Engaging Young Adolescents

The article below has some useful information that may guide you in motivating and engaging our students.    This link to the Middle School Journal has additional ideas and resources that you may find useful.

Books That Hook Middle-School Students on Subject Matter

            In this helpful Middle School Journal article, Kent State University professor William Bintz suggests that certain books – he calls them “way-in” books – can grab students’ interest and engagement in topics that might seem boring. “They are tools for exploration,” he says, “a way to inquire – an opportunity to pose questions, arouse curiosities, and pursue anomalies about topics of unexpected interest that hopefully will capture their imagination.” Way-in books aren’t a substitute for actual content instruction, but they can create a far better learning climate if used skillfully.

Bintz has specific suggestions for middle-school teachers in all content areas. Here are excerpts from his selection:

English language arts

Inference:

-   The Incredible Book Eating Boy (Jeffers, 2006)

-   Beneath the Surface (Crew, 2005)

-   The Watertower (Crew, 1999)

-   The Collector of Moments (Buchholz, 1997)

-   The Invention of Hugo (Selznick, 2007)

Persuasive arguments:

-   Earrings (Voist, 1993)

-   I Wanna Iguana (Orlof, 2004)

-   Detective LaRue: Letters From the Investigation (Teague, 2004)

-   The Perfect Pet (Palatini, 2003)

-   Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School (Teague, 2002)

Social studies

Culture and cultural diversity:

-   The Hello, Goodbye Window (Norton, 2005)

-   First Day in Grapes (Perez, 2002)

-   The Pot That Juan Built (Andrews-Coebel, 2002)

-   Uptown (Collier, 2004)

-   Amelia’s Road (Altman, 1993)

Individuals, groups, and institutions:

-   Benjamin Banneker: Pioneering Scientist (Wadsworth, 2003)

-   Molly Bannaky (McGill, 1999)

-   Immigrant Kids (Freedman, 1980)

Mathematics

Patterns, relations, and functions:

-   The Warlord’s Puppeteer (Pilgard, 2003)

-   Patterns in Peru (Neuschwander, 2007)

-   Sir Cumference and the Sword in the Cone (Neuschwander, 2003)

-   If You Hopped Like a Frog (Schwartz, 1999)

-   Spaghetti and Meatballs for All (Burns, 1997)

Geometric shapes:

-   The Greedy Triangle (Burns, 1994)

-   Mummy Math (Neuschwander, 2005)

-   What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure (Ellis, 2004)

-   Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland (Neuschwander, 2001)

-   Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999)

-   Sir Cumference and the First Round Table (Neuschwander, 1997)

-   The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (Lasky, 1997)

-   The Fly on the Ceiling (Glass, 1998)

Numbers and operations:

-   Beanstalk: Measure of a Giant (McCallum, 2006)

-   If Dogs Were Dinosaurs (Schwartz, 2005)

-   Polar Bear Math (Nagda and Bickel, 2004)

-   The Warlord’s Puppeteers (Pilgard, 2003)

-   A Place for Zero (Lopresti, 2003)

-   One Riddle, One Answer (Thompson, 2001)

-   Inchworm and a Half (Pinczes, 2001)

Measurement:

-   How Tall, How Short, How Far Away (Adler, 2000)

-   Greater Estimations (Goldstone, 2008)

-   Great Estimations (Goldstone, 2006)

-   Measuring Penny (Leedy, 2000)

-   How Big Is a Foot? (Myller, 1991)

Science

Experimental and observational inquiry:

-   Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas (Bardoe, 2006)

-   What’s the Matter in Mr. Whiskers’ Room? (Ross, 2007)

-   Science Verse (Scieszka and Smith, 2004)

-   Mr. Archimedes’ Bath (Allen, 1998)

-   June 29, 1999 (Weisner, 1995)

Observational inquiry and the scientific method:

-   Snowflake Bentley (Martin, 1998)

-   Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson (Erhlich, 2008)

-   Galileo’s Journal (Pettenati, 2006)

-   The Tarantula Scientist (Montgomery, 2004)

-   The Man Who Made Time Travel (Lasky, 2003)

-   Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer (Byrd, 2003)

Physics and Chemistry:

-   A Drop of Water (Wick, 1997)

-   Where Does Electricity Come From? (Mayes, 2006)

-   Forces Make Things Move (Bradley, 205)

-   The Island That Moved (Hooper, 2004)

-   How Do You Lift a Lion? (Wells, 1996)

-   Why Can’t You Unscramble an Egg? (Cobb, 1990)

-   Why Doesn’t the Earth Fall Up? (Cobb, 1988)

Living systems and life sciences:

-   The Way We Work (Macaulay, 2008)

-   Alive: The Living, Breathing Human Body Book (DK Publishing, 2007)

-   What a Family! (Isadora, 2006)

-   Have a Nice DNA (Balkwill, 2002)

-   Amazing Schemes Within Your Genes (Balkwill, 1993)

-   The Facts of Life: A Drop of Blood (Showers, 1989)

Earth and space science:

-   Arctic Lights, Arctic Nights (Miller, 2003)

-   The Incredible Water Show (Frasier, 2004)

-   Mountain Dance (Locker, 2001)

-   On the Same Day in March (Singer, 2000)

-   Cloud Dance (Locker, 2000)

“‘Way-In’ Books Encourage Exploration in Middle Grades Classrooms” by William Bintz in Middle School Journal, January 2011 (Vol. 42, #3, p. 34-45), available for purchase at

http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/MiddleSchoolJournal/Articles/January2011/tabid/2309/Default.aspx

Bintz can be reached at wpbintz@gmail.com

Self Exploration

It is time to begin thinking about our Spring CBU Plans.  The SRT Theme is Exploration.  Each grade level team is responsible for figuring out how they will incorporate Exploration into their units over the course of this semester while creating a display that showcases how this theme was integrated across the curriculum.

