Middle School Motivators is a magnet for the teacher who wants to make lessons come alive, reinforce what is being taught, and have the students anxious to come back the next day. Reviewer Linda Biondi loves the book’s practical, at-your-fingertips organization.
Gifted and advanced fifth graders will find the four units in this book – fiction and nonfiction – packed with graphic organizers, tech, and student discourse. Each unit focuses on a text exemplar. Instructional coach Donna Wall says the units provide suitable rigor.
Daniels and Steineke walk teachers and students through creating a supportive community for academic discussions and learning, from the very basics of working in small groups to the complex tasks of group projects. Kevin Hodgson plans to implement their strategies.
At the heart of Differentiated Lessons is the desire to assist educators in embedding a self-reflective learning process in the classroom while providing students in all subjects continual opportunities to individualize their learning, says ELA teacher Jennifer Wirtz.
In the valuable book Infusing Grammar into the Writer’s Workshop, Amy Benjamin and Barbara Golub make an effective team, says special ed teacher Marci Warboys. Benjamin focuses on research and pedagogy and Golub provides detailed lesson plans and resources.
Book Reviews / Vocabulary Instruction
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/09/2016 · Last modified 11/25/2019
Joanne Billingsley’s Making Words Real provides specific, detailed instructions for teachers to use when introducing a vocabulary strategy. Anne Anderson recommends her systematic approach to card sorts, sample lessons, sentence starters/stems and more.
As the 2016 Presidential Campaign heats up, media literacy expert Frank W. Baker brings the political races to the classroom with standards-based activities to help students understand the persuasive power of plentiful and often misleading political ads.
Teacher Teamwork explains the stages of effective team building, including agendas, routines, common purpose & more. Educator Laura Von Staden reports the book is right on point in terms of activities & concepts to implement, but may be overly time consuming.
Climate Change: Discover How it Impacts Spaceship Earth with 25 Projects is on a level that most tweens can grasp, yet it is not oversimplified and builds vocabulary. With its cool facts and high order questions, this book gets MS teacher Laura Von Staden’s recommendation.
Now is the perfect time to read The First Six Weeks of School, 2nd Ed. from Responsive Classroom. Reviewer Linda Biondi finds even more to use in the new edition of a book she has incorporated into her smooth-running 4th grade classroom for years.
