With eighth grade graduation over, history teacher Lauren Brown will devote her summer break to real self care, concentrating on rejuvenation and resisting the temptation to glance back at the pandemic year or look ahead to anticipated challenges. Finally, it’s time to relax.
Laurie E. Westphal offers a comprehensive introduction to student choice and how to make menus successful. Aimed at high school, the ideas can also work for advanced students in middle school as they develop their strengths, writes history teacher Erin Corrigan-Smith.
Helping students who avoid reading see themselves as developing readers rather than struggling readers can make all the difference, writes Laura Robb. She shows how guided practice lessons give students opportunities to strengthen their skill and move steadily forward.
As educators reflect on the past year, NBCT Elizabeth Stein shares insights from co-teachers in her coaching circle who are grateful for the support they received from one another. She encourages all of us to rest, relax, and find ways to carry forward our own silver linings.
Educators Daniel Rose and Christine Walsh receive a thank-you note for their new book, Talking Through Reading and Writing: Online Reading Conversation Journals” from middle school director and teacher Jeny Randall. She’s ready to reinvigorate her practice with their ideas.
New YA books by Amanda Gorman, Lois Lowry and Margarita Engle are all written in verse, says Katie Caprino, yet each tells a story in a different way. One is a poem to America. Another is memoir. And the third is historical fiction, set in 1990s Cuba, with a singing dog.
For his final post at the end of the most challenging school year ever, Jeremy Hyler went to his students in grades 6, 7 and 8 and asked them: “Is there something you want to share with the education world?” Here’s what they had to say – and what Jeremy thought about it.
Jackie Acree Walsh’s Empowering Students as Questioners provides teachers with the skills, strategies and structures to help each learner reach their potential by transforming their understanding of questioning, writes 5th grade teacher Kathleen Palmieri.
Considering how to shift from just assigning writing to modeling writing, language specialist and co-teacher Tan Huynh walks readers through the process of making the act of writing visible to students. Tan draws on his podcast chat with workshop facilitator Indu Bedi.
In this pandemic year Katie Durkin adopted 3 new practices she’ll be carrying forward: going paperless; slowing down the curriculum to provide more feedback to students; and using the Flipped Classroom model.
