From our newsletter: 10 top reads for new teachers • Story writing • School reform 3.0 • Summer reading • 'My practice teacher' • A civil war mystery solved • What new principals should know • Google's vast ed resources • Super solar system science. (free subscription)
10 Great Reads for New Teachers
We've scoured the web and our own archives to produce a diverse mix of excellent articles that can help new middle grades teachers not just survive but thrive. You'll find our 10 top picks (with a few optional extras)
posted at the MiddleWeb blog. One early entry is titled "Important Things to Do Before Your Students Arrive." Don't wait until August for this one. (And if you're not a new teacher but know some, please share the link.)
From Stenhouse Publishers
Get your students crafting stories like a pro. In Writing Stories award-winning author Carolyn Coman (What Jamie Saw, The Memory Bank) offers sage advice and practical exercises on all aspects of fiction-writing—getting ideas, plot, setting, characters, dialogue, and more. Preview the entire book online.
A New Direction in School Reform?
Two recent national reports say the U.S. needs to rethink public school reform. After tracking the effectiveness of 15 test-based accountability programs over 10 years, a prestigious National Academies of Science panel
found "little to no positive effect overall on learning" and too few safeguards to prevent subverting the system.
A separate report by the National Center on Education and the Economy contends the U.S. education system "is neither coherent nor likely to see great improvements based on its current attempts at reform." It calls for less testing, statewide funding equity, emphasis on teacher professionalism, and more attention to successful international practices.
Relax with a Good Book
Choice Literacy’s Big Fresh Newsletter is loaded with
ideas for summer reading of all kinds – professional, personal and young adult. When you're ready to settle in with a good book, at the beach or beside your own begonias, you’ll benefit from these suggestions by literacy leaders, which include fiction, nonfiction, even a picture book.
Also: For the strong at heart, The Book Whisperer (middle grades teacher Donalyn Miller) has issued her
3rd Annual Book-a-Day Summer Challenge to fellow teachers. Luckily, "Any book qualifies including picture books, nonfiction, professional books, poetry anthologies, or fiction."
'My Student Teacher: I Learned So Much'
Middle grades teacher Sarah Henchey offers some takeaways from a year spent with her first student teacher. "I learned so much from being a bystander in my own classroom, watching someone else teach lessons I designed, and reflecting on difficult situations from her point of view," she writes. "We both worked hard to create a professional relationship that allowed us to comfortably seek each other’s guidance, input, and feedback."
Henchey has five suggestions for other teachers who (like her) may be hesitant about sharing their classroom with a beginner.
A Civil War Mystery Solved
Did Southerners serving in the US Congress in 1861 abscond with hundreds of books belonging to the Congressional Library? A university librarian recently unearthed a
New York Times report suggesting just that. Robert Lopresti of Western Washington University
follows the story from the halls of Congress to the
Times and back, showing how poorly sourced reports can blur history. Lopresti enjoys the history sleuthing and so will students who take this backward glance at the importance of media literacy.
Sage Advice for New Principals
Novice teachers won't be the only educators entering into rookie territory this fall — the move into a schoolwide leadership role can be equally unsettling.
Here's a popular article by the leader of a regional principals center, who asked an array of school stakeholders what new school leaders needed to know. "Their responses were strikingly similar," she says, "and might serve as a guide for those beginning their journeys."
Get to Know Your Online Overlord
When you catch your breath, check out Google's astounding array of web-based services and consider their classroom potential.
Maximum PC’s guide to 39 apps and services is a handy entry point. Among our favorites: We love Google Alerts, an easy-to-use service that pushes any sightings of information you define into your email inbox (provided you have no-cost gmail, of course). Some G-tools come with links for educators
(Google Earth); some promise updates soon (Blogger). Take a look at
SketchUp for free 3-D modeling. You can also scour
Google Books for free (if often musty) full-text tomes and excerpts from many others.
Google Scholar may come in handy as you resume work on that dissertation. If you haven't discovered Google Docs, you're probably not a 21st century educator. Did you know it can be connected to MS Office? Then there's the DIY
Android App Inventor. And, long as this entry is, we've only shared a few wisps of Google's cloud.
Super Solar System Science
On Mars a year lasts 23 months. And that’s just how long NASA’s
Year of the Solar System will run. Dating back to October 2010, the abundantly resourced project brings budding astronomers and science classrooms monthly units
ranging from how planets came to be - to how to join a Night Sky Network club. Lesson plans stress hands-on learning backed up with spectacular visuals. Get ideas for using the materials, relate planets to Earthly locations, and learn about NASA’s exciting missions now underway
from NASA educator Daniella Scalice. Or go straight to the NASA
solar system source. June topic: Collisions.
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