MiddleWeb's New Resources (443)

From our newsletter: Questionable Standards? • Action research • Resilient Leaders Anchor Schools • Think Like a Math Student • Chemistry Lessons to Go • Spell Rite • Saddle Up Your Google Jockey • Quick Links (free subscription)

 

Questionable Standards? 

Here's a 3rd grade teacher with thoughts that 4-8 teachers can relate to. When Gaetan Pappalardo writes “Do we really have a standard teacher…A standard learner?”, teachers busy aligning Common Core standards to lessons may empathize. He wonders if standards writers understand the stages of child development. Elsewhere, a recent Brookings Institution report suggests it's unlikely CCSS will improve school and student performance on a large scale. Standards in education "are best understood as aspirational, and like a strict diet or prudent plan to save money for the future, they represent good intentions that are not often realized.” As even CCSS's strongest supporters say, it's all about implementation.
 
 
from Stenhouse Publishers

The most relevant research is your own. Living the Questions takes you step-by-step through designing and implementing teacher research projects that extend your everyday inquiry and solve pressing problems. See how to incorporate new tech tools and get extensive examples with teacher narratives. Preview the entire book.

 
Resilient Leaders Anchor Schools
With recession and change buffeting school systems, educators sometimes feel overwhelmed. Resilient leaders can help sustain themselves and their co-workers as they work to make positive changes for students. In this Ed Leadership article, Elle Allison, president of Renewal Coaching, points out challenges to resilience and outlines practices that build stamina and "heart." The good news: resilience is a quality that can be consciously developed.


Think Like a Math Student

When it comes to math, what do students bring to the table (or desk)? The News Leader reports that teachers in Staunton, VA, are making an effort to think more like their students as they seek to engage them in tackling problems. "Student-Centered Math," the teachers say, challenges everyone in the classroom, including themselves. Read about PD resources that are guiding the process. ALSO: If you're gearing up for Common Core math standards, there's a good article in the current issue of NCTM's "Teaching Children Mathematics" examining the structure of CCSS-M and the major ideas that will influence implementation. Free download.

Chemistry Lessons to Go
Get out your goggles and look into solids, liquids, gases, chemical change and more middle-level chemistry. The American Chemical Society provides six sets of lessons, complete with lab directions and quick animations. Visit the ACS homepage to find Molecules of the Day and a year’s worth of daily factoids ranging from the origins of the Periodic Table in the 1860’s to the first-ever limit on aerosol sprays introduced by Sweden in 1978. ALSO: For some nutritious hands-on science, see what 4th graders learn about chemical reactions when they bake bread.

Spell Rite  

It started with a recent Wired magazine column by college prof Anne Trubek, asserting that standardized spelling is old-school. Most comments were critical of her view, including this: “Clearly the author is taking kickbacks from the Chick-fil-A cows.” Even Wired's copy desk demurred. After a Twitter exchange with Trubeck, web grammar star Mignon Fogarty (aka Grammar Girl) posted a podcast outlining why she disagreed with just about every point Trubeck made.


Saddle Up and "Google Jockey"

It’s a noun! It’s a verb! It’s a vibrant tactic to involve your students across the curriculum in real-time additions to the sum of class resources. Voices from the Learning Revolution bloggers Shelley Wright and Marsha Ratzel discuss how they added Google Jockeying -- instant info searches by students -- to their science classrooms. Ratzel outlines the challenges of scaffolding computer skills for her sixth graders. Both teachers report a rise in students’ enthusiasm as they quickly search relevant subjects. ALSO see these GJ comments by a Danish science educator. And how about history?

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MiddleWeb's Quick Links

Didn't find quite what you need? Here's a quick look at some other resources of interest.

• Lisa M. Dabbs’ 5-part New Teacher Academy at Edutopia is complete. Find lesson planning, classroom mgt, delivery & more. 

• The Two Writing Teachers’ 5th Slice of Life Challenge invites teachers to write in March. (Comments by previous slice participants are below the video ad.) 

• Nearly 200 years of African American newspapers appear online by title, date and region, curated by Marist University.

• Educators who use social media tools need to understand "timelines." See why Facebook’s Timeline is unique and Evernote Hello is a twist on expectations.

• 7th graders, some on the autism spectrum, bond together during multiple field trips around their town in this ASCD article.