experience, even if it’s very abstract. We can do this for some or all of our students as needed. We can use simulations, manipulatives, body statues (frozen tableau), and finger plays to portray irony, metabolism, chromatic scale, republics, qualitative analysis, grammar, and multiplying binomials (Glynn, 2001; Wormeli, 2005). These aren’t “fluff” activities; they result in real learning for this age group.

To address students’ need for self-definition, we give them choices in school projects. We help students identify consequences for the academic and personal decisions they make. We also teach students about their own learning styles. We put students in positions of responsibility in our schools and communities that allow them to make positive contributions and earn recognition for doing so. We provide clear rules and enforce them calmly—even if it’s the umpteenth time that day that we’ve needed to enforce the same rule—to help students learn to function as members of a civilized society.

Integrating developmental needs into tweens’ learning is nonnegotiable. It’s not something teachers do only if we have time in the schedule; it’s vital to tween success. As teachers of this age group, we need to apply our adolescent development expertise in every interaction. If we don’t, the lesson will fall flat and even worse, students will wither.

Strategy 2: Treat Academic Struggle as Strength

Young adolescents readily identify differences and similarities among themselves, and in their efforts to belong to particular groups, they can be judgmental about classmates’ learning styles or progress (Jackson & Davis, 2000). At this junction, then, it’s important to show students that not everyone starts at the same point along the learning continuum or learns in the same way. Some classmates learn content by drawing it, others by writing about it, and still others by discussing it—and even the best students are beginners in some things.

Unfortunately, students in non-differentiated classes often view cultural and academic differences as signs of weakness and inferiority. Good students in these classes often try to protect their reputations as being the kids who always get the problems right or finish first. They rarely take chances and stretch themselves for fear of faltering in front of others. This approach to learning rarely leads to success in high school and beyond.

Educators of tweens need to make academic struggle virtuous. So we model asking difficult questions to which we don’t know the answers, and we publicly demonstrate our journey to answer those questions. We affirm positive risk taking in homework as well as the knowledge gained through science experiments that fail.

We push students to explore their undeveloped skills without fear of grade repercussions, and we frequently help students see the growth they’ve made over time.

In one of my classes, Jared was presenting an oral report on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle (ethos, pathos, logos), and he was floundering. Embarrassed because he kept forgetting his memorized speech, he begged me to let him take an F and sit down. Instead, I asked Jared to take a few deep breaths and try again. He did, but again, he bombed. I explained that an oral report is not just about delivering information; it’s also about taking risks and developing confidence. “We’re all beginners at one point, Jared,” I explained: “This is your time to be a beginner. The worst that can happen is that you learn from the experience and have to do it again. That’s not too bad.”

After his classmates offered encouraging comments, Jared tried a third time and got a little farther before stopping his speech. I suggested that he repeat the presentation in short segments, resting between each one. He tried it, and it worked.

After Jared finished, he moved to take his seat, but I stopped him and asked him to repeat the entire presentation, this time without rests.

As his classmates grinned and nodded, Jared returned to the front of the room. This time, he made it through his presentation without a mistake. His classmates applauded. Jared bowed, smiled, and took his seat. His eyes watered a bit when he looked at me. Adrenalin can do that to a guy, but I hoped it was more. Everyone learned a lot about tenacity that day, and Jared took his first steps toward greater confidence (Wormeli, 1999).

Strategy 3: Provide Multiple Pathways to Standards

Differentiation requires us to invite individual students to acquire, process, and demonstrate knowledge in ways different from the majority of the class if that’s what they need to become proficient. When we embrace this approach, we give more than one example and suggest more than one strategy. We teach students eight different ways to take notes, not just one, and then help them decide when to use each technique. We let students use wide- or college-ruled paper, and we guide them in choosing multiple single-subject folders or one large binder for all subjects—whichever works best for them.

We don’t limit students’ exposure to sophisticated thinking because they haven’t yet mastered the basics. Tweens are capable of understanding how to solve for a variable or graph an inequality even if they struggle with the negative/positive signs when multiplying integers. We can teach a global lesson on a sophisticated concept for 15 minutes, and then allow students to process the information in groups tiered for different levels of readiness. Or we can present an anchor activity for the whole class to do while we pull out subgroups for minilessons on basic or advanced material. Our goal is to respond to the unique students in front of us as we make learning coherent for all.

In the area of assessment, we should never let the test format get in the way of a student’s ability to reveal what he or she knows and is able to do. For example, if an assessment on Ben Mikaelsen’s novel Touching Spirit Bear (Harper Trophy, 2002) required students to create a poster showing the development of characters in the story, it would necessarily assess artistic skill in addition to assessing the students’ understanding of the novel. Students with poor artistic skills would be unable to reveal the full extent of what they know. Consequently, we allow students to select alternative assessments through which they can more accurately portray their mastery.

In differentiated classes, grading focuses on clear and consistent evidence of mastery, not on the medium through which the student demonstrates that mastery. For example, we may give students five different choices for showing what they know about the rise of democracy: writing a report, designing a Web site, building a library display, transcribing a “live” interview with a historical figure, or creating a series of podcasts simulating a discussion between John Locke and Thomas Jefferson about where governments get their authority. We can grade all the projects using a common scoring rubric that contains the universal standards for which we’re holding students accountable.

In differentiated classes, grading focuses on clear and consistent evidence of mastery, not on the medium through which the student demonstrates that mastery.

Of course, if the test format is the assessment, we don’t allow students to opt for something else. For example, when we ask students to write a well-crafted persuasive essay, they can’t instead choose to write a persuasive dialogue or create a poster. Even then, however, we can differentiate the pace of instruction and be flexible about the time required for student mastery. Just as we would never demand that all humans be able to recite the alphabet fluently on the first Monday after their 3rd birthday, it goes against all we know about teaching tweens to mandate that all students master slope and y-intercept during the first week of October in grade 7.

Thus, we allow tweens to redo work and assessments until they master the content, and we give them full credit for doing so. Our job is to teach students the material, not to document how they’ve failed. We never want to succumb to what middle-grades expert Nancy Doda calls the “learn or I will hurt you” mentality by demanding that all students learn at the same pace and in the same manner as their classmates and giving them only one chance to succeed.

Strategy 4: Give Formative Feedback

Tweens don’t always know when they don’t know, and they don’t always know when they do. One of the most helpful strategies we can employ is to provide frequent formative feedback. Tween learning tends to be more multilayered and episodic than linear; continual assessment and feedback correct misconceptions before they take root. Tweens learn more when teachers take off the evaluation hat and hold up a mirror to students, helping them compare what they did with what they were supposed to have done.

Because learning and motivation can be fragile at this age, we have to find ways to provide that feedback promptly. We do this by giving students short assignments—such as one-page writings instead of multipage reports—that we can evaluate and return in a timely manner. When we formally assess student writing, we focus on just one or two areas so that students can assimilate our feedback.

To get a quick read on students’ understanding of a particular lesson, we can use exit card activities, which are quick products created by students in response to prompts. For example, at the end of a U.S. history lesson, we might ask, “Using what we’ve learned today, make a Venn diagram that compares and contrasts World Wars I and II.” The 3-2-1 exit card format can yield rich information (Wormeli, 2005). Here are two examples:

3—Identify three characteristic ways Renaissance art differs from medieval art.
2—List two important scientific debates that occurred during the Renaissance.
1—Provide one good reason why rebirth is an appropriate term to describe the Renaissance.

3—Identify at least three differences between acids and bases.
2—List one use of an acid and one use of a base.
1—State one reason why knowledge of acids and bases is important to citizens in our community.

Strategy 5: Dare to Be Unconventional

Curriculum theorists have often referred to early adolescence as the age of romanticism: Tweens are interested in that which is novel, compels them, and appeals to their curiosity about the world (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 2000). To successfully teach tweens, we have to be willing to transcend convention once in a while. It’s not a lark; it’s essential.

Being unconventional means we occasionally teach math algorithms by giving students the answers to problems and asking them how those answers were derived. We improve student word savvy by asking students to conduct an intelligent conversation without using verbs. (They can’t; they sound like Tarzan.)

We ask students to teach some lessons, with the principal or a parent as coteacher. Students can make a video for 4th graders on the three branches of government, convey Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle by juggling tennis balls, or correspond with adult astronomers about their study of the planets. They can create literary magazines of science, math, or health writing that will end up in local dentist offices and Jiffy Lube shops.

They can learn about the Renaissance through a “Meeting of Minds” debate in which they portray Machiavelli, da Vinci, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII. The power of such lessons lies in their substance and novelty, and young adolescents are acutely attuned to these qualities.

Up in the Sky! It’s an . . . Adverb?

Ninety percent of what we do with young adolescents is quiet, behind-the-scenes facilitation. Ten percent, however, is an inspired dog and pony show without apologies. At this “I dare you to show me something I don’t know” and “Shake me out of my self-absorption” age, being unconventional is key.

When my students were confusing the concepts of adjective and adverb, I did the most professional thing I could think of: I donned tights, shorts, a cape, and a mask, and became Adverb Man. I moved through the hallways handing out index cards with adverbs written on them. “You need to move quickly,” I said, handing a student late to class a card on which the word quickly was written. “You need to move now,” I said to another, handing him a card with the adverb on it.

Once in a while, I’d raise my voice, Superman-style, and declare, “Remember, good citizens of Earth, what Adverb Man always says: ‘Up, up, and modify adverbs, verbs, and adjectives!’”

The next day, one of the girls on our middle school team came walking down the hallway to my classroom dressed as Pronoun Girl. One of her classmates preceded her—he was dressed as Antecedent Boy. Both wore yellow masks and had long beach towels tucked into the backs of their shirt collars as capes. Pronoun Girl had taped pronouns across her shirt that corresponded with the nouns taped across Antecedent Boy’s shirt.

