MiddleWeb » Of Particular Interest

MiddleWeb Resources (449)

MiddleWeb — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:43:18 +0000

MiddleWeb published 451 issues of our weekly/biweekly resources newsletter from 1998 to 2012, before we began our MiddleWeb SmartBrief partnership. We’re posting the content of some of our most recent issues here at our new website. We don’t want to waste good stuff!

MiddleWeb’s Of Particular Interest

The Pineapple & the Hare:
What Could Go Wrong?
How would your students react to this item that appeared in standardized tests used for several years in several states? When test-weary NY eighth graders expressed bewilderment over the Hare vs. Pineapple race, the NY Times helped the story go viral. The original tale was penned by children’s author Daniel Pinkwater but heavily altered by testmakers. “It’s hilarious…(to) use a passage of mine, because I’m an advocate of nonsense,” he said. Pinkwater even heard from concerned students. Some more serious Pinkwater comments about misuse of education funding were highlighted by EdWeek blogger Anthony Cody. The political fallout included an announcement by the NYSDE that the reading passage’s six questions would not be graded (and assurance that next year’s Common Core-aligned questions will be better). Pearson, the source of the E/ LA test, declined comment. For student reaction, read this post by Brooklyn middle school teacher Ariel Sacks, who also noted that draconian test security can perpetuate bad test items. Whew! We enjoyed this wry round-up of the Pineapple affair at the NYT School Book blog.

Web Job Search
Beyond Monster, CareerBuilder, and Flipdog, where do you look online for job openings, in an education landscape littered with pink slips? Members and non-members can browse job listings at the Association for Middle Level Education. AMLE also lets teachers post resumes and offers PDF advice on job searching. Education Week’s Top School Jobs section is well worth a look — it provides job search for teachers and managers, plus extensive support for job seekers and employers at its Career Coach Corner. The National Association of Elementary School Principals lists leadership openings in grades K-8. The National Association of Secondary School Principals also has open browsing for leadership positions. AND: You can access openings across the U.S. at the federal Career OneStop site.

Online Math Contests
Spring 2012 is bursting with online contests that engage students with math concepts. America is struggling to make math fun, says Reuters. MIT’s Lure of the Labyrinth game, which runs through June 15, involves middle school kids in solving a monstrous mystery (while gathering research data behind the scenes). The game features prizes for kids, lesson plans, a relaxed schedule, and the option for teachers to write a reflection. DimensionU is sponsoring the “DU the Math” multiplayer game competition through May 13 with finals June 16. In addition to lots of techy prizes awarded during the 5-week contest, there are scholarships and music themed top prizes. The Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in NYC, opening later this year, already is sharing the joy of math. Through May 11, teachers – preferably in upper elementary and middle grades – can enter to win a $25,000 prize through the museum’s Innovation in Math Teaching contest. MoMath also hosts a YouTube channel for its Math Encounters. It’s good for PD, but you might also want to share “Soap Bubbles and Mathematics” (starting at minute 15) with students.

Create Engaged Fiction Readers
Ariel Sacks and Rachel Small see reading novels as an opportunity to engage students in collaborative learning. Writing for Ed Week Teacher, Sacks describes the stultifying effects of reading segments of literary works and having students respond to a teacher’s talking points. Instead, she reports her seventh graders flourish when they read a whole novel before they launch into discussions. She provides a step-by-step process for building student involvement and learning (and meeting standards). In a separate post, fifth grade teacher Rachel Small recounts her evolution from rubric-based teaching of fiction to developing virtual book clubs through Edmodo. Her fifth graders now enjoy sharing their observations with students beyond their school.

Leaders Respond to Bullying
Watching the new documentary ‘Bully’ can be wrenching. Teacherken (Kenneth J. Bernstein) describes the experience and the need for action. Two national organizations for principals offer free online resources to help the school community counter bullies. NASSP offers a Bullying Prevention page, which links to Facing History’s guide to the film (free by registration). You’ll also find web and media links for principals, students and parents. NAESP offers handouts to share with parents and links to district policies and legislation. A NYT Learning Network post highlights anti-bullying awareness lessons and links to recent news and editorials, many in response to ‘Bully.’