One idea that I would suggest is Self-Exploration.  Adolescent males are trying to understand themselves.  We are trying to teach them how to make and achieve short and long-term goals that will help them reach their dreams and become productive responsible members of society.  Concepts related to this include:  Career Exploration; Being a Male (Man); Being a Global Citizen; Generational Patterns and Family Traits / Characteristics; Interests, Goals, and Dream.  With that idea, I would also suggest creating a Career Section in your class.  Everyday for 30 days a new career related to your content area can be introduced and discussed in class.  This idea allows for students to see opportunities for themselves in your content, thus making the lessons more relevant.

I look forward to your thoughts about these suggestions.

What Does Differentiation Look Like?

Here is a link to a site that describes differentiated instruction.  Let me know if there is anything here that helps you.

http://www.primary-education-oasis.com/differentiated-instruction.html

Weekly Bulletin Quotes

Mr. Shelton listed the following strategies and quotes in this week's bulletin. I wanted to highlight them here. Let me know if they have any special meaning for you.

Strategies for Teaching Boys and Girls, Secondary Level, p. 66
 
Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life-One of the first steps toward becoming a great, inspiring teacher is to concentrate on building strong relationships with your students while simultaneously making learning fun (Kunjufu, 2002).  As obvious and rudimentary as it may sound, your students must actually like you, you must show that you like them.  Students should be able to sense how you feel about them through your words and your actions.  Many of them simply want someone to listen to their concerns and offer suggestions.  
 
Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lost.
 
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
 
Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first.  The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.  When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

​Marva Collins

Have a great week.

Do You Want to Post?

Any of you who are interested in being able to post to this blog, please let me know?  I will need the email address you would like to use for access to Google Blogger.  Then I can add you.  Being able to post means that you can post questions for the learning community or add topics and information that you think will benefit us all.  Contact me if you are interested or if you have any questions.

PD 360 - Online Professional Development

Please take the time to sign up for a membership.  It is really worth it.  Some of you who are looking for ways to improve will really enjoy this site.  It has thousands of videos that teach and model strategies for educators.  Visit www.pd360.com and click create a new account.  It is free.  If you have any questions or encounter any problems, please contact me.  I will work with you to set up your account.

For a preview video of this resource visit http://schoolimprovement.com/preview/

Strategies and Tips for Students Who are Not Studious…

Many of our students come to school completely ready to learn.  They come from households where parents care about them and their education.  They are expected to go to college and to become successful members of society.  They bring their school supplies, their good attitudes, and their best behavior.  Then there are the other students who need to be taught to know all of those things about themselves.  We not only have to teach them the content, but we have to teach them school etiquette.  We have to teach and model for them how to learn and how to be successful.  Here are some suggestions.  Please add some strategies you would use.

Create routines.  Students (especially male students like me) need structure and routines that help them feel safe and successful.  Students have to be taught to care about grades and failing.  They need routine assessments.  Create a predictable testing schedule (the same day every week) with study sessions and test review sessions.  Also, include optional and mandatory make up sessions for those assessments. 

Create a daily routine.  Students should know what to do when they enter the classroom.  There should be no guessing for the start of the class.  They should know when, where, and how to unpack, sharpen pencils, if they should talk or be quiet, and what to do with their homework.  Eliminate the guessing from them.  Students complain about structure and rules, but they want it.  They need it.  It makes them feel safe.  Vary your delivery of instruction and their activities, but start and end class in the same exact way until your students become the hard working, responsible, self-motivated learners that they need to be.

Create a class theme.  A classroom should be a window to the real world.  Find a subject based theme that builds around a career, job, or social issue that could be interesting for the students.  Your ELA classroom may become a newspaper, magazine, or television studio.  All of your activities may center around the publication or production of a periodical or broadcast.  Every month the students can record their news segments or sell their periodicals to the staff and students.  It can be full of current events, content material, entertainment, or school news.  Your social studies class can run a website that creates history lessons for kids.  Your science class can be a special research organization full of different types of scientists working together to solve societies problems.  Math classes can be analysts and pundits for news and sports shows who solve math problems to teach younger students.  These are merely ideas, but the idea is to MAKE THE LEARNING RELEVANT.

Take responsibility.  Be consistent.  Hold the students accountable for their actions.  Teachers must carry themselves as if they have the power to make things happen.  Things being… learning – discipline – success…  Before I felt like a good teacher.  I acted like a good teachers I had seen.  Eventually, I became a better teacher.  

This new semester is a chance for a fresh start.  Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you.