It was better than Schoolhouse Rock. And the best part? There wasn’t any grade lower than a B+ on the adverbs test that Friday (Wormeli, 2001).

Navigating the Tween River

Of all the states of matter in the known universe, tweens most closely resemble liquid. Students at this age have a defined volume, but not a defined shape. They are ever ready to flow, and they are rarely compressible. Although they can spill, freeze, and boil, they can also lift others, do impressive work, take the shape of their environment, and carry multiple ideas within themselves. Some teachers argue that dark matter is a better analogy—but those are teachers trying to keep order during the last period on a Friday.

Imagine directing the course of a river that flows through a narrow, ever-changing channel toward a greater purpose yet to be discovered, and you have the basics of teaching tweens. To chart this river’s course, we must be experts in the craft of guiding young, fluid adolescents in their pressure-filled lives, and we must adjust our methods according to the flow, volume, and substrate within each student. It’s a challenging river to navigate, but worth the journey.

This article was first published in ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine and reprinted in The Collected Writings of Rick Wormeli (So Far), published by the Association for Middle Level Education (2013). Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Photos: Kevin Jarrett, Creative Commons

In her second installment of a two-part article for MiddleWeb, New Jersey teacher Mary Tarashuk tells us more about how she’s using The Walking Classroom program in her 4th grade classroom. Included in this article: How Mary integrates the TWC content with her existing curriculum and lesson plans. Find out more about how she launched TWC in her first article.

by Mary C. Tarashuk

We are all donning our own set of headphones, synchronizing our watches and WalkKits, and heading out of the classroom to enjoy a 15-20 minute ‘podcast’ — the term we use for our (pre-recorded) audio encounters with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or the stories we hear about events like exploring west of the Mississippi with Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea. Each time we get back from our walks, the kids are ruddy-cheeked, a bit thirsty, and raring to learn more.

Before the recent U.S. Presidential Election, I began incorporating our Social Studies unit on elections with The Walking Classroom podcasts that enhance the subject beautifully. We listened and walked through The Great Depression, analyzed Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous inaugural speech about the fear in our country, and compared our current economic and unemployment challenges to those of the country during the 1930s.

The Social Studies standards ask us to ask kids the big questions. They ask us to connect our students to history and to help them look for its impact on our world today. My students’ understanding seems to have much more depth than it did when I covered this topic four years ago using a more traditional approach to teaching.

This year, my kids are displaying more of their analytical abilities as economists and political scientists, as well as historians. They are discussing Black Tuesday and the role of government. They are discussing the meaning of responsibility and how we handle crises as a nation. (They are also telling me their parents’ specific political views by repeating comments heard at home, but that is a topic for another article!)

Election interrupted

This year my class spearheaded the plans for our schoolwide mock election. The kids worked dutifully as they sorted multi-colored ballots to distribute to each class in the school. The individual classrooms were assigned various states and their corresponding electoral votes. My kids chatted about the state of the nation as they labeled each ballot with the state name and clipped grouped ballots together to deliver around the school. The fourth grade registered every child in the school in preparation for the big day.

And then Hurricane (aka, Superstorm) Sandy came to visit.

We were out of school and out of power for nine days. The day we returned to school, I met them outside on the blacktop. They were lined up near a massive generator that had been put in place as a result of the intense storm. They were so excited to tell their tales of the insanity.

I had to laugh when I heard Sam asks, “Are we walking today?”

This was followed by several “Yeah”s” and expectant eyes.

“No, gang,” I explained. “We’ll get back in the swing next week, once we are settled back into school.”

They looked a little disappointed until I pointed out that it was currently Friday. Then they smiled.

Roosevelt and Muir

The disappointed looks returned when they found out that we wouldn’t be having the school election. In fact, many of my students were more upset about that than they were about having missed Halloween. (That actually thrilled me.)

Missing the election doesn’t mean our discussions about its impact won’t continue as we explore our vast country. Our curriculum dictates a study of the regions of the United States. We can certainly learn about its history on our walks. I’m excited to try podcasts about “hot topics” from the past, like Reconstruction after the Civil War or the establishment of National Parks and John Muir’s role in it. He camped with Teddy Roosevelt. The kids will love that story.

As we experience The Walking Classroom, my students’ ability to integrate big ideas across the curriculum continues to encourage me. As we delve into new topics each week, they are eager to explore new material, to meet people from the past who have made an impact on our lives, and to make personal connections in an attempt to see the larger picture of our world today.

Walking and talking about books

My district adopted a balanced literacy approach to Language Arts this year. Our first theme focused on what it means to be “a reader,” asking us to think about the benefits of reading and to analyze how reading makes an impact on our lives.

Louis Braille

I recently used two of our Walking Classroom recordings — the biographical podcasts on Louis Braille and Johannes Gutenberg — to let the kids take a closer look at how science and innovation have changed the reading lives of so many. I wanted them to think deeply about how the waves created by these inventive men from so long ago continue to ripple through our modern culture.

They were amazed at the facts that they learned, at how books were once actually written by hand and considered rare, about the effort to give blind people the same reading opportunities as those with the gift of sight.

My students couldn’t stop talking about a world with no books, how thankful they were for these two literacy pioneers, and how their contributions changed the world. They happily wrote well-developed essays on this very topic. Even my resistant writers had something to say, and I heard no grumbling about the task laid before them. That, in itself, seemed almost miraculous to me (especially since one of them had to overcome the long habit of crumpling his paper into a ball, digging his heels in, and refusing to write).

We are studying the ocean floor in Science. There is a podcast about that. United States History is built into a large number of podcasts, covering topics that range from western expansion to civil rights. Poetry and figurative language lessons and Greek and Latin root words are the focus of many podcasts. There is even a lesson about Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First” shtick!

We are in the third month of the school year, and the novelty of walking while we learn hasn’t worn off. So long as the materials engage them, I don’t think it will.

Healthy, lifelong learners

It’s been reported that our current generation of American kids is the first generation expected to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That is a frightening forecast.

Our world and its technology have made it so easy to be sedentary, to sit in front of the television, a video game, or a computer. We have fast food and fast-paced lives, and sometimes we sacrifice healthy for convenient. In my experience, children learn what they live.

Why not use technology in a way that will foster a healthier lifestyle for our kids, to make them life-long learners and adults who appreciate that our bodies, like our minds, need exercise? I believe they will come to see that proper nutrition isn’t a punishment, but an opportunity to live well and take good care of ourselves.

Laura Fenn, the creator of The Walking Classroom, set out to incorporate physical fitness and content area topics into the curriculum simultaneously. She created this non-profit organization to help teachers and kids foster a love of learning, one step at a time. And I know from our conversations that she works hard to find the funds to help underwrite the program in schools and classrooms that otherwise couldn’t afford it.

As an educator who at times feels a bit overwhelmed with the curriculum changes and additions that seem to expand the school day — without actually affording teachers with the precious time we need to fit it all in — I can say that this program has enabled me to use a cross-curricular approach to teaching without adding to my teaching stress. It is like killing ‘three or four birds with one stone,’ an exaggeration on a metaphor that I have always found to be a bit troubling, but fitting in this circumstance.

I am combining skills and goals that meet the standards of multiple content areas. This program is directly aligned with The Common Core Standards on Language and Literacy that are being adopted across our country. And we get to go outside for it!

Already, The Walking Classroom has won several awards and been recognized nationally by The Active Schools Acceleration Project, an initiative of ChildObesity 180, for innovation in the use of incorporating technology and physical fitness.

Laura Fenn began this work from her own classroom and turned her little idea into a big reality — a reality that my current students are enjoying immensely. And quite frankly, so am I.

Mary C. Tarashuk has been teaching fourth grade in Westfield, New Jersey for 14 years. Her enjoyment of hiking and nature inspired her to incorporate the outdoors into her teaching. She’s been an integral part of bringing cultural arts assemblies into her school, presented new instructional strategies at district-wide parent information nights, collaborated with colleagues to revise her district’s mathematics curriculum, and is currently writing her first novel, Behind the Doors of the Teachers Room.

In a new two-part article for MiddleWeb, New Jersey teacher Mary Tarashuk offers a rich description of how she’s adapted a clever teaching strategy called The Walking Classroom, developed by a colleague in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the midst of writing and editing this story, Mary’s town of Westfield, NJ found itself directly in the path of Superstorm Sandy. After nine days out of school, power and water are restored and we’re pleased to bring you Part 1 of Mary’s walkabout with her students. Read Part 2 here.

by Mary C. Tarashuk

I’ve always incorporated the lure of the outdoors into my teaching. Over the years my upper elementary students have considered it a novelty when we escape the walls of the classroom and head outside to read under a tree, or to use fat lines and numbers drawn in chalk on the blacktop in an attempt to conquer the addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers by jumping through the process.

Fresh air and physical activity release us from the stale atmosphere that often settles into our classroom. And my students aren’t the only beneficiaries. I too am revived by a trip outside during the school day. It’s a win-win for all of us.

I constantly look for ways to teach a lesson outside, but at times it’s difficult to cover the curriculum without the use of my indoor resources: my chart paper, interactive blackboard, access to the internet, maps and art supplies. Then there are the mathematics, language, social studies, science, and technology benchmarks to meet in our broadening curriculum. As a result, the benefits of fresh air have to be balanced with time inside, learning the tools of readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmatic.

So I was thrilled when I heard about a new program that is designed to get kids out of the building and into the sunshine.

The Walking Classroom

A woman whom I’d met years ago — during my first year as a teacher — had come up with an innovative idea that would help me strike a better balance between two learning spaces — inside and outside.

Laura Fenn was currently living in North Carolina. I decided to get involved with the non-profit Walking Classroom Institute because it sounded like such a simple way to enjoy the outdoors, take brisk walks, listen to some interesting and varied topics, and then go inside to tie them into our current units of study.

Thankfully, Laura and I had the technology to connect with each other, and eventually a large cardboard box was delivered to my school. The return address was Chapel Hill, and the logo on the label was easily recognizable because of its thoughtful and clever design.

