The element of surprise can go a long way in the classroom. “We had homework?” I cringed every time I heard that question as students entered my classroom that first year. Even today, I view homework as a somewhat controversial topic: Is it beneficial? Do students understand the purpose of homework? Is there value in
Read More… from When I Call Your Name … Encouraging Students to Do Their Homework
It’s time to put your traditional rubrics aside and change the way students learn. In today’s assessment-focused education system, we must change the ways we assess students. Our focus should be on changing our classrooms into environments that are focused on learning with support from teacher feedback and self-assessment. With any luck, you still will
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Perspective-writing activities bring “a bunch of dead guys” to life. To young adolescents, historical figures are a bunch of dead guys. Many students believe the issues, values, and perspectives of the people from the past hold no relevance to their lives in the 21st century. However, perspective-writing activities in the middle school social studies classroom
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How are middle grades educators supposed to act outside school? As a middle level educator (since prehistoric times), I am sometimes immune to the many behaviors, antics, and attitudes of early adolescents—those behaviors often interpreted by others as inappropriate, disrespectful, and unsuitable for public consumption. Imagine that! So after a recent outing to the local
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Middle school is not too early to encourage students to dream big. College is a place where students’ minds grow and flourish and where they see the wide range of possibilities before them. However, some students never have the opportunity or the interest in pursuing all that college has to offer. For some students, the
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