Beginning your first year as a middle level teacher? Our resource collection points to plenty of how-to advice – from our very own bloggers and guest writers as well as other outstanding sources – that will guide you through the first weeks of school and the semesters ahead.
Future of History / Lesson Planning
by Jody & Shara · Published 08/16/2015 · Last modified 12/13/2019
If you could design your ideal social studies curriculum for middle school, what would it look like? After surveying area high schools, Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters decide to focus on skills development. Here’s their draft scope & sequence for grades 6-8.
Future of History / Project Based Learning
by Aaron Brock · Published 06/21/2015 · Last modified 11/21/2019
Inner-city history teacher Aaron Brock has developed a childrens’ book project for eighth graders, many of whom struggle with academic literacy. He details how his step-by-step approach addresses important skills and serves as a synthesis and assessment tool.
Flipped teaching / Future of History
by Jody & Shara · Published 05/03/2015 · Last modified 12/14/2019
Jody Passanisi’s post on confronting her flipped classroom bias is among MiddleWeb’s most popular articles. A year later, as she reflects on her flipped teaching experiment again, she finds herself “a little less starry-eyed and a little more strategic.”
The Common Core expects students will support claims with evidence from a text. History teacher Aaron Brock shares an innovative technique he created to help weak readers in his under-resourced urban school develop an understanding of this process.
Future of History / Understanding Data
by Aaron Brock · Published 11/30/2014 · Last modified 12/05/2019
Teaching history students to interpret charts and graphs is often difficult, especially when their grasp of math is limited. In his low-literacy middle school, Aaron Brock used a small-group, high-interest graphing project to build skills and understanding.
Reading comprehension is a primary goal in Aaron Brock’s middle school history classroom. Building on last year’s annotation experiments, Brock has adapted the familiar 5 W’s strategy to help students pay closer attention to the meaning behind the words. It’s working.
Future of History / Music for Understanding
by Jody & Shara · Published 10/05/2014 · Last modified 11/24/2019
When our social studies bloggers planned their U.S. History curriculum, they made sure to add contemporary music. The lyrics of rap and country decontextualize historical themes and let students make connections tying the past to the present.
Future of History / Teaching strategies
by Aaron Brock · Published 09/21/2014 · Last modified 12/13/2019
Social studies teacher Aaron Brock prefers to limit lectures to five minutes in his eighth grade inner city classroom and then shift to cooperative learning activities – giving as much attention to research skills as specific history content.
Future of History / Teaching strategies
by MiddleWeb · Published 08/11/2014 · Last modified 12/03/2019
New ideas can improve the curriculum and teaching strategies of history educators, but that doesn’t have to mean throwing out the old to experiment with the new. What to keep and what to add? Our history bloggers share some helpful criteria.
