For years Amber Chandler has marched her middle school students through Grammar Bootcamp, believing that grammatically correct language is essential to be college and career ready. Now this year’s 7th graders have convinced her there might be a better way.
Book Reviews / Improving Teacher Quality
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/14/2015 · Last modified 12/01/2019
Todd Whitaker provides school administrators with a fresh approach to improve the culture in their schools, suggesting positive strategies for working with mediocre teachers. Reviewer William Evans wanted more research to support experience-based suggestions.
Book Reviews / Teaching for the Future
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/12/2015 · Last modified 11/13/2019
David N. Perkins’ Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World is profoundly unsettling in the best way, simply because it gives so many expansive possibilities for making every minute of a student’s day relevant, says reviewer Sarah Cooper.
Book Reviews / Student Driven Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/12/2015 · Last modified 11/15/2019
The authors of Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions provide a thorough rationale and detailed steps to achieve a technique they say can “revolutionize” education. Reviewer Laura Von Staden finds their arguments compelling.
Genre Connections provides teachers with “concrete” advice for helping kids discover different genres in a variety of ways. Tanny McGregor’s suggestions for using art and music are particularly helpful, says reviewer Elisa Waingort.
Articles / Teaching the Whole Adolescent
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/08/2015 · Last modified 07/15/2024
In her valentine “to those volatile adolescents and the educators who cherish them,” veteran middle level teacher Beth Morrow highlights six good reasons to spend your days with “the wonderfully rough and resilient gems that are middle school students.”
Upstanders supports the complex challenge of cross-content literacy with excellent lesson plans, and authors Smokey Daniels and Sara Ahmed also describe a path to develop the most difficult skill for young middle schoolers, learning to be truly empathic.
Florida teacher David Finkle chronicles middle school life in a daily comic strip for the Daytona Beach News. Here he shares the 15-year story of “Mr. Fitz,” including four sample strips guaranteed to draw chuckles and knowing nods from teachers everywhere.
Teachers who want to combine deep reading of poetry with the joy of discovery will find engaging lessons and activities in Georgia Heard’s Poetry Lessons to Meet the Common Core. Reviewer Linda Biondi praises the book’s strategies to “live with a poem for a week.”
Reviewer Dylan Schulte finds the reader friendly Math Dictionary does an awesome job defining the majority of concepts that are aligned with Common Core Standards for middle grades mathematics. The book helps teachers and students understand math, using examples.