I must admit that I giggled with glee as I scurried to my classroom with it, placed it on an empty desktop, grabbed a pair of scissors to cut through the heavy tape, and opened the box. There it was, the entire program delivered to my classroom, hot off the presses. I must admit, I didn’t read through the entire teachers’ guide right then. I was too excited. I immediately dug in and grabbed one of the WalkKits that was tucked in with the rest of our class set of listening devices.

My mind went into overdrive when I glanced at the list of history/SS topics on the back cover of the sturdy plastic case; Civil Disobedience, The Gettysburg Address, Louise Braille, Eleanor Roosevelt, The Gold Rush, William Blake, The Renaissance artists. The topics spun in my head as I kept envisioning how they would tie into an already existing and ever-changing curriculum.

When I was able to get out of my kid persona and put on my pedagogical cap again, I lifted the large, green binder from the box. It held the lesson materials and background information for the teacher. The simple directions for introducing the program were a relief. I do well with straight-forward directions and suggested teaching tips. I was officially ready to give this a try.

My principal was very supportive. When I’d explained the idea to him, he’d given me the green light. By the twinkle in his eye, I knew his interest was peaked as well. It was time to see how the kids would respond.

Cardiovascular curriculum

We jumped right in, beginning with a look at heart rate, aerobic activity, cardio and cognitive function. It was important to me to let my kids know that we were getting more than just a chance to go outside. We were being given an opportunity to learn about interesting people and places while getting some exercise. I wanted to instill in them an understanding that we could all benefit from being active, especially in a world where technology allows us to be so deskbound, so often.

We learned how to take our pulses. Then we found our individual heart rates while they were at rest. Each child focused intently on locating his or her pulse. Immediately after mastering the art of finding our pulses and getting a baseline reading, we jumped around like maniacs, doing jumping jacks and outlandish dance moves for exactly one minute. As I screamed, “Stop!” twenty sets of fingers flew to their necks or wrists, as they prepared to collect data on our heart rates in action.

It made for giggles and an excellent review of statistical landmarks (those math standards won’t wait!). We identified the maximum, minimum, range, median, and mode of our beat-per-minute data. We calculated the mean of our class findings, and discovered that the terms mean and average are essentially synonymous. All well and good, but the kids were itching to start the “outside part” of the new program.

Getting outside

“When are we gonna’ start walking?” they begged, as we inspected each student WalkKit, reviewing the button features and components. The kids eagerly snapped open their protective cases and popped out their audio players. They were tentative at first, being afraid to break them, but they quickly mastered the buttons and looked up expectantly. Their eyes said, “Are we going to use these now?”

“Tomorrow,” I promised as the groans echoed in the room. They were soon replaced by smiles when I continued, “Today we walk without the WalkKits, so we can figure out our pace. We also need to observe anything going on outside that could distract us from our mission of power walking and learning cool stuff at the same time. If we are prepared for possible distractions, our first official walk tomorrow will go off without a hitch.”

“Yeah!” and “”Yessss!” mixed with hands shooting in the air, volunteering to be the pace car or the caboose on our first practice walk. These coveted positions are explained in detail in the teacher guide, but suffice it to say, they keep everyone together and accounted for while we are on our adventures.

Learning step by step

Our first official walk was a smashing success. The first audio lesson explains the logic behind the program and encourages kids to be more conscious of the food choices they make. It doesn’t vilify junk food, but it points out the scientific connections between good nutrition and healthy bodies. The podcast keeps it light, but the message is there.

On the third day of using the program, I picked up my class after recess. Our physical education teacher, who doubles as the lunch time supervisor, had a broad smile across his face. He walked over to me, smile growing, head shaking, and said, “Okay, Tarashuk, why did every kid in your class take their pulse when we lined up to go inside?” I beamed, and so did the kids.

I have to say, the kids fell into the routine with ease. We had a set walking regiment in place almost immediately. It has been easy to dive into the many topics we’ve engaged so far, as we go on our bi-weekly walks. Truth be told, I would love to do it every day, but it is currently being used to supplement a curriculum that is already established by my school district. I will say that it accents this curriculum beautifully!

Scientific research shows that increased cardio function increases cognitive function. When our brains are full of oxygen, we learn with a fresh head. The Walking Classroom program seems especially effective for my kids who have attention issues, but I find that it benefits virtually every one of my students. They all seem to prefer to move while they learn. Me too.

Next time: Mary tells us more about The Walking Classroom learning experience, how she integrates the TWC content with her existing curriculum and lesson plans, and how her students seem to be learning more about curriculum content AND good health by hitting the road twice a week.

Mary C. Tarashuk has been teaching fourth grade in Westfield, New Jersey for 14 years. Her enjoyment of hiking and nature inspired her to incorporate the outdoors into her teaching. She’s been an integral part of bringing cultural arts assemblies into her school, presented new instructional strategies at district-wide parent information nights, collaborated with colleagues to revise her district’s mathematics curriculum, and is currently writing her first novel, Behind the Doors of the Teachers Room.

