Donnie Piercey’s 50 Strategies for Integrating AI offers a comprehensive guide for educators ready to harness the potential of AI. Piercey includes a wide range of practical strategies and insights to enrich the learning experience for K-12 students, writes Kathie Palmieri.
Learning focused schools have a collective growth mindset and a shared belief that every student can learn and grow. Education leaders Ron Williamson and Barbara Blackburn share six characteristics that define such schools and offer ideas about how to accomplish each one.
Without good math fact recall, many students become discouraged about building math knowledge and solving equations. Kathleen Palmieri uses song and movement to engage fifth graders in computation fluency. Watch the music and exercise videos that are hits with her kids.
Facing the ‘December Dilemma’ of how to include winter holidays in the instructional day? This MiddleWeb resource offers a multi-faceted look at religious and non-religious aspects of the season, legal issues, and some ideas for seasonal lesson planning.
Kasey Short recommends offering middle schoolers YA novels with multiple narrators as a way to enrich opportunities for content instruction and SEL. They’re also really engaging and fun for kids to read. Included: sample questions and activities and lots of suggested titles.
Author and master teacher Debbie Silver begins her case for spirit-building humor and laughter in classrooms and schools with a personal story from her years as a middle level educator. “Pay attention to how much you laugh together. Teachers and school leaders who laugh, last.”
Kelly Owens suggests ways to promote more engagement and motivation in class by using a HEAD, HEART, HANDS lens. She includes her team’s strategies for creating a student-centric learning environment, increasing opportunities for self-reflection, and decluttering the classroom.
Scaffolding strategies need to be used strategically, writes depth of knowledge expert Dr. Karin Hess. A strategy intended to support executive functioning or language development may not be effective for deepening content knowledge and thinking. See her tips and tools.
Recounting her visit from a grandfatherly apparition grabbed the attention of Stephanie Farley’s students and launched a study of storytelling. Putting “stunt teaching” into action – sometimes with colleagues – builds engagement and opens the door to choice, challenge and play.
Kasey Short finds Brett Vogelsinger’s Poetry Pauses “amazing – and a must read” for middle school English teachers. “The book is original, honest, and filled with practical resources” that can help educators integrate poetry into lessons around any ELA topic or standard.
