Close Reading the Media / News Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 08/28/2017 · Last modified 12/03/2019
How do today’s students access news and what do they understand about its origins? In his Close Reading the Media column, expert Frank W. Baker offers ideas and activities for engaging students in critical thinking about how they share and consume news in social media.
Future of History / Student Speaking
by Lauren S. Brown · Published 08/27/2017 · Last modified 11/25/2019
We all want our students to contribute more to class by doing more of the talking. But getting kids to participate effectively is easier said than done. Lauren Brown applies Erik Palmer’s PVLEGS and Dave Stuart Jr.’s pop-up debates to help students grow as speakers.
Mary Tarashuk is counting on Peter Brown’s fiction picture books to enliven her 4th graders’ adaptation to their new classroom and their first science unit on animal and plant adaptation. The Global Read Aloud, featuring Brown’s Roz the Wild Robot, is in the wings.
Future of History / Learning Spaces
by Sarah Cooper · Published 07/30/2017 · Last modified 12/05/2019
Amid a near-universal celebration of collaborative, interactive work as a 21st century reality and ideal, teacher Sarah Cooper investigates something we so often forget in our classrooms and our schools: the need for quiet space and the challenges of achieving it.
Book Reviews / Social & Emotional Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 07/27/2017 · Last modified 11/24/2019
Carla Tantillo Philibert’s Everyday SEL in Middle School gives SEL implementation guidelines and brief lessons to help educators in classrooms and schoolwide meet their students’ social and emotional needs, says former teacher/now principal Tonya Curt-Hoard.
The free education site CommonLit has created nearly 1000 document-based lesson plans and a growing collection of differentiated nonfiction text sets. Rob Fleisher, the non-profit’s director of school partnerships, shares some creative ways to tap these rich resources.
Children's Books / The Science Lady
by Kathy Renfrew · Published 07/24/2017 · Last modified 11/27/2019
Kathy Renfrew, The Science Lady, is launching a new science blog at MiddleWeb. In her first entry she shares some favorite selections from the National Science Teacher Association’s Outstanding Books collection and how they might be used to begin the school year.
With its ready-made product menus and immediate applicability, Differentiating Instruction with Menus is one of those books that won’t gather dust, as teachers will turn to it for quick reference throughout the school year, says ELA and gifted facilitator Kim Rensch.
Laurie Lichtenstein can’t let the school year end without thanking Lin Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton for his profound effect on her 7th grade American history class. Her open letter to the Founding Father shares her students’ new excitement for history’s unfolding drama.
Close Reading the Media / Visual Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 06/27/2017 · Last modified 12/12/2019
If your students think a photo can’t change history, have them think again, with this resource-rich article from media literacy expert Frank W. Baker, drawing on the work of civil rights era photojournalist Charles Moore, whose iconic images still haunt us today.
