This single classroom procedure has made a HUGE difference in my experience teaching middle school. My first year teaching I didn't do this and I knew that something needed to change. I decided to put into a place a daily bellringer for every one of my classes. I am a Family Consumer Sciences teacher so I teacher 4 different classes!You can call it whatever you want to call it but I call it a bell ringer because my students are expected to be doing it as soon as the bell rings to start class.Her
My rule #1 in a series about bringing out the best behavior in middle school students, Helpful tips for managing adolescents effectively.
The biggest challenge with teaching middle school is the race against the clock! Ideas for how to structure a 60 minute class period.
Looking for games to play with a classroom? This list of English games in the classroom is exactly what you need to engage students!
Check out these 9 first week of school activities for your students. They help to forge those lasting bonds for a successful year!
The first week of school is a great time to build classroom culture, community, and teach class routines. Ideas for engaging first week of school activities to make it easy and fun!
Looking for games to play with a classroom? This list of English games in the classroom is exactly what you need to engage students!
Calling a student out in front of their peers can be unavoidable at times. But this can be tricky when you're dealing with middle and high school students.
Debates are a fantastic way to teach a number of skills to middle school students. They help students to develop the ability to research a topic, work as a team, practice public speaking, and improve their critical thinking skills. For teachers, however, it can be challenging to come up with debate topics for middle school students that are fun, interesting, and engaging. So to help you out, we have put together this list of 50 debate topics for middle school students. Some are fun and silly, some are serious, and some are even controversial. But all of these debate topics are guaranteed to engage your teenage students in a meaningful debate.
9 valuable lessons I've learned about Classroom Management as a middle school teacher!
There are times throughout the year when it seems like your classes just aren’t going right. You are working hard on your lessons, thinking of engaging applications, and even trying to add ch…
Start the school year off right!
These 40+ free STEM websites: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are for grades 6-12; middle school and high school. Hands on science
I develop curriculum for middle school math. I focus on using critical-thinking skills in my content so the math makes sense to the students.
Learn how you can start engaging your students with math task cards in the classroom. These ideas will give you some variety in how you use these valuable tools.
Today, on the blog, I am sharing 15 of my favorite Amazon finds that I use in my classroom.
There are times throughout the year when it seems like your classes just aren’t going right. You are working hard on your lessons, thinking of engaging applications, and even trying to add ch…
Have you ever wanted to create a flipped classroom but didn't know where to begin. This blog post provides some steps in order to...
Teaching research skills to middle school students is a gigantic task! