I think that if teachers are going to assign us books to read over the Summer or something then they should at least take the time to make it somewhat oh what’s the word yeah, FUN!! If they don’t it leaves kids with a feeling of not liking to read which I don’t agree with because I love to read, but all you need is an exciting or good book to really get you going! All I’m saying is READING SHOULD BE FUN FOR EVERYONE!!! (Mepride) What Kids Can Do, from a 2005 YALSA collection

Teachers have labored to enliven summer reading for decades. Writing in an NCTE quarterly in 1997, Florida middle school ELA teacher Gloria Pipkin observed, “There may be a handful of students who can’t wait to tackle our scintillating assignments on their summer vacation, but for the most part, summer reading assignments are regarded as a plague and a pox, even by avid readers, who much prefer choosing their own books.”

Why, Pipkin wondered, “don’t we devote some time during the last couple of weeks of school to promoting real summer reading? Not mandating or requiring or assigning but encouraging it.” Pipkin, who wrote books for Heinemann and edited for Scholastic in the 2000’s, offered a long list of suggestions to catch kids’ attention. Among them: Have students write brochures of recommendations, like the one her students wrote on “Beach Books.” (These days the brochures might become blog posts.) She also suggested using high-interest books as prizes for recognition assemblies. Teachers might reveal  favorite reads from their own middle grades days. Or prepare annotated book recommendations by genre (with audio selections thrown in where available at local libraries).

High school librarian and NeverEnding Search blogger Joyce Valenza recently discovered a teacher librarian who is just as determined to help make summer reading a hit with students in the 21st century as Gloria Pipkin was in the 1990’s. Using iBooks Author and Bookry, Elissa Malespina worked with her colleagues at South Orange (NJ) Middle School to develop Choices Summer Reading, an attractive 33-page “book” that offers summer reading choices across a range of fiction & nonfiction genres. (Click on the Expand button in the book icon and then click through the book’s pages  to see how up-to-the-minute graphics and succinct summaries can draw in young readers.)

Writing from her 5th grade classroom, Pernille Ripp shares her ideas for Helping Students Find Great Books Over the Summer Break.  Her goal: a huge list from which students can choose freely. Among her methods: Skyping reading suggestions with other classrooms, checking Scholastic trailers, getting suggestions through her Twitter survey, and book speed dating. She links to Colby Sharp’s book speed dating blog post on selecting books for quick looks and how his 4th graders browse in a hurry.

Teachers will find more suggestions for building summer reading enthusiasm in a 2011 Scholastic blog post by Mary Blow. She shares ideas for promoting summer reading. In addition to providing family-friendly links about summer academic slide, she includes ways to avoid a slippage in reading skills both in fiction (series books can help less proficient readers) and in nonfiction. Blow also touches on poetry, myth, and folklore. She suggests having students read aloud to younger friends or the elderly as community service. Blow concludes with ideas for professional and general reading for teachers.

Books They’ll Go For

Do you have students who are “reading ahead” and are searching for books written for high schoolers? At YALSA’s Hub, Erin Bush discusses Cross-Unders – teen books attractive to tween readers – and offers an annotated list including Spacer and Rat by Margaret Bechard and The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter.

What happens when kids select their own books? Librarian Travis Jonker has tallied the Top 10 Circulated Books of 2013 for 3rd and 4th graders at his elementary school in Michigan. All ten are nonfiction. Jonker, who blogs at School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott Award committee, plans to compile lists for his other grades, too, as the school year winds down. Fifth & sixth grade lists should be available soon.

For more reading recommendations for 4th grade (and younger), visit Reading Rockets, a project of WETA, and its 2013 Big Summer Read. Their brief, lively write-ups for ages 6-9 feature fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Highlights include ninja meerkats and punctuation marks with personality. Not to mention Iditarod dogs and Albert Einstein. Reading Rockets is also a great place to check for lists of award winning children’s books.

Of course, Reading Rockets goes beyond lists to help teachers and parents build kids’ interest in reading. Get Ready for Summer! Ideas for Teachers to Share with Families includes  a lengthy list of family-friendly resources, including free children’s books online, interactive educational sites, and other resources to encourage literacy. A quick check of random links yielded a few dead ones. Students who want to get a look at their favorite authors can visit Reading Rockets’ brief video interviews.

To give students a global take on reading, introduce them to the International Children’s Digital Library. The website, started by the University of Maryland and now run by the ICDL Foundation, leads children to books in many languages. Elementary and middle school children will likely enjoy being turned loose on the site filled with online books in many languages, some with several translations.  But you may want to show them all the search possibilities: book length, age, topic, genre, setting, shape (! ) and much more. Students can register for free to keep up with their reading or just drop by to browse. The Teacher Training Manual suggests ways to use the site during the school year.

Students who are hankering for online classics, written in English or in English translation, can visit the Library of Congress for Kids Read or Teens Read.  Both pages also link to book lists. Teens are treated to author videos.

Nonfiction, anyone? Writing in School Library Journal, Kathleen Odean suggests nonfiction books rather than excerpts help students grasp deeper learning as required by the Common Core State Standards. Her annotated list of 20 lively reads has offerings for every age.

More Lists

For an easy handout or website feature, check out the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Summer Reading List K-8 brochures, which you can personalize. Available in color or black & white, the PDF’s feature books predominately published in the 2000’s. You may want to remind students that they can also enjoy the summer exploring all the super websites at the ALSC’s Great Websites for Kids.  

Want more lists of award winning books? Don’t miss the Cybils selected by KidLitosphere Central: The Society of Bloggers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature. The 2012 winners, announced in early 2013, join lists going back to 2006 arranged by genre and age. KidLitosphere also hosts hundreds of book reviews collected from a variety of sources, organized by author and by title.

And here’s another list, the 2013 CLA/NCTE Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts. The Children’s Literature Assembly, an affiliate of the NCTE, selects 30 books for grades K-8 which meet high standards in language and style, encourage reader participation, and represent their genre’s benchmarks. The archive of winners reaches back to 1997.

Students may want to check out 20th and 21st century novels via the silver screen this summer. Not only The Great Gatsby but also Judy Bloom’s Tiger Eyes (1971) and more recent books from Rick Riordan and Cassandra Clare will venture into the multiplex in coming months. School Library Journal rounds up these and many more in Page to Screen: Summer Reading Blockbusters, Dystopian Teen Lit, and Childhood Classics, an article by Shelley Diaz.

Online Student Reading Challenges

Students can tackle nonfiction – news, features, essays, and more – this summer via the NYT Learning Network’s fourth Summer Reading Contest starting in mid-June. But kids must be 13 and over to submit favorite reads to the NYTLN contest (COPPA requirement). To get a suggestion for using a similar program with younger students, check the comments section of the article. Students can access NYT content through Learning Network links – and there are lots of them – at no cost. And the Times still has its ten-free-articles-a-month policy in its tiered subscription system.

Like some public library summer programs such as those based on the Collaborative Summer Library Program, Scholastic encourages kids to keep a log – online – of time spent reading as part of its 2013 Summer Challenge. Teachers or the kids themselves can register. Scholastic offers long lists of books arranged by age. And there’s the possibility of prizes for ardent readers. Teachers will find articles and other materials to help build student engagement.

Photo credit: Bogart the Cat by Elaine Vigneault

Whether summer brings you time to relax, an opportunity to bolster your credentials, or some extra work to help balance your checkbook, you’ll likely want to keep at least one toe in the education pool. We have suggestions to spur your cogitation and avoid any professional “summer slide.”

Books and Videos to Savor

> Anticipating some deep relaxation? Ready for neural stimulation? The folks at Powerful Learning Practice have compiled a list of favorite books from education authors like Linda Darling-Hammond, Ken Robinson, John Hattie and 17 others.

> You may want to take on this year’s version of the Book Whisperer’s summer reading Book-a-Day Challenge. “Any book qualifies,” says the Book Whisperer (AKA fourth grade teacher Donalyn Miller), “including picture books, nonfiction, professional books, poetry anthologies, or fiction–children’s, youth, or adult titles.”  Miller, who blogged about a recent reading slump, welcomes educators to this summer’s challenge at the Nerdy Book Club.  Get the latest at #nerdybookclub.

> To travel beyond the world of pedagogy, whether on vacation or on your deck, you can find lots of super fiction and nonfiction reviews at NPR’s Book page (@nprbooks). And don’t miss New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin’s stack of titles selected for the beach.

> Edutopia blogger and MiddleWeb contributor Elena Aguilar has some summer book suggestions at her Edutopia blog —for 2012 it’s a mix of professional and personal reading ideas with lots of added ideas from readers.  Her 2013 selections play into her concerns about education and society: dystopian science fiction and challenging nonfiction. Teaching coach Lisa Dabbs does much the same in a post at her blog, Teaching with Soul. Of special interest are summer reading ideas suggested by folks in the new-teachers hashtag group that Lisa facilitates (#ntchat).

> For a visit with magical books, view “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” by Moonbot Studios LA, LLC. This winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2011 is available in a $5 interactive version posted at the iTunes store.

> Finally, if you’re looking for just the right professional read, don’t miss MiddleWeb’s large book reviews collection. If you’d like to read a new book and review it for us, get the details here.

Go Beyond the Book

> The next time you are online and missing your school year chats with middle graders, drop by This American Life for their audio hour on students’ perceptions of middle school life.

> In the past year  TED-Ed has mushroomed  to almost  300 videos featuring collaborations between teachers and animators and well over 20,000 ‘flips’ by teachers. Drop by to soak up ideas and learn how you can ‘flip’ the videos into your own lessons this fall. And think about lessons you could submit for the TED-Ed treatment. TED has also ventured into hour-long PBS programming with TED Talks Education.  Up early in the series: Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates, Rita F. Pierson and Sir Ken Robinson.

