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10 Ideas for Whole Class Rewards for Your Secondary Students
Teaching in a middle school creates interesting challenges. I always struggle with finding rewards and incentives that are age-appropriate for them. Middle schoolers are stuck in an awkward place where they are still young at heart, but most of them are trying to look and act like high school students. In a time where research shows that PBIS is the best method for classroom management and to create a positive whole-school community, it is imperative to find whole class rewards that motivate your class. Flexible Seating Options We would all love to implement flexible seating options into our secondary classrooms. But, often our biggest fear is the classroom management complications…
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4 Classroom Management Tips for Middle School
Teaching middle school is tough, heck being in middle school is tough! Everything about middle school makes people groan when I tell them what I do for a living. But, even though I never pictured myself as a middle school teacher (I was convinced I would be Ms. Honey from Matilda), I LOVE my job. I love the age and the kids and even the girl drama makes me chuckle from time to time. But it is a tough age for classroom management. The students are no longer at the age where they want to please you, and all they care about is what their peers think. Here are 4…
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Ways to Differentiate Homework
Homework is a hot topic in my district right now. Parents complain because we give too much, or not enough, or its too hard. Homework can be difficult for students who struggle. They think that they understand what is going on when they are in class, but when they get home, they have no idea what they’re doing. Don’t Give Homework Just to Give Homework Make sure that all of the homework that you give is meaningful. Think to yourself, what is the educational purpose of this homework. And if you’re not happy with your answer, maybe that isn’t something you should be giving for homework. I am not arguing…
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Pre-Reading Strategies for Middle School
Teaching reading to middle school students can be difficult. There aren’t as many resources for teaching middle school reading intervention. Check out 4 Resources for Middle School Reading Intervention. It can also be difficult to find age-appropriate activities to work with students on pre-reading. K-W-L Chart This is one technique for pre-reading that does translate to older students. A K-W-L Chart is where you have the students start by listing what they know about a topic (this is the “K”). Then, you have them make a list of everything that they want to know about the topic (the “W”). And then post-reading you add the third column of everything that…
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Using Stations in Middle School
As students get older, lesson plans tend to stray away from hands-on learning and group activities. They tend to lean towards more lecture-based lessons, sitting and doing paper and pencil work. But, are students really past the age where learning stations are beneficial? No! Movement When you teach with learning stations, students are given movement breaks during the lesson. Although middle school students can sit for longer periods of time; sitting for a whole class period is still difficult for most of them. Middle school students still are young enough that they benefit from the ability to get up and move during a lesson. Heck, I’m an adult, and I…
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Using Stations to Teach Exponent Laws
Often, teaching inclusion math in middle school, it is difficult to keep all students moving at the same pace. We faced this challenge recently when teaching our unit on exponent laws. We begin teaching exponent laws by teaching the different laws, product of powers, quotient of powers, power of a power, negative exponent rules, and the power of zero. On the first day, I provide my students who struggle in math with these cheat sheets of the rules, Power of Exponents. Throughout the unit, if anyone else gets our attention, we’ll give them one also. We then spend a few days giving students plenty of practice and reviewing all of…
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6 Effective Co-Teaching Models, and When to Use Them
Co-Teaching seems to be the trend for public schools. My school, like many others, is leaning towards a model that includes as many students as possible into the general education classroom. To make this work, many special education teachers are expected to co-teach. General education inclusion classes with the content area teachers to provide the necessary modifications and accommodations to the students on my caseload. In the meantime, there are great peer models coming from the general education population. Also, there is less of a stigma placed on students with disabilities because they are not being removed from the classroom. This concept makes it more difficult to determine which students…
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4 Awesome Middle School Reading Resources
Most school districts that I am familiar with, do not have a reading curriculum to use with inclusion students in middle school that receiving pull out reading services. At my school, there is a sub-separate curriculum for reading but this does not address the specific needs of my students because they are not far enough below grade level to qualify. When I started working at my school, we did have a reading curriculum, although, no one was using it because it was stale, outdated, and the kids hated it! Because of this, I have had to find my own tools and resources to use to teach my pull out of…
