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Addressing Writer’s Block Through Physical Movement

Encouraging student thinking and writing with opportunities for movement. Almost all students will experience writer’s block at one time or another. Helping them work through this common experience with the use of physical activity may add success to the writing process for all students. There are several reasons why students encounter writer’s block, and it

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20 Literacy Strategies for Engaging the Middle Level Brain

Effective ways to enhance reading and writing experiences. Recently, I was teaching a language arts class in Logan, West Virginia. The objective of the lesson was to analyze the impact of tradition on human behavior using narrative text. Sounds really dull, doesn’t it? It could have been, had I not used engaging strategies to facilitate

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Creating Makers, Not Spaces

Move the desks out of the way, pull up a piece of rug, and invent something using the engineering process and leftover parts. Just like anything else, the Internet provides a plethora of ideas to define and design “makerspaces.” Other names include fablabs, hackerspaces, and design labs. In our school, our students devise problems when

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Helping Students Become a Better Version of Themselves

As a family and consumer science teacher at the middle school level, the Lead2Feed Student Leadership Program lessons seem to blend seamlessly into my curriculum. Some of the major units of family and consumer science are interpersonal relationships, leadership, community connections, resource management, and global citizenship. The Lead2Feed lessons connect to each of these units on multiple

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Differentiation: Closing the Gap between Frustration and Success

Teaching and learning in diverse ways. As middle school teachers, we are well aware of the many ways in which our student populations vary. From physical appearances and stages of development to prior experiences and ethnicities, students’ compositions highlight the importance of getting to know our students in order to create learning experiences that reflect

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AMLE Celebrates Inaugural Schools of Distinction

AMLE recognized its inaugural class of Schools of Distinction earlier this month, in conjunction with the organization’s 49th Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida. The twelve schools were selected for their fervent commitment to implementing the essential attributes and characteristics of successful middle grades schools. In addition to being celebrated during a special awards ceremony, each

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Reimagining School – What should it look like and who is it for?

Cornelius Minor and Kass Minor help #AMLE22 attendees find their bottom lines as educators Cornelius and Kass Minor believe that kids don’t just learn in school. They become. It’s an attitude reflective of what we know about middle grades best practice, making them the perfect keynoters for #AMLE22 and our return to in-person conference. We

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Kindness is harder than it looks.

Houston Kraft reminds #AMLE22 attendees that connection doesn’t happen by accident. Houston Kraft, author and co-founder of CharacterStrong, took the main stage at #AMLE22 yesterday for his keynote address on Deep Kindness. From the outset, he made clear that he had a mission for those in attendance. “If we want more kindness on our campus,

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