Rick Wormeli is a National Board Certified Teacher, the author of six respected books in the teaching field, and an internationally known speaker on middle-level education, classroom assessment, innovation, and teacher professionalism. He’s also an educational consultant to National Public Radio, USA Today, and the Smithsonian Institution. Rick has been involved with MiddleWeb for more than a decade, both contributing his own insights and gathering teacher wisdom to support several of his popular middle-level books.

Rick is one of three guest experts participating in a MiddleWeb webinar for new teachers and those new to the middle grades. The webinar archive will be available after July 30, 2012.

This is a two-part article. See Part 2.

Four Fundamentals of Middle Level Teaching (Part 1)

by Rick Wormeli

The music starts with a low base beat, then it moves up the scale, adding more texture as it builds intensity. Our pulse quickens, adrenalin flows, and finally our classroom world crescendos and we are at full throttle, teaching like we’ve never taught before, affecting the future in ways we never dreamed we could. It’s a fantastic time to be a middle level educator!

It really is. With the transformative work of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform and their Schools to Watch program, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Southern Regional Education Board (MMGW), plus new insights and support from myriad researchers and expert practitioners, we have more information on how to teach young adolescents effectively than we’ve ever had before.

When applied effectively in our daily classroom practice, it all works as promised. Best of all, politicians, business leaders, and those outside of middle level teaching are finally recognizing the critical role the middle years play in everyone’s future success, and they are supporting us.

In the midst of all this forward momentum, however, it’s important to float above the treetops and look at the larger landscape, to see what kind of job our colleagues across the profession are doing as middle grades educators.

What’s my outlook?

We could be doing better

In my capacity as a teacher trainer, I get to see the big picture of teaching and learning in the middle grades, traveling all over North America and abroad, observing a wide variety of middle level teachers and principals at work.

While most are doing well, some are not. In almost all situations in which schools and teachers could do better, one or more of what I consider four fundamentals of middle level teaching are in their nascent stages — or missing completely. Whatever we can do to help educators develop all four of these fundamentals is time well spent.

Fundamental #1: We must apply what we know about our unique students

Here’s a potentially insightful activity: let’s take out our lesson plans and circle those places where our expertise around the nature of 10 to 15 year-olds is clearly demonstrated. Do we end up with lots of circles?

This is not a group of slightly more complex primary students. Nor is it a group of immature high schoolers. These kids are unique. We can’t, for example, just assign a lengthier version of expository writing than students were asked to do in the early elementary grades and think we’re being developmentally appropriate for middle level students.

When I ask middle level teachers to show me how their lessons respond to the unique nature of young adolescent students, sometimes I get a blank stare. That scares the heck out of me. I begin to think these folks are teaching blind to the students they serve, and that can’t be good. There is a way to teach high school seniors that doesn’t work with middle school students — just as we can’t take what we know about 12 year-olds and think it works the same way with 17 or 18-year old teens. It all comes down to what we know about human growth and development.

So what is it about young adolescents that we should take into consideration when designing and implementing our lessons? Here’s a small taste:

They can’t all be lumped into the same readiness levels – emotionally, intellectually, hormonally, or physically. Girls mature faster than boys. Bones grow faster than muscles, so coordination isn’t consistent. There is discomfort in the growth plates on the ends of their bones that requires frequent movement to relieve, even in mid-lesson. With growth comes the need to eat – about every 90 minutes. They worry intensely over body changes, and they have an increased need for hydration. In her book Brain Matters (2010), Pat Wolfe reminds us that they have an increased tendency toward addictive behaviors and pleasure seeking.

Intellectually, the tools they’ll need for figuring out academics and life are not all in the toolbox yet. This makes decision-making, impulsivity control, moral/abstract reasoning, “reading” the situation, planning, understanding consequences of words and actions, and other executive functions intermittent at best.

They are fiercely independent, yet paradoxically, they crave social connection. This is the first point in their lives that they realize how wrong adults can be, and they’re not sure what to make of it. They move from concrete to abstract thinking, sounding like adults when talking about some topics, and young children when discussing others.

They crave competence, self-definition, creativity, vividness in learning, emotionally safe environments, control/power over their lives, physical activity, positive social interactions with adults and peers, structure and clear limits, and meaningful participation in school/community. Most of all, they want to belong.

Middle level teachers should be able to cite these attributes and many others without hesitation, and their lessons should reflect this expertise.

Where in our lessons have we provided concept vividness? Where have we helped students move from concrete to abstract? Where have we given students some decision-making power in their learning?

Great resources for getting up to speed on what is currently known about young adolescents include several excellent AMLE publications: Middle School Journal, Middle Ground, and Research in Middle Level Education Online. I also recommend An International Look at Educating Young Adolescents (Mertens, Anfara, Jr., Roney), Turning Points 2000, This We Believe (AMLE), and the pioneering work of Chris Stevenson, who wrote Teaching 10 to 14 Year-olds.