Where to Look for Civics Tools
Teaching consultant and former Disney Teacher of the Year Rick Wormeli considers the state of civics education in an April Ed Leadership article. He believes that “illiteracy in civics is arguably an arteriosclerosis of our democratic circulatory system, effectively blocking understanding and progress, bringing us closer to a civic stroke.” As a cure, Wormeli recommends the iCivics program championed by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who hopes that “interactive digital media will help preserve American democracy.” You can see civics in action in Beth Sanders’ Alabama inner-city classroom, as she engages students in an iCitizenship project. Here’s what one of her students has to say. Sanders also contributed to this EdWeek series of posts on effective social studies instruction.

Catch Their Attention with Science Kids
You can find just about any science topic at Rene Smith’s Science Kids. The former education programmer for the Science Alive center in New Zealand has assembled a wide ranging collection of science games, facts, jokes, and more. Free images and brief videos are plentiful. Lesson plans and projects range from concocting quicksand to building a website. And there are long lists of ideas to spark science fair efforts. Most of the content will appeal to the younger kids in MiddleWeb’s audience.

Cross-Curricular Lesson Planning
In this Ed Week Teacher post, NBCT Sarah Henchey advocates interdisciplinary study to engage students and deepen their learning. After observing teachers at a nearby school plan across content areas, Henchey worked with her school’s other sixth grade teachers to develop a unit on Greek and Roman culture. She suggests several strategies to meet the challenges of coordination. Among them: build buy-in, start small, communicate efficiently. Henchey told us in an email that “I think there’s a lot of potential in these kinds of units, especially in light of the Common Core literacy standards.” We plan to ask her more about that in a future interview.

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MiddleWeb’s Quick Links

Didn’t find quite what you need? Here’s a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Californian Rebecca Mieliwocki, a seventh-grade English teacher with 14 years in the classroom, was named National Teacher of the Year this week!

• MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow introduces MS national chess champs: they won over high schools! (After an ad.)

• Use these writing blunders to show students that grown-ups can make errors, too. From the NYT.

• From Hadley Ferguson’s Middle School Matrix: Research shows which class minutes yield greatest learning.

• Steven Engravalle’s iSchoolLeader Magazine blog offers lots of ed news for school and teacher leaders. See if you agree.

• Can’t Confirm That Quotation? Search Google Books. Here’s how, from MindShift.

MiddleWeb Resources (451)

MiddleWeb — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:45:09 +0000

MiddleWeb’s Of Particular Interest

Teach Writers, Not Writing
How can you approach writing conferences in ways that build better writers? Teacher-author Ruth Ayres, who blogs at Two Writing Teachers, recommends a two-step process that concentrates on a single teaching point and “gets to the heart of the writer” for each conference. Advice: stay with the writer’s original work whenever possible – and don’t expect to create a perfect conference each time out.

Algebra: How Much at What Age?
Students’ understanding of algebra seems to be more about being prepared than being a certain age. But there’s still disagreement about when to introduce algebra into the curriculum. Ed Week writer Sarah Sparks concentrates on the lamentable results of pushing all eighth graders into algebra. Some students actually lose ground. The Harvard Education Letter reports similar findings but offers research-based strategies to build algebraic thinking into math taught to elementary students. WNET/13 has posted Get the Math, a series of free videos and web interactives to show adolescents that algebra has real world applications. “Real” as in fashion, music, and more.