> Ready to dive into tech-augmented learning? Summer may be a great time to review your use of web tools and connected learning sites and plan for the future. Writing for Edutopia, Nicholas Provenzano has suggestions to get you started. For a quick overview of how online resources can make teaching more efficient and effective, read Mary Blow’s Scholastic blog post. Richard Byrne at Free Tech for Teachers always has great ed tech ideas to share, including this challenging post from 2012.

> Educators can benefit from a new project at Coursera, the massive online open classroom (MOOC) of free college courses from leading universities. Launched in April 2013, Coursera’s teacher PD category already offers quite a few courses. edX is another option.   Writing at Library Journal’s Digital Shift, Audrey Watters adds her perspective on “MOOC Mania: Debunking the hype around massive open online courses.”  For quicker doses of immediately applicable PD, check ASCD and Ed Week for free new and archived webinars.  Educators can also order other ASCD webinars and Ed Week courses for a fee. Find more summer learning at Powerful Learning Practice  with eCourses which combine digital resources with pedagogy at a range of prices.

Have a Go at Grants

>To augment your classroom’s resources, scout out grant opportunities during the summer months. For a quick overview of foundation grants, visit The Foundation Center’s Philanthropy News Digest which, thankfully, is searchable. Grant Wrangler from Nimble Press offers K-12 teachers a free searchable listing of grants and other resources from foundations, companies, and educational organizations. You can sign up for an emailed newsletter for near-term listings. Possibilities range from grants for a few hundred dollars for quick classroom projects to much more complicated awards.

> And we always scan the latest grant info at the Public Education Newsblast. Now published by the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), the newsletter is packed with the latest ed news as well as links to funding sources.

Share Your Voice

> Have an itch to write about your educational practice and learning issues that matter to you? Summer can be a good time to plan or launch a blog.  At Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrne offers a collection of how-to videos and evaluates hosting platforms. Another way to share your thoughts is to post comments at prominent blogs and ed organization websites. Blog authors and managers love comments!

> For writing opportunities you can add to your vita, consider ASCD’s Educational Leadership and the ASCD Express, which solicit articles from educators by theme. And of course MiddleWeb welcomes book reviewers and proposals for guest articles.

>You can also raise your voice by joining an online professional community. Among the many options are the large and lively ASCD Edge, and Edutopia’s special interest groups, which range from Games and Technology Tools to more general areas like Middle School, Elementary School, Social & Emotional Learning, Education Leadership, New Teacher Connections, and more. Education Week also offers opportunities to share your experience. And what about Twitter? Sign up for free to start posting your 140 character observations.

> Get a headstart on educators to keep up with at Edudemic’s top educational hashtags as well as their list of tweeting education leaders. Both lists were posted in 2012.  For a quick guide to Twitter, visit Powerful Learning Practice’s guide for teachers.  If you’re uneasy about coming out from behind the curtain to express your ideas and opinions, be sure to read Opening the Curtain on Lurking by 4th grade teacher Stephanie Bader.

Update (May 15, 2013): eSchool News has amassed a collection of workshops, conferences, webinars and reading resources at a range of costs to boost educators’ summer PD.

Update (May 15, 2013):  Writing for Scholastic, 4^th grade teacher Meghan Everette shares ideas for funding PD and offers a brief how-to for grant searches.

Check back in early June for more breaking PD news!

I remember from my days in New Hampshire that spring brought mud season, complete with bumpy frost heaves rippling across rural roads as the ground thawed. Then came black fly season that drifted into June, well beyond the last snows of May. Then glorious summer finally arrived – and it felt as if we had earned it.

Most schools in North America seem to have survived the pesky testing season and can now look forward to swarms of young people experiencing spring fever. At schools not on a year-round schedule, these last few weeks can be exhilarating for teachers, too, using lessons and activities that capture middle graders’ energy, stretch their minds and engage their attention. Below are ideas shared by educators to do just that.

Beyond Busy Work

Cossondra George, who is completing her eighteenth year at Newberry Middle School in Michigan, suggested in an Education Week Teacher post that teachers finish the school year not with a slow glide but with a strong climb. Her ideas for having students evaluate the year of learning through an anonymous online survey include levels of complexity to fit different age groups. George also shares her plans for having students write letters to next year’s class, hosting an in-class awards presentation, working with students to create a memory book (online or on paper) and more.

In Bringing the School Year to a Strong Finish, Mike Anderson homes in on the emotional impact students may experience as their year ends. Anderson, who spent 15 years teaching 3rd-5th graders and now works as a Responsive Classroom consultant, provides a collection of activities to prepare students for the transition while keeping their learning on track.

Anderson concludes: “Our school days are so busy that slowing down to think about anything further away than the next week often seems impossible. But it’s exactly because we’re so busy that we need to think about ways to keep the focus on learning and community right through the end of the year. Otherwise, we risk losing valuable learning time. And we may deprive students of that wonderful feeling of bringing their work together to a fruitful conclusion.” Responsive Classroom, which works with K-6 educators, provides lots more end-of-school blog posts.

Year End Stress, Teacher Version

Of course teachers need to tend to their own stress as the year ends, too. Nearly 200 teachers commented on Elena Aguilar’s Edutopia post, How to Stay Charged During the Final Weeks of School. A teacher for 14 years, Aguilar is now a transformational leadership coach for Oakland Unified School District. In her Edutopia post, she offers specific tips: introducing an engaging project while maintaining a familiar schedule, providing time for reflection for yourself as well as for your students, and more. Aguilar concludes by outlining why some students’ troubling summer expectations may cause them to act out and suggests ways to respond that help them and you as the last day of school nears.

Spring Projects

Writing about Six Engaging End-of-Year Projects for Edutopia, UCLA Graduate School of Education instructor Rebecca Alber remembers her former high school students’ post-test malaise and suggests remedies that can work for them and younger students. She points out: “They have to feel as if they aren’t actually doing work. (Yep, you have to trick them!) And whatever you do plan, three elements are essential: choices, creativity, and constructing.” Alber recommends involving students in “Show What You Know,” “On-Campus Field Trips,” “Craft a New Ending” and more, all with cognitive demands attached.  Commenters on her post offer ideas for middle graders as well as older kids.

Projects take over in May for seventh and eighth graders at Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, CA. In a 2012 MindShift article, Building a Bridge to Summer with Projects, Matt Levinson,  head of the school’s upper division, lists some of the children’s options. Eighth graders choose one project for the month. Seventh graders rotate among a range of options including one centered on service learning.

You’ll find a how-to for planning and implementing a three-week service learning project for upper elementary students in Alycia Zimmerman’s ‘Tis the Season to Do Community Service. Writing in Scholastic’s Top Teaching blog in 2011, Zimmerman outlined a December project with logistics that could fit just as well in May or June. Along with a step-by-step guide, she provides links to Generationon.org and Learning to Give. Browse the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse’s SLICE database for service ideas arranged by grade, including one set for grades 4-6 and another for grades 6-8.

Field Trip Fun and Learning

Imagine yourself surrounded by a busload of middle graders: a never ending nightmare or a memorable spring day filled with learning? You decide (assuming field trip funding is still a reality in your school district). Get down-to-earth specifics for creating a day (or more) of academic fun from Amanda Wall’s MiddleWeb guest article, Learning on Field Trips. Wall, a former middle school teacher and doctoral student, shares lessons she’s learned about planning, sharing academic goals, grouping and more, neatly summarized in six tips.

Calendar Highlights

Brighten spring learning with help from the calendar. Though exploring Mexican culture through observing Cinco de Mayo may be too late for this year, other historical events remain. May’s Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month is just getting started. In addition to learning the history and contributions of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America from a Library of Congress collection of federal resources, students can see their impact on modern day America with help from a US Census fact sheet. Scholastic provides several detailed lesson plans.

Teachers may also want to take a quick look back at Law Day. In 1961 the US Congress declared May 1 to be the nation’s day to celebrate the rule of law. Today the American Bar Association offers varied Law Day resources, including several lesson plans. If not this year, mark your calendar for 2014?

A more somber American observance arrives on May 27: Memorial Day. The US Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, supplies an overview of America’s day to remember citizens who died serving the country. The document follows the development of Memorial Day with its beginning after the Civil War, when it was often called Decoration Day as people decorated military graves. The VA mentions Confederate Memorial Day and notes that after World War I, the scope of the national Memorial Day in the U.S. was expanded to commemorate all military who had died for the nation. (In 1971 Veterans Day was also declared a national holiday.)

More recently Congress created the National Moment of Remembrance which encourages all Americans to pause wherever they are at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence to remember and honor those who died serving the nation. The VA website hosts a video featuring actor Joe Mantegna, a recurrent host of the annual Memorial Day concert, speaking about the observance.  More videos as well as an overview of the day are available from History.com. You can also find lesson plans at Read Write Think.

Teachers whose school year runs into June (or year-round) may want to celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865 when American slaves in Texas learned with the arrival of federal troops that they were free, following the end of most hostilities and General Lee’s surrender in April. TIME provides an overview.  Read Write Think offers links and an activity to compare June 19 and July 4 using an online Venn diagram.

