MiddleWeb

Interrobang: Kids Solve Big Problems Together Online

If you don't keep up with punctuation news, you may not have heard about the new mark, now being adding to some digital fonts and keyboards. The Interrobang is a question mark overstruck by an exclamation point, the equivalent of ?! It's also the clever name of an online, collaborative problem-solving game developed by Microsoft Partners in Learning in partnership with Learn & Serve America and the Smithsonian. Students competed in three leagues (EL, MS, HS), "taking on missions that engaged them in real-world problems, from bullying to biodiversity." At this site you can look at the results via a user-friendly display and learn how to get involved in future versions. [Update: a new Interrobang event is now online (Dec. 2010). Check it out.

 

Attracting Urban Youth to Afterschool Programs

This research report, first published by the Teachers College Record, uncovers several qualities of after-school programs that help them not only attract urban youth but keep them coming back. These qualities, the authors say, are critical factors in positive adolescent development: supportive relationships with adults and peers; safety, and opportunities to learn.

All Teachers: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE)

Here's an excellent general teacher resource from the MiddleWeb archives that deserves repeat attention from time to time. The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) website is a terrific repository of teacher resources and tools, and since we last highlighted it, they've added a Twitter feed to highlight some of their best content in categories like Arts & Music, Health & Physical Education, History & Social Studies, Language Arts, Math and Science. FREE draws on materials developed by federal museums and archive collections, educational materials developed via federal agencies and programs like the National Science Foundation, as well as selected resources from sites like Scholastic Inc., the Alliance for Climate Education and other non-profits.

Student Guidance: Find a Life Theme

"In middle school, you'll spend countless hours reading stories and analyzing their themes. But what may surprise you is that your own life is a story waiting to be written and analyzed." So begins a student advice column by middle grades teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron, published in Imagine, a magazine for gifted secondary students. Gawron describes how she discovered her own life "theme" in her middle school years. "Recognizing your theme -- finding that motto that describes your way of thinking -- is an important process in growing as a student and as a lifelong learner." Learn more about Imagine magazine here.

Help for the (Teacher of the) Gifted

A new subscriber writes that "I teach a gifted pull-out program for 7th and 8th graders and need all the help I can get." One of our favorite resources about the gifted from newsletters past is an article in the March 2006 Edutopia Magazine which offers the "sage advice" of a number of teachers under the heading "Challenging and Motivating Gifted Students" (link above). Last fall, we recommended a new blog, just beginning to appear at Teacher Magazine, with the intriguing title "Unwrapping the Gifted." Author Tamara Fisher specializes in K-12 gifted ed. Fisher has now built a backlog of blog entries, where she offers teaching ideas, smart advice, and moral support for the GT pullout teacher. And our list wouldn't be complete without this favorite – a 20-year-old essay by psychologist Thomas Armstrong titled "Little Geniuses."

Gifted Learners and the Middle School

In this article, Gifted Learners and the Middle School, published in 1995 in the ERIC Digest, prominent University of Virginia scholar Carol Ann Tomlinson notes the tension that has sometimes existed between the advocates of cooperative learning and other strategies associated with the "middle school model" and those eductors of the gifted who believe such strategies result in a lack of challenge for advanced learners. Tomlinson, whose research on differentiated education has come to the forefront in the decade since this still-pertinent article was written, works to identify some "middle ground." Also see Tomlinson's 2003 article "Deciding to Teach Them All" for more recent reflections on this subject.

Giftedness Comes in Many Forms

A colleague sent us the link for this important 1989 essay by psychologist Thomas Armstrong. "Little Geniuses" reminds us once again that many middle schools become preoccupied with their GATE and PACE and other "gifted" programs aimed at academic high-fliers and forget all the other ways children bring gifts to the world. Armstrong celebrates more than three dozen "unconventional" talents that are worth developing and celebrating. It's an old issue which still lingers in many of our schools. Armstrong's thoughtful analysis can help us address it.