Tag: Student Engagement

Leveraging the Science Behind the Middle School Brain in your Teaching Strategies

Young adolescence is recognized as the developmental period our students undergo between the ages of 10-15. This is the age where students develop the ability to expand their concrete knowledge to a more abstract way of thinking.  The connections in the brain are occurring often, and the skills learned become hard-wired.  Because there is so

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Wayside Teaching Revisited

Revisiting the value of informal teaching beyond planned instruction. Wayside teaching was first introduced in the May 1987 “As I See It” column in the Middle School Journal—30 years ago. Here is a slightly modified version of it, particularly for all those educators who came to the middle school more recently. Formal, organized instruction is

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Semester Long Account Reconciliation Project leads to Student Success

We often rolled our eyes (literally) and stomped our feet (figuratively) when we looked at our pacing guide and saw the week that we would spend teaching account reconciliation. We viewed it as a necessary evil of eighth grade math state standards and as a concept that our students rarely see in action at home.

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The Power of Hope: What we Can Learn about Middle School from 7th Grade Inaugural Poetry Contest Finalist Gabby Marshall

At AMLE, we jump at the opportunity to amplify the middle school student’s voices and accomplishments. That’s why we were delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Gabrielle “Gabby” Marshall, a seventh-grade student at The Steward School in Richmond, Virginia and finalist in the Inaugural Poem Project and Contest for Students. Twelve-year-old Gabby placed

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