The summer solstice also provides learning opportunities for both science and social studies classes. Arriving on June 21 this year, the solstice marks the year’s longest day in the Northern Hemisphere. The AAAS’s Science Netlinks hosts a quick audio explanation of why our planet’s 23.5% tilt developed during the period of frequent celestial collisions and how the tilt impacts Earth’s seasons. An accompanying post explains why more huge direct hits from space debris are unlikely. Science Netlinks also provides lessons. National Geographic hosts an enlargeable graphic showing Earth’s revolution around the Sun. Visit TimeandDate.com for a look at solstice traditions in the Northern Hemisphere. Earthsky.org provides a 2012 post on viewing Stonehenge on the summer solstice. This June check back at earthsky.org for a 2013 story.

Lots to Read

by Caldecott winner Brian Selznick, 2012 CBA Illustrator of the Year

Relaxed, post-test reading takes on an organized flavor in Spring. Though the Association of American Publishers’ Get Caught Reading site hasn’t been updated since 2012, there are plenty of interviews with favorite authors and other celebrity highlights. Read Write Think provides resources to help students dive into books, especially during National Children’s Book Week for grades K-6.  Kids can vote in the Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards through May 9 and hear the favorites announced May 13 as the week begins. The Children’s Book Council and Every Child A Reader originated the awards in 2008 so that youngsters could share their opinions about books written for them. Teachers and librarians can find Book Week resources here.

Over at the Nerdy Book Club, you’ll find a teacher’s bright idea about how middle schoolers can spend some time near the end of school “paying it forward” by reading to younger kids. In this teacher’s case, the journey to the elementary classrooms “is part of an authentic assessment in my Speech and Debate class.” Works either way!

The last weeks of school may also be a good time to refresh spelling skills, especially with the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals May 28-30.The Bee website offers suggestions for organizing a bee along with a couple of helpful downloadable PDF’s. (Note: it’s too late to register a class, and parents have to pay to access materials for their children in the Bee’s Word Club.) You can find plentiful lists and worksheets by grade at Spelling Words Well, a creation of Ann Richmond Fisher, an education writer and former teacher. Her site has begun assembling materials that are aligned to the CCSS, now through grade 5 (May 2013). For more spelling fun, with access to the New York Times, you can share spelling problems encountered by the paper’s writers in a recent post, When Spell-Check Can’t Help by Philip B. Corbett.

Find lots more awesome links to spring’s historical and cultural events – everything from Stonewall Jackson’s death to Nelson Mandela’s election as South Africa’s president – on Awesome Stories’ interactive monthly calendar.

And what about the very last day of school? You can prepare for the grand finale by referring now to Larry Ferlazzo’s helpful suggestions for closing out the year, gleaned from his own classroom and from his readers. Update (May 2013): At his Classroom Q&A blog, Larry has just posted Ways to Use Class Time During the Last Two Weeks Of School featuring ideas from Roxanna Elden and Donalyn Miller in part 1. Part 2 will feature Alice Mercer and Bill Ivey along with reader suggestions.

Update (May 2013): Writing at Edutopia, Elena Aguilar suggests ways to integrate the arts into the post-test weeks to bring enthusiasm back into the classroom.

Update (May 2013): Scholastic offers a lengthy collection, Wrapping Up the School Year, including several blog posts that look really helpful for middle grades teachers: Genia Connell’s post that provides two upper elementary lesson plans, Brent Vasicek’s detailed Your Closing-the-Classroom Checklist, Cate Sanazaro’s quick strategy for making next year’s first day fun and efficient, and Ruth Manna’s Saying Goodbye, suggestions for helping kids with their end-of the-year mixed feelings.

Update (May 2013):  Find out how Mobile Apps Make Field Trips More Interactive in an Education Week post by Sarah D. Sparks.

Each month hundreds of educators try to reach pages on MiddleWeb’s original website (phased out in 2012) where we once featured some of the most popular articles about rubrics on the Web. So we figure it’s time to update those still useful posts and create a place for them here at our new home.

While we’re at it, we’ve also pulled together a selection of excellent contemporary resources about effective use of rubrics in the classroom. We’d welcome your own suggestions in the Comments!

What is a rubric? A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for student work that describes levels of performance quality. Sounds simple enough, right? Unfortunately, rubrics are commonly misunderstood and misused. The good news is that when rubrics are created and used correctly, they are strong tools that support and enhance classroom instruction and student learning. Author Susan M. Brookhart identifies two essential components of effective rubrics: (1) criteria that relate to the learning (not the “tasks”) that students are being asked to demonstrate and (2) clear descriptions of performance across a continuum of quality.” – From the description of “How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading” (ASCD, 2013)

Why all those searches for rubrics?

Why is everyone searching for rubrics? They’ve become part of routine lesson planning, of course. But done right, they can move beyond the “routine” and serve as excellent tools for formative assessment. Rubrics can give teachers important information about the effectiveness of instruction and give students an understanding of how their efforts relate to levels of achievement. And they can strengthen learning when kids have a hand in creating them.

The abuse of rubrics over the past decade and more makes some squeamish, caught in this quotation from Todd Finley in his Edutopia article on crafting inspiring rubrics: “A generation of essays has soaked in the antiseptic taste of writing rubrics’ viscous marinade. It’s time to throw them on the grill, wave our two-pronged spatulas and cheer at the sizzle and smoke.” The resources we’ve amassed here avoid the antiseptic taste and emphasize rubrics that really make a difference.

For starters, you can now visit our MiddleWeb rubrics articles from earlier years. They include an excellent post from the late 1990s that features a thorough introduction to rubrics by scholar and Harvard Project Zero staffer Heidi Andrade. We’ve also included links to several teacher-created rubrics: one can be used to help determine students’ inference levels (pictured below). Several others address independent writing. (Several of these rubrics were created or adapted by literacy teacher/author Juli Kendall.)

To access recent resources, visit the extensive collection of rubrics links at Kathy Shrock’s Guide to Everything. Her Assessment and Rubrics page is helpfully organized and generally up to date. You’ll find lengthy rubrics sections related to the Common Core, general and subject-specific classes, multimedia and web 2.0 skills, and much more.

 Rubrics Past and Present

The pedagogical conversations about rubrics stretch all the way back to the 1970’s when the term “rubric” drifted over to education from medicine. But we’ll just tack back to around 1990 when Heidi Andrade was beginning her study of educational psychology.

In her decade-long work at Harvard and its Project Zero, Andrade helped define the effective use of rubrics as she investigated learning and assessment. Today, Andrade continues her research and consultation with educators as an associate professor at University at Albany, SUNY. Two of her more recent journal articles, accessible online, are particularly helpful for middle grades educators.

Writing with doctoral student Zachary B. Warner in the New York State United Teachers Educator’s Voice, Andrade considers student self-assessment in Beyond “I Give Myself an A.” Using a language arts rubric and a math checklist, Andrade explains the learning that self-assessment can build. She and Warner conclude:

“The implications for classroom practice that emerge from this research seem relatively straightforward: Students ought to be actively engaged in critiquing sample pieces of work, in thinking together about the criteria by which their work will be evaluated, and in self-assessment of their works in progress. By involving students in the assessment process in these ways, teachers can blur the distinction between instruction and assessment. This can transform many activities in the classroom into a seamless flow of analyzing models, creating products, and continuously evaluating and improving products. These are habits or routines that can have a lifelong positive effect — well beyond the content of a particular curriculum.”

To see the challenges faced by middle school teachers in a months-long effort to improve student writing, also read Assessment-Driven Improvements in Middle School Students’ Writing, an AMLE article by Andrade and Knickerbacker Middle School educators Colleen Buff, Joe Terry, Marilyn Erano, and Shaun Paolino.

Following an initial workshop, teachers met weekly to discuss and implement peer- and self-assessment using rubrics. The teachers report how they adjusted the learning and assessment plans to fit their own classrooms. One resource this group and others reported using was the 6+1 Trait® Writing analytical model from REL Northwest.

Eighth grade teacher Colleen Buff concluded, “One lesson I’ve learned is that this is a process; it does not change students’ writing overnight. But if you make it a continuous effort and incorporate it in all the writing you complete, the students will slowly develop their writing skills and their writing will improve. The most valuable lesson I learned is that students really do want to be successful and can rise to a challenge.”

A Rapid Review

For a quick review on shaping effective rubrics, read two recent posts by Andrew Miller, a National Faculty Member for ASCD and the Buck Institute for Education and a consultant. In the first post (at ASCD Inservice), Miller provides 4 Tips to Get More Out of Rubrics. He explains why commonality in form among classes or grade levels, consistent uses, and a focus on learning targets can benefit students. He also notes that teachers need to differentiate rubrics from checklists. In his second article (at  Edutopia), Miller notes the challenges of using rubrics and adds word choice and format suggestions. See: Tame the Beast: Tips for Designing and Using Rubrics.

A Thorough Exam

For a more detailed look at rubrics that work, visit Granted, and… ~ thoughts on education by Grant Wiggins. Wiggins, co-author of Understanding by Design and author of Educative Assessment and many articles, recently considered rubrics at his blog. In Part 1 of Intelligent vs. thoughtless use of rubrics and models, he briefly sums up the problems of unhelpful rubrics (“invalid criteria, unclear descriptors, lack of parallelism across scores, etc.”) and notes that “the most basic error is the use of rubrics without models. Without models to validate and ground them, rubrics are too vague and nowhere near as helpful to students as they might be.”

In Part 2 of his rubrics discussion, Wiggins revisits a 20-year-old essay, updating it to consider validity, scoring holistically versus judging independent dimensions, comparable language versus descriptive language, quantitative versus qualitative differences, the challenge of encouraging creativity, and other issues — all treated in a conversational tone and with some lively comments at the end.

A Creativity Rubric?