Students & the Outdoors: A Natural
Over the past nine months middle school teacher Kelli Bivens has found a way to bring her black and brown students together: lead them into the woods near Athens, GA to learn about Nature and build bonds while blazing a trail. Across the continent, L.A. County students at Leo Politi Elementary just walk out the school door to encounter native plants and animals. A federal grant has replaced a section of the urban school’s concrete yard with a 5,000 square foot garden. Science test scores are up six-fold after 3 years as kids observe and write about the world outside their windows. Want a game plan for surveying the flora and fauna in your school’s neighborhood? Visit the NYT Learning Network for a detailed lesson plan. Kids will pick up math skills along the way.

Kids Learn to Search, from Google
Whether your classroom is filled with beginning searchers or savvy digital natives, Google’s recently unveiled website, Search Education, can help. The site’s lesson plans are available at three levels of difficulty. Google also provides an archive of training videos for teachers. You can apply some of the tips to other search engines, too. If you want to avoid having your kids develop hard-to-erase online footprints, try some of the search engines described at the How-To Geek site. Duck Duck Go leads the list. AND: MindShift suggests students sharpen their searches by predicting results.

Principal Evaluation: Beyond Test Scores
Principal evaluation needs to catch up with the reality school leaders face today. That’s one finding of “The Ripple Effect,” a recent report from the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality and the American Institutes for Research. The report outlines “a framework for understanding principal effectiveness that includes principals’ practice, direct effects on schools and teachers, and indirect effects on instruction and learning.”

Anthony Cody’s Take on CCSS
What questions come to mind when you think of the Common Core standards? Ed Week blogger and high-stakes assessment critic Anthony Cody has assembled lots of questions about CCSS to point out some potentially devastating results that could follow implementation. Cody, a recently retired middle school science teacher/coach, finds the premise for instituting more rigorous standards suspect. He references a study on the economic inequality he believes is at the root of much poor performance.

Enjoy the Year-End Scramble
The end is near: what’s an educator to do? Knowing teachers want a strong finish, middle grades teacher Cossondra George describes how to involve students in end-of-year evaluations of their classroom experience. She also describes the elements of a successful in-class awards ceremony. Over at Scholastic, you’ll find some fun end-of-school ideas from teachers, including a “Teach the Teacher” Day. Another Scholastic article has lots of year-end suggestions for younger students (several might be adapted for older kids, too). Our favorites: paper ‘bricks’ emblazoned with students’ famous last words for a wall to welcome new students next fall — and a class timeline with high points remembered by kids. How to maintain teacher energy amid end-of-year frenzy? At her Edutopia blog, teacher-coach Elena Aguilar offers survival tips.

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MiddleWeb’s Quick Links

Didn’t find quite what you need? Here’s a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Any summer PD plans? 12 teachers will be guiding underwater robots off the GA coast.

• Administrators and teachers, new or not, will find helpful suggestions in Educational Leadership’s new-teacher issue.

• Flipped classroom proponents respond to concerns. And a proposal to flip Bloom’s Taxonomy gets a lot of attention.

• Brief animations can help kids grasp the space/time continuum.

• Show students how to cite a tweet, from media specialist Julie Greller.

MiddleWeb Resources (450)

MiddleWeb — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:40:42 +0000

MiddleWeb’s Of Particular Interest

Awesome Stories Retools
With over 2.5 million visits in 2011, Awesome Stories has proven its value to educators, parents, and students. The free site, created by attorney Carole Bos, provides multi-faceted stories of people, events and cultures using primary sources in a wide range of media. The 13-year-old website is the first place to go for info that connects the classroom to recent movies, plus the latest on history, the arts, and more. As Awesome Stories retools, drop by and offer any advice you have. And sign up for the monthly newsletter. (Yes, we love Awesome Stories!)

Summer, Academically Speaking
Alycia Zimmerman counters ‘summer slide’ with a full-on super send-off for her 3rd-5th graders. In this Scholastic blog post, she describes how she builds excitement about summer reading. She also provides links to Scholastic’s resource packed K-12 Summer Challenge and to parent resources. For later grades: Donalyn Miller, the Book Whisperer, has interesting summer plans for 6th-7th graders. And the NYT Learning Network is hosting its third annual reading contest for kids 13 and up — and this year offers suggestions for keeping math alive in summer, too.

