Teaching and learning in grades 4-8

Effective Assessment for Improved Learning

Glen Pearsall’s Fast and Effective Assessment focuses on making life easier for teachers while improving students’ learning and understanding, writes consultant Anne Anderson. Pearsall includes lots of ideas and efficient tools to create feedback that benefits students.

Reading Comprehension One Step at a Time

Stambaugh and VanTassel-Baska focus on purposeful planning, finding stories to engage young readers, and discovering ways to use readings to get the most impactful writing from students while increasing their overall comprehension, says teacher Erin Corrigan-Smith.

Try Drama and Role Play with English Learners

Reader’s theatre helps EL students feel more confident “playing” with English and learning to use fixed expressions, intonation, and gesture, writes teacher-author Alice Savage. Explore her 10 ideas for extending the content or language of a script into engaging lessons.

Teach Climate Change Through Positive Action

Middle school science educator and Albert Einstein Distinguished Education Fellow Joshua Sneideman and energy education specialist Erin Twamley share seven ways that teachers and schools can involve students in climate change studies. Included: Project ideas.

Learning the Secrets of Good Class Discussions

One area of Matt Smith’s teaching “that has improved tremendously since my novice days” is facilitating productive discussions. Students need to engage in active talk to process complex ideas. This won’t happen until teachers master “wait time” and stop affirming too much.

Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards

Middle school dean Bill Ivey says Rachel Simmons’s Enough As She Is will thoroughly illuminate and clarify what parents and teachers of girls are seeing and hearing and help those adults think through how best to be supportive as girls seek their best authentic selves.

Creating Citizens in the History Classroom

Sarah Cooper’s Creating Citizens will ignite a passion for discovery, challenge students to seek information from wide ranging sources, and help them apply their learning and form their own opinions about history, civics and current events, writes Linda Biondi.

We Can Teach Grammar Better Than This

Grammar doesn’t need to be numbing. As you consider curriculum additions and tweaks over summer, author and literacy consultant Sarah Tantillo suggests ways you can incorporate grammar into those refreshed lessons to help students understand structure and write more clearly.