Formerly a teacher and a professor, consultant Susan M. Brookhart considers assessing creativity as opposed to grading it in a recent article in Educational Leadership. Brookhart, whose book How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading was published this year, notes that assessing creativity can help students understand and achieve it. Brookhart goes on:

“I created this rubric with some trepidation—because where there’s a rubric, there will be someone who’s thinking of using it to grade. Generating a grade is not the intended purpose of the rubric for creativity. Rubrics help clarify criteria for success and show what the continuum of performance looks like, from low to high, from imitative to very creative. For that reason, rubrics are useful for sharing with students what they’re aiming for, where they are now, and what they should do next. I do not recommend grading creativity.”

Image credits:

Wiggins slide: Docstoc, Creative Commons

By Susan B. Curtis

A lot of teachers are a little breathless these days, and not just because this school year  started off at a fast gallop and hasn’t slowed since. Another challenge is the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, in various stages in 45 states and DC. How do teachers view the impact of the CCSS on instruction and assessment? And how do educators move ahead with this pressing assignment?

Taking the Pulse of Teachers

Two recent surveys sought teacher attitudes. Achieve, one of the organizations deeply involved in implementing the Common Core, found 68% of the 500 teachers polled had a favorable attitude toward the CCSS, up from 59% in 2011. Unfavorables also rose, from 15% in 2011 to 21% now. You can find these results and how teachers view CCSS-based assessments in this Alliance for Excellent Education newsletter (the third story).  For the full poll results visit Achieve.

A 2012 online survey with 540 responding teachers by WeAreTeachers asked somewhat different questions. Well over half of the teachers surveyed taught in schools where the standards are being implemented this year or began last year. Seventy-two percent felt ‘somewhat’ or ‘well’ prepared for the changes. About the same percent have received some standards related training. Most were concerned about having resources aligned to the CCSS, with 60% preparing some of their own materials as well as accessing other sources. The WeAreTeachers survey found that teachers “see several challenges to Common Core implementation, including their own understanding of the standards, student engagement, assessment, and lack of professional development.”

Reporting on the 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher released in February 2013, Ed Week’s Catherine Gewertz finds that teachers and principals are relatively positive about their ability to incorporate the CCSS into their teaching but are less confident that implementing the standards will boost student achievement. Elementary educators are more optimistic in this regard than middle and high school educators.

A Quick Look at CCSS Origins

For a quick review of the recent history of CCSS, Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart reviews Robert Rothman’s book, Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education. Vander Ark references Rothman’s August article in the Harvard Education Letter, ‘Nine Ways the Common Core Will Change Classroom Practice.’  Robert Rothman is a senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education. Tom Vander Ark, author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World and founder of GettingSmart.com, was formerly the executive director of education for the Gates Foundation. (For other views of the CCSS origins story, see some of the articles in the Concerns section below.)

The Basics and Beyond

Edutopia’s ‘Resources for Understanding the Common Core State Standards’  puts the copious CCSS online resources into a manageable order.  Starting with selected links to the Common Core State Standards Initiative website, Edutopia continues with ASCD resources (some funded by a Gates Foundation grant) that include the new free-access EduCore site as well as upcoming and archived free webinars.

Edutopia provides links to Hunt Institute videos and the grade level videos from the Teaching Channel (TCh). The introductory TCh videos show NYC classrooms – elementary and middle school – as they pilot the CCSS. The TCh videos also present brief interviews with the authors of the standards.  You can also access TCh blog posts, notably “My 10 Greatest ‘Ah-ha’ Moments in Working with the Core.”

After overviews of resources from Achieve,  the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC),  Edutopia explains the two federally funded collaboratives tasked with developing standards-aligned assessments, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Both organizations are working with the Educational Testing Service’s Center for K-12 Assessment and Performance Management. Edutopia concludes with links to helpful posts from several of its bloggers and others.

Much of Education Week’s detailed coverage of the Common Core saga requires registration or subscription (sign up for Ed Week newsletters to get some news stories free). Ed Week’s Curriculum Matters blog is public and frequently reports on CCSS developments. Among Ed Week’s archived sponsored webinars are several on CCSS, incluiding one on standards and English language learners and another on math.

Help for Parents

Not surprisingly, the public is less aware of the CCSS than educators. The Council of the Great City Schools, a 56 year old organization representing 65 urban school systems, has released ‘Parent Roadmaps to the Common Core Standards’ for grades K-8. The site offers guides on both math and E/LA to help parents support their children as they encounter class work aligned to the CCSS. The Council also hosts a CCSS video to promote the standards among parents.  And at the National PTA site, you’ll find grade by grade editions of the “Parent’s Guide to Student Success” as well as other CCSS-related resources.

CCSS in the Middle Grades Classroom

Education bloggers have responded left, right and center, to the challenges the Common Core implementation presents. Particularly helpful to middle grades teachers are two pragmatic posts from TweenTeacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron. In “What’s In a Name? – The Questionable Branding of the ‘Common’ Core,” she argues that despite the self-inflicted wound of unfortunate branding, the CCSS can become effective because the standards demand “students use their brains to contribute to a topic, not just the regurgitation of that topic.” She continues: “It’s about not just the content but the collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity involved in communicating that content. And that’s not common.” Wolpert-Gawron concludes that teachers will need to collaborate more actively at the school level to share communication skills and knowledge of content.

In another 2012 post, “The Common Core Tabloid: Truth vs. Hearsay,” Wolpert-Gawron responds to educators’ uncertainty about assessment by outlining two of her strategies for getting her students ready for what actually materializes. She describes the usefulness of teaching with leveled questions for future use in CAT (computer adaptive technology) assessments. “To address the writing component and the performance-based assessments, I have become deeply dedicated to project based learning this year [using] collaboration, technology, inquiry-based instruction, and project-based writing.” Results include more enthusiastic students and improved test scores, she says.

“How can principals successfully support teachers’ implementation of new curricula?” including the upcoming CCSS emphasis on deeper literacy.  An ASCD Express article by Nonie K. Lesaux and Joan G. Kelley, Five Findings for Leading Common Core Implementation, offers suggestions distilled from middle school teachers’ feedback.

More Concerns about the CCSS

Criticism against the CCSS is present among some on the political right, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess, writing in Ed Week. In August 2012 Hess wondered if the pro-CCSS forces were sufficiently aware of the conservative reaction against the federal push for the standards’ implementation. He cited statements from the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as well as conservative think tanks, who express concerns about federal over-reaching. Though ALEC in late 2012 softened its position on the CCSS, Hess himself continues to be concerned about the impact of implementation, seeing reformers as concentrating more on messaging than improving education outcomes. In 2013 several state legislatures proposed dropping out of the CCSS with most bills failing to pass or being tabled, according to Ed Week reports.

Strong reactions have also come from some educators. They question the source and intent of the CCSS. Writing in the Washington Post, educator and consultant Marion Brady posted “Eight Problems with Common Core Standards.” In a reference that recalled the traditional description of reading, writing, math and science as the “core” subjects, Brady said: “Variously motivated corporate interests, arguing that the core was being sloppily taught, organized a behind-the-scenes campaign to super-standardize it. They named their handiwork the Common Core State Standards to hide the fact that it was driven by policymakers in Washington D.C.” Brady notes several inadequacies of the standards, including their relevance to improving learning when the impact of poverty is ignored.

For further critical views of the CCSS, see Larry Ferlazzo’s ‘The Best Articles Sharing Concerns about Common Core Standards.’ Hear lots of teacher voices in response to Ferlazzo’s January Classroom Q&A post, How Can We Best Prepare Students for Common Core in Language Arts? In addition to collecting teacher voices at his blog, Teaching the Core, educator Dave Stuart, Jr. proposes that, rather than freaking out about the coming standards, teachers strengthen their practice by adopting them. He offers specifics based on five ELA standards.

What about Science, History and the Arts?

The first focus of the Common Core movement has been mathematics and language arts. With those standards now in various stages of implementation across the country, educators and related organizations are turning attention to science, history and geography and the arts.

You can catch up on the Next Generation Science Standards, released in April 2013, at the FAQ page of the NGSS website. NSTA has archived a series of free webinars to explain the major practices to be included in the NGSS. The last is scheduled for June 2013. Ed Week’s Erik W. Robelen provided an overview of the standards, including the parts dealing with evolution and climate change which will likely generate some political push-back, the history of the standards’ development, initial responses from science organizations that had found earlier drafts acceptable or lacking, the elements yet to be completed, and the outlook for development of assessments, as of now unfunded. Discover the hands-on role of teachers in crafting the NGSS from Marsha Ratzel, the Kansas middle grades teacher and blogger, who worked with 50 other educators and industry leaders in her state to review drafts and recommend changes as the standards were developed.

In November 2012 the National Council for the Social Studies along with the 22 states who are represented by the Council of Chief State School Officers met to continue their work on developing social studies state standards. Following the meeting the CCSSO issued “Vision for the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Inquiry in Social Studies State Standards.”  The eight page statement outlined plans for creating a framework, not standards, for states, as discussed by Catherine Gewertz at Ed Week. The CCSSO anticipates the framework will be completed in 2013. For a teacher’s take on the vision statement (as opposed to the standards framework educators had expected), read this post from Teaching the Core.

The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (click on the brochure) is working to update the 1994 National Standards for Arts Education (available at the Kennedy Center’s ArtsEdge) to produce the Next Generation National Arts Standards.  For revision updates and answers to FAQ, visit the NCCAS wiki.

Updates

• Educators Tout IB’s Links to Common Core – As districts scramble to translate the Common Core State Standards into concrete curricula and lesson plans, says this Education Week story, some educators are highlighting the International Baccalaureate program as an especially strong fit.

