When I taught middle school language arts, one of my students, Matthew, would complain that he was not able to give an explanation about or summarize the poems we were reading in class. However, every Monday he would...

Ok, so before you start freaking out and telling me how important curriculum is in a school, let me preface this whole article by saying that yes, curriculum is a very important part of a school's program. The purpose...

IMHO, LOL, OIC, OMG. If you've recently graded middle school or high school writing, chances are you've read terms like these; or my favorite, "wtf - idk" which also happened to be an answer on a student's quiz. As a...

We've all had those days when technology doesn't cooperate, leaving that innovative lesson plan we've worked so hard on to fall apart. I crafted a differentiated lesson using a popular web-based educational technology...

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people." – Victor Borge In my first year of teaching, I taught kindergarten. There are moments from that year that parallel later moments teaching middle...

One of my favorite days of the year is when I give students their first independent reading assignment. I believe the best way to keep the love of reading alive is for students to read what they love and share their...

The eighth-grade girl approached Tom Adams in the cafeteria. "Dylan just asked out Samantha as a joke," she said. "Now he's laughing about it with his friends, and Samantha is sitting at our table crying." Adams, the...

Much of the writing we assign our students is public writing—writing to communicate with others. Writing-to-learn is personal writing, writing that helps students increase comprehension of texts—fiction...

iGen, a term used by generational researcher Jean M. Twenge (2017), is used to describe children born between 1995 and 2012. In her book, Twenge analyzed large data sets to understand the struggles and hopes of this...

Reading and writing are powerful learning tools that can be used effectively in the math classroom to draw connections between mathematics and its application to the other school disciplines and the real world....