Tying shoes. A simple activity that's typically performed one or more times daily. Once people learn how to tie shoes, they can do so almost without thinking. One of my favorite activities to do with teachers and...

Collaborative, individualized, and competitive learning are instructional methods that can be used with the project-based learning approach in middle school, with collaborative learning (sometimes known as cooperative...

Background For many years educators have used punishment, or fear of punishment, as the primary deterrent to student misconduct. We have tried zero tolerance, excessive use of in-school suspension (ISS) and out of...

In working with teachers on integration and differentiation, there are a few obstacles that are prevalent in almost every group. Logistics in implementing this approach in a system that is currently used is a common...

As with most things in education, context can be everything. A skill taught in isolation from meaningful context, for example, is rarely learned, and often becomes grist for blaming the student for his lack of...

It's easy to become jaded about assessment, but I'm going to offer a different view that will hopefully make assessment a tool for learning instead of just an after-the-fact event. We can't always control all of the...

Aiden, an eighth grader, wanted to vent about his latest group project. He had to work with classmates to design an environmentally sustainable home in Vietnam. This involved sourcing local palm thatching and bamboo,...

Reader response compels readers to interact with the text and makes visible for readers and their teachers the depth of text comprehension. This is the fifth in a series on scaffolding writing-to-learn by teaching a...

"Student-centered" is just one set of new buzzwords in the education world. I remember sitting in a professional development session watching a video of students conducting the class with very little input from the...

At last year's AMLE Annual Conference for Middle Level Education, I was surrounded by passionate, knowledgeable preservice and inservice teachers, veteran and new administrators, and early career and retired...