• ASCD’s December 2012 issue of Educational Leadership asks “Common Core: Now What?”  Among the public articles are ‘The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends’ by Timothy Shanahan, and ‘Making the Shifts’ by Sandra Alberti. (12/10/12)

• Here’s a timely Common Core topic from the final 2012 issue (12/20) of ASCD Express: Characteristics of Literacy-Rich Content-Area Classrooms. You’ll learn more about the essential elements of literacy-friendly classes in math, science and social studies. For a deeper look at literacy in the mathematics classroom, also see Meet Content-Area Literacy Standards Without Losing the Math Teacher.

• In late 2012 Edutopia posted a five-part series by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins to help clear up some of the confusion surrounding the implementation of the CCSS and to suggest workable next steps.

• The New York Times Learning Network is continuing its weekly series of lessons drawn from the news growing out of CCSS implementation.

• In 2013 Eye on Education has released a free ebook, The Common Core Made Easy: A Collection of Tips, Resources, and Ideas by Lauren Davis. An editor at Eye on Education, Davis blogs on the Common Core and is the author of Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans: Ready-to-Use Resources, reviewed on MiddleWeb.

• Computer-adaptive testing being developed as CCSS implementation is planned has advantages for kids at either end of the ability continuum but present challenges as well, explained in this article from Ed Week’s Digital Directions. (10/24/12)

• Do you teach mathematics? Writing at eSchool News in 2013, Laura Devaney explains How the Common Core is redefining math instruction. She finds that “integrating skills throughout the curriculum and drilling deeper on concepts, are among key changes.”

Beyond engagement and retention, adults and students at Bates [Middle School] cite numerous other benefits of arts integration: It encourages healthy risk taking, helps kids recognize new skills in themselves and others, provides a way to differentiate instruction, builds collaboration among both students and teachers, bridges differences, and draws in parents and the community. Plus it’s just plain fun.”  ~ Mariko Nobori writing in an Edutopia Schools That Work series

With such great outcomes, why isn’t everyone integrating the arts into core curriculum? And just what does it mean to do that?

The Kennedy Center for the Arts provides an in-depth look at arts integration at its ArtsEdge site, pointing out that the term goes beyond arts classes and enhancements in other courses to a full partnership. After careful deliberation, the Kennedy Center crafted this definition:

“Arts Integration is an APPROACH to TEACHING.  Students Construct and Demonstrate UNDERSTANDING Through an ART FORM. Students Engage in a CREATIVE PROCESS Which CONNECTS an art form and Another Subject Area and meets EVOLVING OBJECTIVES in both.”

To see examples of arts integration in practice across language arts, science, social studies and math, explore the videos at the ArtsEdge page Arts Integration in Practice.

Jane Remer, a long-time educator and consultant with many clients including the Kennedy Center, advocates “all the arts for all the children, K-12.”  In an article for ASCD, “Creating Rigorous Arts Lessons Across the Content Areas: Tips for Collaboration,” Remer reviews several large-scale projects and then goes on to outline how classroom educators can integrate arts into their classes, in part through consultation with arts educators. Her closing paragraphs offer guidelines for day-to-day success.

In an ASCD Educational Leadership article, “The Arts Make a Difference,” Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond, authors of 2012’s Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century, describe the elements that make arts integration in a school or district work. These elements include accessing local arts resources; promoting collaboration among content educators, arts educators and artists; and using the arts to build “careful observation, inquiry, practice, creation, representation, performance, critique, and reflection.”  Rabkin and Redmond note the challenges arts integrators face: “Arts integration is not simple or easy work. The educators and artists who have developed it have worked with meager resources and have swum against a tide of stereotypes that keep the arts in the margin, despite their demonstrable and dramatic success in raising student achievement.”

Arts integrators “have swum against a tide of stereotypes that keep the arts in the margin, despite their demonstrable and dramatic success in raising student achievement.”

To find out what arts integration looks like at a middle school, visit Edutopia’s Schools That Work video on Bates Middle School in Annapolis, MD. At Bates, Vanessa Vega writes, “Job-embedded professional development, differentiated arts instruction, and critical-thinking skills integrated into the curricula have been key to [the students’] success.” Vega notes that  “What makes arts-integration practices particularly effective at Bates Middle School is the fact that Bates teachers design arts-integrated activities to address the specific standards that students are having the most trouble understanding.”

As Vega points out, the efforts at Bates are based in part on the principles of Harvard’s Project Zero and its Artful Thinking project (here with an updated link). The Artful Thinking site is loaded with resources for the classroom, including wide ranging curriculum connections and links to images, museums and more.

Edutopia also provides links to fully developed lesson plans in several content areas for grades 6, 7 and 8, as well as professional development resources used in Anne Arundel County public schools and templates used at Bates. And if you’re a visual learner (smile) check out Edutopia’s Pinterest page on arts integration. Find more arts integration resources from Edutopia at Andrew Miller’s blog on integrating arts into project based learning.

With Connecting with the Arts, Annenberg Learner provides a series of video workshops for middle grades teachers. Watch to see teachers talk about arts integration and its value to students, strategies for collaborating with other educators, roles students adopt as part of AI, ways to connect across the curriculum, evaluation of learning, and more.  The free workshop series is a companion to Annenberg’s collection of 12 Connecting with the Arts videos of visits to AI classrooms which can be purchased.

How relevant is arts integration, really?

In “The Social and Emotional Benefits of Being Weirdly Creative,” Edutopia editorial director David Markus quotes a Bates student: “At first you feel pretty weird, especially singing and dancing.… You think maybe someone will make fun of you. But because everybody has to sing and dance and do the art, everyone is in the same boat… (My source seems to relish this next part of his description.) So you have to keep doing the art day after day. You have to dance the motions of the planets or sing their name in a song or take a photo of a jungle gym exhibiting the properties of an isosceles triangle. And somehow, through all these awkward displays of creativity, the social playing field levels, and you actually start to have fun, and you begin to make friends with kids you might never have even spoken to, because they’re having fun, too.”

More insight about the potential impact of arts integration on schools, students and families can be found in the documentary video School Play, reviewed in this MiddleWeb article, “The Creative Lives of Children,” by K-6 principal Lyn Hilt. You can watch a trailer for the award-winning film at YouTube.

In a guest post at MiddleWeb’s STEM Imagineering blog, educator Sammy Parker writes about the impact of the arts on STEM courses, noting, “From the lives and words of Nobel laureates to the eye-opening changes that the arts have on students, especially low-SES ones, to the dynamism and success of classrooms and other educational settings that meld the best of both worlds, the evidence for the immense value of creating and cultivating a nexus of the arts and STEM is persuasive.” He goes on to suggest ways teachers can work together to bring that intersection to their students.

For educators who wonder how implementing the Common Core State Standards might relate to (and impact) arts integration, McREL’s Kirsten Miller provides some possibilities in “Common Core Quick-Start: How the Arts Intersect with the Common Core State Standards,” included in the recent ASCD Express issue, Thoughtful Arts Integration.

You’ll also find a detailed examination at The Arts and the Common Core: A Review of Connections Between the Common Core State Standards and the National Core Arts Standards Conceptual Framework. The document was prepared by the College Board for the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards in 2012. This coalition of arts education organizations plans to complete its re-imagining of national arts standards during 2013.

Update: Writing at Edutopia, Elena Aguilar suggests ways to integrate the arts into the post-test weeks to bring enthusiasm back into the classroom.  (May 2013)

Image credits

Frontpage: STARSFoundation via Compfight (Creative Commons)

Art Display: Bates Middle School via Edutopia

Venn Diagram: ArtsEdge, Kennedy Center for the Arts

Children at wall: Santa Catalina School via Compfight (Creative Commons)

During March, middle level educators and administrators around the country are celebrating National Middle Level Education Month.  The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), which provides a year-round focus on middle level leadership, introduces the March observance:

Without a doubt, middle level students can be misunderstood, misguided, and even maddening—but they can also be magnificent. That’s the message that we’re trying to share in March during National Middle Level Education Month.

This year, NASSP, the Association for Middle Level Education, the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, and the National Association of Elementary Principals have joined together to promote and celebrate this critical time in the educational and developmental lives of young adolescents.

The NASSP explains the need to focus on the “magnificent middle”:

• Schools teaching middle level students are responsible for educating young adolescents that are undergoing rapid and dramatic changes in their physical, intellectual, social, emotional and moral development.

• According to the US Census Bureau, each day nearly 24 million young adolescents (ages 10–15) enter school. These students deserve challenging and engaging instruction; teachers and administrators who are knowledgeable and prepared to provide them with a safe, challenging and supportive learning environment; and organizational structures that banish anonymity and promote personalization, collaboration and social equity.

• The habits and values established during early adolescence have a critical, lifelong influence that directly impacts the future health and welfare of our nation.

• Research from ACT reveals that the academic achievement of eighth-grade students has a larger impact on their readiness for college by the end of high school than anything that happens academically in high school.

• To improve graduation rates and prepare students for college, career, and citizenship, a deeper public understanding of the distinctive mission of the middle level is necessary.

Today’s young adolescents frequently get a bad rap, but those of us who work with them on a daily basis know just how concerned, caring, and compassionate they can be. One way that adults who work with and appreciate this age group can help them through this challenging and sometimes awkward stage of life is by providing the public with a more accurate picture of who young adolescents truly are.

Together, by celebrating Middle Level Education Month, we can draw attention to this age group, recognize their unique needs, and call for collaborative efforts to support them. Most importantly, we must remember that while March is the “official” month to celebrate middle level education, advocating for young adolescents and middle level education is a year-round job.”