DIY STEM for Girls
The number of girls interested in STEM has dropped steeply since the 1970’s. Educators and companies are trying to reverse the trend with events like Dare 2B Digital. The California conference brought together 13-16 year olds to experience the excitement of hands-on science and math. Appearing at the event was the young star of Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Mini-Maker Show! You and your students can watch 10-year-old Sylvia’s many DIY videos for project ideas and STEM-spiration.

Helping All the Kids All Year
In this Ed Week post, special educator and NBCT Laurie Wasserman shares strategies for keeping students with IEPs (and others with challenges) on course during the year. The sixth graders at her school have benefited from their general and special ed teachers collaborating closely. They are carefully developing and implementing procedures to keep students up to date and looking at lessons from a student’s point of view. Wasserman also makes a plea for teachers to exert whatever leadership is needed to get the extra planning time this level of student support requires.

Quick Tips to Capture Memories
Capture photos of end-of-year memories — from field trips and celebrations to project presentations — and then make them even more memorable with free, easy-to-use photo editing tools. In this post, teacher-librarian leader Joyce Kasman Valenza profiles web-based editing tools she enjoys: Picnik (now at Google+ Creative Suite), PicMonkey, Aviary, iPiccy and more. Be sure to visit her New Tools libguide (a treasure trove) to see these image editors in action.

Worst Things to Say
Mindful that teachers often face lots of end-of-year stress, ‘Get in the Fracas’ blogger Dan Brown shares the “5 Worst Things a Teacher Can Say to Students.” Reading over Brown’s list reminds us that a teacher’s words may undermine learning goals, and sarcasm can cause deep wounds. In the comments, readers have added their own phrases to avoid. Some also question #4 on his list. See what you think.

What Engages Kids, in Their Own Words
Heather Wolpert-Gawron asked her eighth graders “What engages students?” She took all 220 responses and developed a “10 ways to engage” list, including: exchanging ideas with peers, using tech, and learning through projects and hands-on activities. Also on Edutopia, Mark Phillips reports the experience of a troubled, introverted student who found no support from his teachers.

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MiddleWeb’s Quick Links

Didn’t find quite what you need? Here’s a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Find out why spiders don’t stick to webs in this Science Friday video. Lots more creatures featured.

• Want to make the case for the arts in a time of budget cuts? The ArtsEdge research database is just what you need!

• Reading Rockets’ Edgar Rice Burroughs writing contest ended May 4, but the writing prompts are still fun.

• Carl Hiaasen comments on reality TV, animal wranglers, and the kids in his new YA novel, Chomp.

• Kids 12 & up can enter WKCD’s Graduation Speech Contest to answer “What makes a nation strong?” Enter by June 1.

MiddleWeb Resources (447)

MiddleWeb — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:38:10 +0000

MiddleWeb’s Of Particular Interest

Bring Balance to Your Day
About this time of year, we may find ourselves so busy that it seems hard to find time to re-energize and reclaim balance. Mike Anderson, a consultant and educator, lists some traps we can fall into and offers strategies to meet them head-on. Among them: act now, exercise in found time, use your own deep breaths. Things we may know but need to be reminded of. As Anderson points out, maintaining a healthy balance is part of the job. His piece is one of several dealing with stress in the March 15 issue of ASCD Express.

Teacher Language Matters
What does it look like in the classroom when kids are understanding deeply, especially in science, social studies and other content areas? What helps “understanding” have some staying power? That’s the essential question literacy expert Ellin Keene set out to answer as she visited a diverse set of classrooms across the US. In this interview at Choice Literacy, Keene describes what she found, including “particular ways that (teachers) could adjust or modify our (spoken) language” to promote understanding that sticks. Sophisticated vocabulary and varied sentence structure can help.