Fundamental #2: To become proficient, we have to fail a lot

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell offers compelling, researched arguments that we need about 10,000 hours in a skill or field before we are considered proficient in it. In our profession, the 10,000 hours is reached about the sixth year – perhaps earlier, if we include teaching work done over the summer. But for me, it wasn’t until the eighth, ninth and tenth years that I gained confidence in my own proficiency (and there are moments, even today, that I still have some doubts).

Gaining proficiency requires us to spend a fair amount of time failing. In every career considered a profession, the professional model works very well: We learn knowledge, we apply that knowledge in specific situations in our jobs, we get critiqued on how we’re doing, and we revise our knowledge and efforts in light of that critique. When we continue going through this cycle again and again, we mature in our field and are more effective as a result. It’s the stuff of teaching hospitals, professional development schools, architectural schools, CPA offices, police and fire department academies, law firms, journalism – every profession.

Effective middle grades teachers offer this same powerful cycle of learning to our students. And we do it with the understanding that we are guiding the intellectual development of insecure, morphing humans in transition.

Ineffective middle grades teachers, on the other hand, rely on antiquated teaching algorithms like: Read Chapter 12; answer 1-23 on p. 317; take notes on two lectures; watch one 35-minute video; practice with flash cards; take the test on Friday. From this sequence, they expect students to absorb and retain information in long-term memory. While any one of these actions may help students learn something in the short term, none of them are the best recipe for long-term mastery, which is the school’s goal or certainly should be.

If we want our students to achieve mastery of standards with any kind of consistency, we have to revisit content and skills repeatedly throughout the year, and in different contexts and from different angles. Learning is recursive. We don’t dare assume students learn something because we said something, and we don’t declare students lazy when they fail to learn. Instead, we create constructive responses to failure.

Let’s think through this using some science content. When we teach the noble gases: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radioactive radon (Rn), we list them and explain how they are odorless, colorless, and have very low chemical reactivity. We point out that each of their melting and boiling points are close together, so they are liquid only for a small temperature range. We tell students about their uses historically and in industry: deep-sea diving, space exploration, blimps, and lighting. We may include fun facts such as Helium being the second most common substance found in the universe, and its extremely low freezing point, about -457 degrees Fahrenheit.

But this procedure is simply knowledge conveyance. There’s nothing here about moving things into long-term memory through recursive practices, circling back over and over again with new approaches to the same content.

In my example, new units of study should incorporate this information about noble gases. We can require students to use this data in analyzing the effects of noble gases in new situations and inventions – ask them to draw comparisons between noble gases and characters in a novel – ask them to explain the Periodic Table’s taxonomy when discussing nomenclature and classification. We can also assign students to explain repeatedly, in a variety of formats, why a narrow temperature range between melting and boiling points matters, and which elements are found most commonly in the universe and which ones are most rare.

If we are effective “recursive educators,” we visit and re-visit the content/skills that provide the most leverage in our students’ education, assessing students each time, providing feedback, and engaging them in re-learning as necessary, however long and whatever method it takes. This means we allow students to re-do work and assessments over and over until they hit the high standard set for them, and we give them full credit for mastery when it is finally presented, not partial credit because they didn’t learn it on our prescribed timetable.

If we are effective, we build our previous curriculum targets into subsequent assessments to see what students carry forward, which is the true testimonial for a grade (our grade as well as theirs). If the evidence offered does not reflect the high level presented during the original unit, then the grade for that standard, for that student, goes down until clear and consistent evidence of higher mastery is presented.

If we are effective, we focus these extended efforts primarily on the non-negotiable “Power standards” we have to teach — and we have to focus on those because there is not enough time during the school year to give this much effort to all the standards listed in our curriculum. We incorporate our colleagues’ course content in our own classes, and they use our course content in their classes, so that we all reinforce each other’s important learning.

NEXT TIME: To make all this work, we have to get very specific and very frequent with our feedback to students.

In my second post, I’ll talk about Fundamental #3: We Need a Heck of a Lot More Descriptive Feedback. And I’ll wrap up the final pair of fundamentals with #4: You Know a Heck of a Lot More Than Your Pacing Guide.

Rick Wormeli is a National Board Certified Teacher, the author of six respected books in the teaching field, and an internationally known speaker on middle-level education, classroom assessment, innovation, and teacher professionalism. He’s also an educational consultant to National Public Radio, USA Today, and the Smithsonian Institution. Rick has been involved with MiddleWeb for more than a decade, both contributing his own insights and also gathering teacher wisdom to support several of his popular middle-level books.

This is the second of two articles (Part 1). Rick is one of three guest experts who participated in a MiddleWeb webinar for new teachers and those new to the middle grades. The webinar archive is now available.

Four Fundamentals of Middle Level Teaching (Part 2)

by Rick Wormeli

In my first post about the Four Fundamentals of Middle Grades Teaching, I highlighted (1) the need to shape our lessons and our teaching strategies around what we know about the adolescent learner, and (2) the importance of “recursive” teaching, the practice of looping back to earlier content and integrating it into our students’ on-going learning experience. We make it stick by asking them to process the content in new ways.