NASSP’s Outreach & Publicity Resources

NASSP provides a head start for publicizing the celebration with links to in-school and community outreach materials. Included are a history of the middle level movement reaching back to 1963, a to-do list, a sample letter to share with parents and the community, extensive bibliographies, and more.

AMLE Live Tweet Event (March 7)

Join the Middle Level Education Month Twitter Event on March 7 from 7-8 pm ET at #MLEM13! Hosted by AMLE, NASSP, NAESP and the National Forum, the Twitter dialogue will center on “Celebrating the Magnificent Middle Level and the Power of Collaboration”. So plan to share ideas, thoughts, questions, and more with virtual panelists Rick Wormeli, Summer Howarth, Todd Bloch, and Todd Williamson! Be a part of this awesome online conversation!

And watch for up-to-the-minute blog posts from middle level experts at SmartBlog on Education as March unfolds. Featured March 5: “8 ways to celebrate the magnificent middle” by bringing your community in and by highlighting middle-level students’ lives across content areas.  NASSP’s Patti Kinney and AMLE’s Dru Tomlin wrote the post. For more information on the sponsoring organizations’ plans, visit NASSP or contact Patti Kinney, Middle Level Services,  kinneyp@nassp.org.

MiddleWeb Celebrates with Student-Centered Articles

Sharing a classroom with middle level students presents challenges and the possibility of great joy. Among MiddleWeb’s store of guest articles by educators are several that speak to the uniqueness of middle level education:

• “Rick and the Fundamentals” (Rick Wormeli)

• “Belonging in the Middle Grades” (Amanda Wall)

• “How to Build Happy Brains” (Judy Willis)

• “The Homeroom Is Still a Home” (Jose Vilson)

• “Power of Teachers’ Words” (Debbie Silver)

• “Wrong Side of the Tracks” (Nancy Flanagan)  and

• “My Epic Teaching Journey” (Marsha Ratzel)

WKCD: How Kids View the MIddle Grades

So what do the kids themselves think about middle level education and especially “how to help us learn”?  Visit What Kids Can Do, and watch the 4-minute video of students talking about social and emotional learning.

Also see this Voices from the MIddle Grades page and its collection of comments by students, arranged by their areas of concern. Some of these materials are drawn from WKCD’s book Fires in the Middle School Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Middle Schoolers, by Kathleen Cushman and Laura Rogers (2008).

The March 3, 1913 suffrage march in Washington, DC

Several thousand suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913. Many of the 500,000 spectators were not supportive of the non-violent protest, injuring 200 marchers and sending 100 of them to the hospital. As Women’s History Month begins in a few days, thousands are expected in Washington, DC to commemorate those marchers who took the struggle for women’s right to vote from the states to the federal government, rallying for a constitutional amendment. The Suffrage Centennial Celebration organizers provide an overview of the period at their website.

Winning the Right to Vote

Students can learn about Alice Paul and the other suffragists who picketed the White House and were imprisoned (and at times force-fed during hunger strikes) in the years following the 1913 march. The Library of Congress provides a brief video recounting the imprisonment of suffrage leader Lucy Burns. News of the women’s treatment helped lead to ratification of the 19^th Amendment in 1920. In a brief video made before the 2012 election, people of all ages reflect on the effects of the amendment. The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association, which is working to erect a monument to American suffragists, produced the video. For biographical sketches of suffragists, visit the association’s site.

Winning the Right to Fight

Topping the US government’s impact on women so far in 2013 is the Pentagon’s decision to lift the ban on female service members in combat roles. Women make up 14% of the active military. 152 died during the Iraq and Afghan wars. They will now be eligible for over 200,000 combat positions based on their ability to perform and will no longer be excluded because of their gender. Students can watch outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announce the change in this Washington Post report.

A US Army female soldier serves in Afghanistan

A Museum that Spans Eras

The National Women’s History Museum is keeping up with both the Suffrage Centennial Celebration and the change in combat status for women. The museum hosts a promotional video featuring girls speaking as women who affected history which could serve as an introduction to Women’s History Month.

For an historical review, the video “NWHM Celebrates Women’s History Month”  emphasizes the role that labor organizations played in improving work life and  ties those early 20^th century efforts to the emergence of women’s history studies in the 1970’s. Celebration of women’s history began in the Santa Rosa, California schools in 1978 and culminated in 1987 with the US Congress declaring March to be Women’s History Month.

At the National Women’s History Museum site, teachers can register to access several lesson plans, including one about girls who changed US history. Biographical sketches are arranged by period and by area of influence. The women’s suffrage timeline reaches back to 1840.

As of February 23, 2013 several of the links listed on the museum’s resource page were not functional.  Among those that are accessible, infoplease offers a list of dates when countries allowed women’s suffrage, and History.com provides videos, photo galleries and essays on women’s history and achievements in several fields. TimeForKids from Time Magazine  and Education World are also classroom friendly.

Women Scientists through History

Other helpful National Women’s History Museum links relate to the 2013 Women’s History Month theme: Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination:Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The theme, selected by the National Women’s History Project, centers on STEM careers and contributions. A resource from the Air and Space Museum features women aviators and space pioneers.

Agnes Scott College provides brief biographies of women in mathematics. And the University of Alabama’s Department of Physics & Astronomy offers sketches of women scientists. Watch Women@NASA for Women’s History Month resources, too. In 2012 the site’s blog highlighted Women’s History Month in a series of Shout Outs to outstanding women scientists.

Sally Ride, the first US woman in space

Young Scientists

The National Academy of Sciences’ I Was Wondering site for the middle grades focuses on women in science. Based on the book series Women’s Adventures in Science, the colorful pages include brief biographies and an interactive timeline that graphically presents the paucity of women scientists in 1900 and the mounting number of successful women scientists in recent decades. The site’s games are not challenging. As of mid-February the links to teacher resources and a page for asking questions are not working.

The National Women’s History Project’s 2013 Gazette features student scientists who have achieved recognition as well as student programs run by women’s organizations. The gazette, which honors women in STEM, highlights Deepika Kurup, a 14-year-old New Hampshire resident who developed a solar powered water purification jug. In addition, the Gazette reports on PBS’s SciGirls, a show with tween girls enjoying STEM projects, as well as the Girl Scouts’ STEM focus.

History Centered Resources

Britannica offers free access to its huge collection of 300 Women Who Changed the World. The site features interactive biographies grouped by area of leadership, along with a timeline, topics, primary documents, and videos. Pearson’s Fact Monster provides a series of essays written for students. One looks back to the challenges women faced before the women’s rights movement broadened access to political participation. Another centers on feminism. Fact Monster also links to the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments.

President Obama signs the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Elsewhere, the Library of Congress hosts Women’s History Month for Teachers, with links to several federal agencies. The Census Bureau  has its 2013 Women’s History Month “Facts for Features” summary already online. You’ll find overall stats on employment, education, businesses, and more, including links to more detailed information. Kids.gov presents women’s history through themed collections: reformers, warriors, politicians, scientists, and more.

Students who want to concentrate on the women who have served as First Ladies can visit C-Span. Collaborating with the White House Historical Association, C-Span launched a weekly  series, “First Ladies: Influence and Image,”  in February 2013. The first two videos introduce the series, and later films will center on each First Lady in 15 to 90 minute segments. Currently the series website features brief biographies, quotations, and video clips.The White House hosts somewhat longer First Ladies’ biographies with links to presidential libraries.

Plans are underway for another year of author posts at Kidlit Celebrates Women’s History Month. Librarians Margo Tanenbaum, The Fourth Musketeer, and Lisa Taylor, Shelf-employed, share posts from authors (the 2011 and 2012 posts are also available) along with links to Women’s History Month resources.

On February 26, 2013, PBS premiered MAKERS: Women Who Make America. The three-hour documentary traces the women’s rights effort decade by decade, recounting advances and failures.Some of the program’s website video clips may be useful in showing the challenges women faced in the mid 20th century and their efforts to overcome them. PBS provides resources for educators. Teachers may want to preview content.

To access Women’s History Month on Twitter, follow the hashtags #wmnhist, #WHM, #IWD, #fem2, #grl2, #women, #girls, #herstory, and #STEMfem.

Update (March 1): Students can access the New York Times’ extensive collection of articles related to women’s history through the Learning Network blog at no charge.

Update (March 15): The Washington Post offers a slide show of leaders of the Women’s Rights Movement.

Photo credits

Front page: Members of the National Woman’s Party picket the White House, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-31799 DLC

Inez Milholland Boissevain riding a horse during the March 3, 1913 Washington, DC, protest, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-77359

US Army soldier talking with Afghan civilians, www.army.mil,  image

Sally Ride, Photo from NASA

President Obama Signs the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. View the White House video.

In the six months that  STEM Imagineering blogger Anne Jolly has shared her expertise in STEM learning with MiddleWeb readers, she has delved into the theory and the practice, with an emphasis on what works for teachers and students in the classroom. In this Resource Roundup we provide an overview of STEM, gather some of Anne’s resources into one place, and add some new finds. 

What better time to focus on STEM than right before the kickoff of National Engineers Week on February 17? The coalition sponsoring the 63-year old observance keeps K12 education in mind with resources for students and teachers. While engineering is the focus, other STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) topics abound. Be sure to visit Discover Engineering, an interactive website targeting kids in grades 6-9. The Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day page provides ideas for attracting girls to engineering throughout the year. Sponsors for that site and other sources of National Engineers Week materials represent a wide range of engineering, manufacturing, high tech, and energy companies as well as professional societies and government agencies.