Whither Weather?
Washington, DC’s cherry trees are blossoming ahead of schedule this year. Forsythia is blooming in Connecticut. So why did the eastern US have such a warm winter after last year’s record breaking snow? What can we expect from such early plant growth? This NYT Learning Network lesson has students look into interactive weather data across the U.S. Kids can also examine the weather impact of bodies of water and landmasses. ALSO: Register now to participate in National Environmental Education Week April 15-21. This year’s focus: Incorporating environmental studies and STEM, as students learn about climate and develop hands-on projects in their school yards and communities. Don’t miss the middle level resources.

Why Value-Added Evaluation Fails
Assessing teaching using value-added test data has its uses, but the data is not an accurate measure of individual performance. This recent post summarizes findings by Linda Darling-Hammond and others (published recently in Kappan magazine) on the shortcomings of using value-added scores to rank and reward teachers. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues also suggest strategies for achieving accurate and equitable evaluations.

Game Design & Education
Last fall, researcher James Paul Gee explained to a Buck Institute for Education audience how elements of game design can bring pedagogy into the 21st century. In this Edutopia blog, two BIE leaders talk about Gee’s ideas. For more about how gaming comes alive in schools, see this TED Talk by 7th grade world history teacher Aran Levasseur — and read his recent article for PBS’s MediaShift, where he highlights the potential of digital games to promote innovative thinking and career role-playing.

Billy Collins Gets Animated

Former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins shares his quiet humor and sharp observations in this new video, where he presents animations of five short poems, part of a Sundance Channel project. Before you share these with your students, read this middle grades teacher post at RAMS English. You’ll have kids looking for ‘cool words’ and unexpected pairings before they settle in to view some or all of the visualized poems. Just in time for National Poetry Month.

Math the Write Way
How can you build the benefits of writing into math class? In ‘Using Writing in Mathematics to Deepen Student Learning,’ McREL consultant Vicki Urquhart outlines the research that supports writing about math and offers strategies for adding free writing, biographies, word problems and more. Though the booklet was written for secondary educators, most of its suggestions should be useful to upper elementary students, too.

ED: Racial Disparities in Schools
Black and Hispanic students face harsher discipline and increased retention rates, and have less experienced teachers, according to data in the latest U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), collected in 2009-10 from schools serving 85% of US public school students. An OFCR press release provides key findings on discipline and retention as well as teacher equity, bullying and harassment, and other issues. Educators can access school and district specific data or visit a CRDC summary.

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MiddleWeb’s Quick Links

Didn’t find quite what you need? Here’s a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Access New Deal Works Progress Administration posters on war, health, consumer concerns, theater and more. From the Library of Congress.

• Kids will enjoy celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Day (Thurs, April 26) during National Poetry Month. Read Write Think has suggestions.

• Find an overview of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and video clips of his speeches at History.com.

• For a quick view of the flipped classroom, past and present, visit this Knewton infographic.

• MS teacher Laura Coughlin uses YouTube videos and song lyrics to spark interest in standardized test review.

MiddleWeb Resources (448)

MiddleWeb — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:41:04 +0000

MiddleWeb’s Of Particular Interest

From the Teaching Channel: The 3 Little Pigs Remixed
Have fun while your students meet the Common Core E/LA standard for discerning ‘theme’ in fiction. Just have them do some remix with the Three Little Pigs and produce variant endings. Other activities build plots from themes, create quick plays from original stories, and more. Watch as teachers describe the unfolding lesson in this Teaching Channel video. Worksheets and handouts included. Since June 2011, the nonprofit Teaching Channel has produced hundreds of free videos about good teaching practice, all presented by teachers themselves.

PBL the Muppet Way
Teacher Michael K. Milton recently noticed that the plot of the 2011 movie, The Muppets, mirrors the processes of Project Based Learning. In this @deeplearning blog post, Milton analyzes the PBL-like steps the Muppet gang pursues to save Muppet Productions. Clever and informative. In addition to the movie clip included in the post, find more at Disney’s website for the The Muppets.