At the end my first post I wrote: To make all this work, we have to get very specific and very frequent with our feedback to students. And that’s where we pick up here, with the 3rd fundamental aspect of teaching tweens and young teens.

Fundamental 3: We Need a Heck of a Lot More Descriptive Feedback

Middle school students can learn without grades, but they can’t learn without feedback. Let’s make descriptive feedback, not just any feedback, a priority. “Good job!” is not descriptive, nor is “You can do better” written in the margins of a student’s paper. Try specific feedback like this instead:

• I can’t find evidence for your claim. Can you help me find it?

• Your speech had the required content, but your audience was not engaged. Looking at your audience, avoiding a monotone voice, and personalizing your examples would have engaged them.

• You followed the directions of the lab, but you had an additional variable that negatively affected your results. What was it, and how will you adjust your methods so the variable doesn’t occur again? 

Having students do their own descriptive self-assessments is also a critical component of effective learning. When students complete tasks, we can ask them to write a letter to us comparing their own efforts with exemplars we provide. Where does their attempt match the model/exemplar? Where does it deviate?  We can ask them to do an item analysis of their test performance as well: Which ones did you get correct? Which were incorrect, and why were they incorrect? What actions will you take to learn the concept properly?

We can place a special mark at the end of any sentence with a punctuation error — or near a mistake in the order of operations in a math problem — and that can signal the student to “find and correct the error.”

When teachers not only identify mistakes but provide the correct fact or procedure, they’re promoting passive student learning. It’s learning that does not last.

On the other hand, when teachers put up a flag, declaring the presence of errors, and give students whatever tools they may need to find and correct their mistakes, we instigate active learning that endures.

Let’s remember that it’s the descriptive nature and frequency of the feedback that really matter. It’s critically important, in fact, and it must be a purposeful focus in our lesson design, not just something we do when we “can get around to it.” In each lesson element, identify how students will receive feedback about their growing understanding. The feedback can come from themselves, peers, teachers, or others. If it’s frequent and descriptive, they will be able to use this feedback to revise their efforts and be assessed anew.

Fundamental #4: You Know a Heck of a Lot More Than Your Pacing Guide

The pacing guide for our subject says we should be on page 83 today, but students are not ready for that content or they mastered it long ago. So what do we do?

As highly trained professionals, we now go “off the map” and teach what is developmentally appropriate for our students right now — not what a curriculum committee sitting in a conference room over the summer presumed our classroom realities would be at this moment of the year. Yes, it’s helpful to have clear standards and a pacing guide’s schematic presentation of learning, but we do not treat it as prescriptive. We reserve the right to adjust things as necessary in order to live up to the school’s mission – teaching every student (including the kids who are most challenged) to higher levels than they thought they could achieve.

If we find a smarter, more effective way to teach something, we’re ethically bound as professional teachers to use it instead of trying to “honor” an ineffective pacing guide that didn’t foresee the unique situations before us. The alternative, student incompetence, is not acceptable. Put another way, we can never sacrifice our students in order to be able to say: “I am perfectly aligned with the pacing guide.”

If a particular book we all agree should be taught at this grade level is not the book that best fits a subset of our students, and we know another book in the same genre will work better, we should be allowed to use it. If we teach all the same standards through that more effective book, we should be permitted to use our judgment without suffering the death stare of the department chair. We must have an educational reason to make such changes, of course, not just a mood or whimsy.

Teachers sometimes forget that schools are not set up to teach. They are designed to protect the status quo, to conform to accountability requirements created by non-educators far above us in the food chain, and to best meet the needs of students who get it first. For any student who needs more, less, or different instruction, including the pacing and manner of instruction (and that’s most middle grades students on any given day), school conspires against them.

In order to teach everyone, we need the professional fortitude to break with standardized practices as needed.

Mindless adherence to instructional pacing and technique regardless of the students we serve is middle grades malpractice. Seriously, would we want our own children in classes with such teachers? We have a professional obligation to invoke our intellect. We make informed responses to the needs of each student we serve.

To build and retain the trust necessary to be allowed such autonomy, we must demonstrate thoughtful decision-making based on up-to-date knowledge in our field, including both subject and pedagogical expertise.

We need to be well read in our field and to participate in national conversations. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals are as swamped with work as we are, but they read the latest journals and court cases weekly in order to keep up in their fields and provide the best service to patients and clients. As true professionals, we must do the same.

Are there other fundamentals for middle level teaching?

Yes, but the four I’ve described in these two MiddleWeb articles tend to be the ones most commonly missing when things aren’t going well. Shoring them up with sharply focused professional development for both teachers and principals will go a long way toward making middle school not only effective for students, but also vibrant places where we can happily dive back below the tree tops and play that teaching music with great passion and vitality.

Enjoy the years ahead!

Miss Part 1?

Rick Wormeli is a long-time classroom teacher, now education consultant, living in Herndon, VA. He can be reached at rwormeli@cox.net.