STEM Is for Everyone

Now is STEM’s national moment, according to Ben Esner, the  Director of the Center for K-12 STEM Education at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Writing for the Huffington Post, Esner argues that the STEM focus on investigation and problem solving, hands-on project learning, and  interdisciplinary studies results in a powerful methodology for effective education across content areas. The implementation of Common Core State Standards will reinforce STEM, he predicts, while the coming Next Generation Science Standards will necessitate the further development of STEM educational resources along with easily available professional development for educators. Esner sees the need for schools to move beyond reliance on institutions such as his, and begin to gain the support and develop the expertise to create and teach curriculum that is driven by engineering design principles.

Outreach Biologist DNLEE tackles the challenge of democratizing STEM education in her  Scientific American post, A Dream Deferred: How access to STEM is denied to many students before they get in the door good. She recounts seeing how “lack of resources, benign discouragement by well-meaning adults, and active exclusion by powerful gatekeepers” severely limited urban high school students’ access to science fair participation, even as she worked to open it. Her observations underscore the social prejudices and cultural barriers that face economically disadvantaged children.

In her Deep Sea News post, “A field guide to privilege in marine science: some reasons why we lack diversity,”  PhD candidate and science educator Miriam Goldstein notes class barriers to science education and adds that “by driving people away from science, we are missing out on so much talent and so many wonderful discoveries.” Commenter Stacy Rebich Hespanha  adds: “I would like to point out another thing that I think is a really big barrier — not KNOWING that you SHOULD BE seeking out opportunities to do research as an undergrad …. The same is true for high and middle school students who are doing very well in school but for cultural/social reasons never explore possibilities for getting involved in summer or after-school research programs.”

Balancing the challenge of making STEM accessible to everyone is the benefit of STEM learning for everyone, especially students whose success in the traditional classroom has varied. Read Anne Jolly’s take in her blog post, Three Ways STEM Levels the Field.

STEM: The Concept

Writing in a National Science Teacher Association post, Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Jonathan Gerlach begins with a definition of STEM:

STEM education is an interdisciplinary approach to learning where rigorous academic concepts are coupled with real-world lessons as students apply science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in contexts that make connections between school, community, work, and the global enterprise enabling the development of STEM literacy and with it the ability to compete in the new economy.” (Tsupros, 2009)

Gerlach goes on to discuss two challenges educators face. First, how do teachers move beyond the traditional siloing of subjects and work together to understand how technology and engineering can mesh with math and science? Second, how do educators relate to the business community’s understanding of STEM, which he describes as more oriented to recruiting graduates who can immediately begin to solve problems on the job as opposed to newly minted workers who arrive with extensive technical knowledge but less hands-on experience? He also notes that graduates of tech schools as well as university engineering and other professional schools will be in demand for the wide range of STEM occupations.

…Math and Science

For an overview of what makes STEM education effective, read Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It’s available from the National Academies Press as a paperback or a free download. The 2011 book “examines the vast landscape of K-12 STEM education by considering different school models, highlighting research on effective STEM education practices, and identifying some conditions that promote and limit school- and student-level success in STEM.” The emphasis is on math and science because research has so far centered on those elements of STEM. Find a quick review of the book’s findings at Science Daily.

…Technology

One aspect of the technology component of STEM is covered in Learning Science Through Computer Games and Simulations, another  2011 publication from the National Academies Press. For a hands-on look at the intersection of games and education, visit Gamedesk.The California nonprofit, supported by the Gates Foundation, the NFS, and others, is expanding its scope across the country by creating a national digital learning platform with funding from AT&T. Already visitors to the site can try out Thermbot targeting middle graders and Motion Math In-Class for elementary students. Also consider the research underway into games-based assessment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The NSF-funded project, based at the Games+Learning+Society Research Center, has already resulted in games with STEM characteristics, involving players in worlds that explore regenerative biology, virology and limnology.

…Engineering

Look into engineering in yet another National Academies Press book, 2009’s Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects. It’s also in paperback and downloadable formats. The book “reviews the scope and impact of engineering education today and makes several recommendations to address curriculum, policy, and funding issues. The book also analyzes a number of K-12 engineering curricula in depth and discusses what is known from the cognitive sciences about how children learn engineering-related concepts and skills.” For a briefer and more “how-to” treatment of engineering’s place in K-12 STEM instruction, visit this page from TeachEngineering, a site packed with searchable lessons, activities and units with input from many universities and professional societies through NSF grants.

STEM coach Judy Duke (L) with MS science teachers Rhonda Cookson and (R) Rebecca Brower.

Moving from Understanding to Implementation

With an better grasp of the scope of STEM, educators can begin to incorporate its principles into their classrooms. But just how do teachers learn the pedagogical skills and strategies to bring STEM alive for students? STEM Imagineering blogger Anne Jolly recently asked teacher trainer Judy Duke about the steps to successful STEM professional development. You can read the key elements here.

A veteran middle grades educator, turned teacher coach, Duke works with the non-profit Engaging Youth through Engineering (EYE), based in Mobile, Alabama. The EYE project, a school-community program of the Mobile Area Education Foundation, combines resources from a major NSF grant, area educational institutions, philanthropists, and corporations to produce STEM curriculum designed to engage middle school students in coursework that will prepare them for high tech careers. An organization with which STEM Imagineering blogger Anne Jolly consults, EYE shares STEM materials at its website, including a graphic of its Engineering Design Process. Also online: videos of students immersed in STEM learning and overviews of EYE modules for grades six through eight.

Other Sources of STEM Curriculum and Fun

At the PBS Kids Design Squad Nation website, middle grades teachers can access a guidebook that starts with a how-to to explain the design process and continues with 11 activities based in engineering. Design Squad Nation no longer appears on the PBS broadcast schedule, but episode videos, animations and other activities from DSN and its predecessor Design Squad (hold the Nation) are available. One goal of the program was to get beyond the stereotype of the engineer.

PBS also provides a wide range of helpful links at its STEM Education Resource Center. In addition to lessons and activities, the resource center offers a long list of links to major resources from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), National Science Foundation, National Science Teachers Association and more. Public TV tackles math along with other STEM topics for middle graders at STEM Collaborative. In addition to collecting highly interactive math activities from several state public TV organizations, the collaborative lists lots of other free STEM resources for K-12.

The venerable Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways offers a selection of activities bringing real life to math. And don’t forget MSP2’s wide selection of online math and science guides and its SMARTR site for kids.

For up-to-the-minute STEM news, browse the blogs collected by Best Colleges Online. You will also find STEM education organizations on Twitter @StemEdCoalition, @TeachingSTEM and @STEMAhead, along with STEM-related hashtag groups: #nsta, #scichat, #scienceed, #edtech, #stem, #scied, #STEMchat and #stemed. Science NetLinks shares a collection of STEM-related apps here. This is their K-12 list, but you can filter it by grades. Another option: STEM Magazine published by a STEM educator in Georgia.

And don’t miss STEM Career SmartBrief, free from the  Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE). It covers what students can look forward to in STEM as well as topics on middle and high school STEM learning. See a copy and sign up here.

Should STEM Morph into STEAM? STREAM?

Writing in Edutopia, John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design,  makes the case for extending the effectiveness of STEM by transforming it into STEAM, to add the creativity of the arts and artistic design to the push for STEM. Maeda notes the need to support arts education and includes links to organizations which are considering the impact of STEAM.

In a guest post at MiddleWeb’s STEM Imagineering blog, educator Sammy Parker argues, “From the lives and words of Nobel laureates to the eye-opening changes that the arts have on students, especially low-SES ones, to the dynamism and success of classrooms and other educational settings that meld the best of both worlds, the evidence for the immense value of creating and cultivating a nexus of the arts and STEM is persuasive.”

Commenting on a recent eSchool News  article, “STEAM’ education gains momentum in schools: A growing number of experts say the arts should be included in STEM education initiatives, a writer raises a concern seen elsewhere: “Ideally it should be STREAM–adding an R for reading or literacy. Math, science, technology and the arts must include reading and writing. Learning these different content areas includes learning to read/write in these areas too. We can’t forget reading!”

In a Huffington Post article, Chuck Cadle, CEO of Destination Imagination, a nonprofit provider of STEM education in afterschool programs, says “Bottom line is that educators need to recognize that STEM is not a stand-alone educational strategy. STEM knowledge should be integrated across the curriculum,” using inquiry based learning, whole child and other strategies “to foster higher-order thinking skills, such as goal setting, planning/budgeting, organizing, prioritizing, memorizing, initiating/risk-taking, shifting, and self-monitoring.”

Gadget Alert

You can power up STEM projects with littleBits, according to teacher Lisa Noble. Writing at Voices from the Learning Revolution (scroll to the end), she describes the little motors, marketed as “an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning and fun.”  MIT Media Lab’s Joi Itos includes littleBIts in trends for 2013. Educators get a 15% discount: “pricey but way cool” according to MiddleWeb’s John Norton, who also points to Lego’s Mindstorms gadgets, popular in well-funded STEM circles. Both gadget lines would make nice donations to local schools.

A century and a half after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, students in 2013 will continue an 87-year tradition of studying African American history during February.

Historian Carter G. Woodson, along with colleagues at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), established Negro History Week in 1926. With mobs still lynching African Americans every year (335 deaths reported in the 1920’s) and a surge of race riots sweeping the country, Woodson wanted to provide a counterpoint to the racial discrimination that dominated America. Initially observed in black schools, churches and social organizations, the event grew into Black History Month (also known as African American History Month) with President Gerald Ford’s signature in 1976.