Build Projects with Science Buddies
Science Buddies wants K-12 students to enjoy challenging science projects. The free site offers students the Ask an Expert Forum and the Topic Selection Wizard. Teachers will find thoroughly developed guides, enrichment tools, and rubrics. Science Buddies is a nonprofit supported largely through the foundations of tech, energy, and child-oriented companies. For Earth Day, the site’s staffers have selected favorite projects, including wiping out ‘vampire’ computer peripherals and modeling the global conveyer belt (ocean currents) in a loaf dish.

Parent Guide: 21st C Learning
To help more parents acclimate to new trends in teaching and learning, Edutopia has released A Parent’s Guide to 21st Century Learning, available as a PDF to registered users (no cost). After a quick overview of collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking, the guide offers grade leveled resources parents can use at home and within the school community. For teachers, try Edutopia’s 2011 Home-to-School Connections Guide. Teacher Larry Ferlazzo, whose ideas on parent engagement are included in the guide, recently hosted a discussion on ‘Ways to Build Trust Between Parents & Teachers’ at his EdWeek blog, Classroom Q&A.

Teaching Students How to Search
Finding a few minutes to tackle ‘a Google a Day’ (aGaD) can give your students a fun way to practice internet search skills. In a Voices from the Learning Revolution post, middle school NBCT Marsha Ratzel outlines her recently acquired Google a Day strategies, which also help students identify credible sources. ELSEWHERE: In wake of news that the Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer appear in print, the NYT Learning Network has posted lesson ideas for improving students’ use of Google, Wikipedia, and Times Topics pages. AND: A recent article in Educational Leadership looks at ways to help students evaluate the quality of resources, including infographics, in terms of expertise, accuracy, and more. There’s also a checklist for judging Wikipedia articles.

Brain Science Changes Education
21st century-learning expert Ira Socol has a message for middle schools: Re-form. Writing at his blog SpeEdChange, Socol cites a recent NatGeo article summarizing findings about adolescent brain development and argues that adults be more accepting of students’ quick changes in interests, varying concepts of time, and other predictable if challenging learning behaviors. Rather than treating teens as adults only when it suits adults’ needs, he suggests that schools be “designed for growth and learning, not compliance and conformity.”

Digital Kits Save Time
In a recent Tempered Radical post, sixth grade teacher Bill Ferriter shows how to use Google Docs to create digital image kits for student projects, including storytelling. A huge advantage of providing the kits online is that kids can spend more time understanding ideas and less hunting for images. Ferriter also notes that image searches from within Google Docs will limit results to Creative Commons images licensed for reuse and modification. Ferriter’s how-to screen shots should get you off to a swift start as you create your own digital kits. And don’t miss his follow-up post with more details about how he uses the kits.

See History in the Making
Historical film clips can catch the flavor of the period and show Very Important Personages in action. The clips can also catch students’ attention in a hurry. To help teachers make the most effective use of these authentic glimpses into the past, teachinghistory.org offers K-12 lesson plans, strategies to boost learning, and a PDF (“Archives of Historic Footage”) describing many clip sources. There’s much more at the USDOE-supported site. You might start with the Quick Links pages for elementary and middle school.

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MiddleWeb’s Quick Links

Didn’t find quite what you need? Here’s a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Scholastic blogger Addie Albano answers general education teachers’ questions on IEPs.
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• Angry Birds have invaded Space, thanks to NASA and Rovio. The mission: understand microgravity .

• Teens and teachers can find great spring/summer reading in YALSA’s Best of the Best Reading Challenge.

• The Statistical Abstract of the US has survived abandonment by the Census Bureau, thanks to for-profit companies.

• 4th grade teacher Patti Grayson is using Edmodo, the secure social network for students & teachers, in some creative ways that can work in other grades too.

• Find Antarctic icebergs, weather, penguins and survival tips – in lessons and links – at Countdown to 2041.