When you join up in the middle grades, you become part of a passionate team. You cherish the middle level playbook because, as it’s stated in This We Believe, you “value young adolescents and are prepared to teach them” (p. 14). In many ways, it’s like signing up to play on a football team. It takes
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Students need strong speaking and listening skills to succeed in school and beyond. There is truth to the old adage “what is tested, is taught,” particularly in the past several years of assessment mania. The question we need to be asking ourselves, though, is what “test” are we preparing our students for? Clearly, standardized assessments
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You’ve read it … that one passage in a student research paper that startles you. The sentence structure and vocabulary exceed middle school norms. You raise your eyebrows, shake your head, and take a deep breath. How many times did you say, “Don’t copy word for word.” As middle school educators, we’re used to saying things
Read More… from Preventing Plagiarism: Three Proactive Paraphrasing Lessons
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Empowering our middle school students to make the world a better place. At Americans Who Tell The Truth, we are eager to stir the hearts and minds of young people towards caring deeply and acting boldly to make our world a better place. Often such initiatives are reserved for experiences outside school learning. We believe, however,
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Why tracking based on ability means everyone loses. Let’s say we have two soccer teams. One is populated by all of the strongest, fastest, toughest, athletic students. These kids attend practice every day after school and work out on their own in the evenings and on the weekends. They eat healthy food and receive the
Read More… from Mixing Up the Teams: All Students Deserve the Very Best
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Making students who move from school to school feel welcome. A Florida newspaper reporter asked me what life is like for the student who moves three or more times a year. So I gave him this scenario, and the conversation developed from there: A Typical Scenario You are a fifth grade student. Your mom wakes
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