Since 1928 the ASALH has provided a theme for each year. Looking over the thematic titles can provide students with a sense of the concerns of African Americans over the decades. For example, the link for the 2006 theme can help students understand how African Americans, shut out of local and national organizations, developed their own fraternal, civic and social institutions, some of which fought violence against blacks — including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized in 1909.

2013: Remembering 1863 & 1963

For 2013 the ASALH theme is “At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington.”

The Schomburg Center’s wealth of resources

The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture covers much of the African American experience with online multimedia exhibits sure to catch the attention of middle graders. ‘IN MOTION: The African American Immigration Experience’ starts with the immigration of Africans to America as slaves and then studies thirteen migrations, culminating with the influx of sub-Saharan Africans in recent years. In addition to the extensive collection of images, texts, maps and timelines, this 2005 exhibit offers grade specific lesson plans, including many for grades 6-8.

At the Schomburg Center’s exhibit, ‘The Abolition of the Slave Trade,’ younger students may find the interactive timeline on the history of abolition of the slave trade — and the interactive map on numbers of slaves departing specific countries and arriving at other countries — most useful. Older students can research the essays, which offer general introductions that lead to more specific topics. The texts section provides extensive primary documents. Overall, this is a visually involving site that provides massive amounts of information in easy-to-access sections.

Another Schomburg exhibit, ‘Lest We Forget: The Triumph over Slavery,’ is also overflowing with interactive  materials arranged  chronologically. This exhibit uses a small font size in a pale color that makes using the resources less engaging than accessing other exhibits from the Center.

‘African Americans and American Politics,’ a Schomburg interactive exhibit from 2009, follows African Americans’ growing participation in American politics with sections for the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Students may need a quick demonstration on how to access the photos and documents, which are accompanied by brief explanations.

In  the Center’s ‘Harlem 1900 – 1940′ exhibit, covering the rapid growth of the African American community in New York, students will find advocates, artists, business leaders and politicians. It’s a super source for the Harlem Renaissance. Teachers can click on Main Menu, upper right, to access images and PDFs that explain how to do oral history. The page also links to civic, advocacy and social groups of the early 20th century.

Finally, the Schomburg offers a 2011 exhibit,  Africana Age: African & African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century. Its essays, images, brief videos and maps cover the African diaspora to the US and beyond. The essays will interest the upper age range of middle grades students.

Scholastic highlights the Underground Railroad

This year Scholastic helps students understand American slavery and the Underground Railroad with a multi-faceted, highly interactive resource. Through audio and images, slaves held at plantations and traveling north speak for themselves. Accompanying the selected slave narratives are primary resources, mostly photographs plus several documents. Students can also zero in on Harriet Tubman along with Underground Railroad volunteers and abolitionists. Activities include writing letters in code.

Scholastic debunks a long list of generally accepted myths about the Underground Railroad. The site also includes a detailed teacher’s guide. Nearby is Black History Month: Everything You Need.

The Library of Congress has assembled a page for teachers featuring images related to African Americans’ experiences and civil rights, arranged in periods from the 1700’s to 1996. Following the long list of image links are resources drawn from the LOC’s American Memory Collection. To access ready-made lesson plans rather than multitudinous resources, visit this LOC selection. Several  lessons are suited for 6-8 graders.

The US Census: Focus on the 21st Century

For a look at African Americans in the 21^st century, students can visit the US Census Bureau’s 2011 report on how people of African descent reported their race in the 2010 Census. Geographical locations are included. The report offers opportunities to study graphs and maps. A snapshot of African American culture can be found in the Census “Facts for Features” report prepared for Black History Month in 2012. The 2013 version of this “Facts to Features” report is scheduled for release January 24.

The Smithsonian: Civil rights and American art

The Smithsonian can help teachers bring art into the study of Black History with its online exhibit, ‘Oh Freedom! Teaching African American Civil Rights through American Art at the Smithsonian.’ Glean ideas for bringing the exhibit into your classroom by participating in the ‘Oh Freedom! Online Conference: Teaching Civil Rights through Smithsonian Collections.’ The free event, set for Wednesday, February 6, 2013 from 10:30 until 5 pm eastern, will feature museum curators and grade school educators as well as keynoter Richard J. Powell of Duke University. Registration is required. (The conference will be archived.) For an overview on using the site’s resources before the conference, visit the FAQ.

While exploring, don’t miss the interactive timeline covering civil rights in the 20^th century which links to artists and artworks, including photographs, in the Smithsonian collection. At the More Resources link, the Smithsonian provides strategies for incorporating art into history and includes graphic organizers and worksheets. The site invites student comments and teacher lesson plans. Two of the lesson plans included in the exhibit target middle schoolers: ‘Citizens Making Choices: The Role of the U.S. Constitution in Peaceful Protest’ features the Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968 and the 1992 LA riots. The other lesson introduces ‘The Many Faces of Civil Rights.’ The Resources page also links to extensive online resources for teachers as well as a detailed glossary. At present the resources for students are limited to books. Students do have their say in a series of podcasts.

Students can see the impact of history and current culture on contemporary African American artists at the website for ’30 Americans,” a 2010 show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The guide for educators includes selected artist bios, discussions of their art, and suggested discussion.

Black History Month: Reading & Writing

For English/Language Arts involvement in Black History Month, READ WRITE THINK offers a page which centers on the month-long National African American Read-In  from the Black Caucus of NCTE. The NCTE provides a packet to report read-in participation. The RWT page also includes lesson plans and links to the Library of Congress’ African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship and PBS’ African American World.

To introduce poetry by African Americans, consider using Elizabeth Alexander’s engaging talk on the sources of black poetry and its interplay with hip-hop. Just a couple of words will need to be explained. Students can view Alexander’s 2009 Inauguration poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” here. (Warning: you may want to embed this YouTube video elsewhere – many comments at the link are highly inappropriate.)

For a chronological look into African American poetry, students could contrast Phillis Wheatley, the first black woman poet published in America, and Natasha Trethewey, the current US Poet Laureate. Trethewey links the Civil War to present day America in her poem, “Elegy for the Native Guard,’ remembering slaves and freedmen who enthusiastically served the Union. This link provides video of her reading the poem during a trip to Mississippi’s Ship Island where some of the Guard served. It features African American Native Guard re-enactors.

Sciencemakers: Leaders in STEM

The National Science Foundation-funded Historymakers’ collection, Sciencemakers, offers images and interviews of contemporary African American scientists and mathematicians. Teachers could adapt one aspect of the Sciencemakers page: encouraging students to create speeches or videos imagining themselves as future scientists or as scientists of the past or present. Historymakers also hosts collections of text interviews with hundreds of African American leaders in education, the military, the law, music, and other categories. Through a subscription service Historymakers sells videos of the interviews.

As part of its Black History Month resources, Science NetLinks  offers ‘The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences.’ The brief biographies of the scientists, engineers and mathematicians are organized by profession and cover past and present. Other resources at the Science NetLinks page look into skin color. For students interested in space travel, NASA provides brief bios of current and past black astronauts. In 2011 Leland Melvin, a former astronaut who also worked as an engineer, chemist, musician, NFL player, and NASA educator, explained the history of African Americans in flight.

Leland Melvin with DC students

The Future of Black History Month

A recurrent discussion among educators and other Americans is whether racial and ethnic groups - African Americans, Latinos and Asians, for example – should be singled out for annual observations of their cultures. African Americans discuss whether Black History Month should continue to be observed in a five-minute PBS news segment.

For a longer treatment of the questions about celebrating Black History Month, visit Independent Lens’ page on African American filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s documentary, ‘More than a Month.’ Aired on PBS in 2012, the film follows Tilghman as he begins by soliciting signatures to end Black History Month and then goes on to present differing points of view. The Independent Lens page provides several clips. Clip 3 returns to Carter G. Woodson, the creator of the annual observance, and goes on to discuss the impact of politics on how history is taught in American schools. The page includes an interview with Tilghman which can show students the challenges of making a documentary. The comments following the interview give a cross-section of attitudes toward Black History Month.

Update (January 31): Black History Month Has Been an Epic Failure – In a Huffington Post article, journalist Dion Rabouin faults teachers and proponents of Black History Month in the United States for failing to heed Malcolm X’s message: “Our history did not begin in chains.” Rabouin goes on to recount many great achievements by Black people in world history which he contends are given short shrift in American history lessons.

Update (January 31): Dos and Don’ts of Teaching Black History from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance.  From Larry Ferlazzo’s collection of Black History Month listings.

Update (February 1): Don’t miss EDSITEment’s Guide to Black History Month Teaching Resources. It provides educators with over 550 years of the African American experience arranged chronologically.

Update (February 5): The US House of Representatives has just launched a website about its history. Included is “Black Americans in Congress” which features profiles of the congressmen and women along with 7-12^th grade lessons plans following these members’ participation in the House from 1870 forward. Civil Rights history is provided in oral histories and an outline of Amendments and legislation.

Update (February 14):  Awesome Stories provides resources reaching from Africa before the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Ronald McNair, the African American astronaut who died in the crash of the shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Art and photo credits:

Carter G. Woodson: US Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations. Branch. News Bureau. (06/13/1942 – 09/15/1945)

1st Vote for African Americans: Waud, Alfred R. (Alfred Rudolph). “The First Vote.” Nov. 16, 1867, from Harper’s Weekly. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Underground Railroad:  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-28860]

Evening Attire: James VanDerZee (1886–1983), Evening Attire, 1922, gelatin silver print, 10 x 8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum

Leland Melvin: NASA/Carla Cioffi