Teaching active listening in an age of information overload When Taryn Kralik moved from teaching fifth and sixth grade in a self-contained elementary school classroom to eighth grade ELA after ten years, she knew she needed a different approach. She had a class of reluctant readers, English learners, and just reluctant learners in general. Frequently
Read More… from Using Podcast Circles to Engage Reluctant ELA Learners
Do you ever dread when it’s time to review for an assessment? More importantly, do your students? Tara Maynard, a middle grades math teacher and 24-year veteran of the classroom, has been crafting review activities for decades designed to provide meaningful practice without totally boring students. We sat down with her to ask what makes
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As you enter the classroom, the lights are dimmed and a dozen students are scattered throughout. Some are folding origami; another is using a wood burning kit to etch a magnificent dragon plaque. Others are reading quietly. You have entered the “Calm room.” It’s one of four rooms that 6th graders at Olmsted Falls Middle
Read More… from Play, Move, Calm, Think: An Advisory Approach with Student Choice at the Center
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A genius project—also called genius hour (Davis, 2022; Mulvahill, 2018), enigma mission (George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2019), or passion project (Bowersox, 2020; Wormeli, 2018)—is a form of personalized learning in which students engage in sustained, self-directed inquiry for part of the school day. Genius projects are a natural fit for the middle grades because they
Read More… from Research to Practice: Implementing Genius Projects in the Middle Grades
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Creating Opportunities for Productive Struggle in Math, ELA, Social Studies, and Science While productive struggle has been the focus of much research for the past two decades (e.g., Ewing et al., 2019; Hiebert and Grouws, 2007; Townsend et al., 2018), much of that research centered on mathematics content. Here we posit that productive struggle can,
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A beloved activity in my 7th grade science class was the mitosis dance activity. The kids worked collaboratively to choreograph a complex performance set to music and complete with a human cell wall and spindle fibers pulling apart the sister chromatids (aka their fellow classmates). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the activity engaged
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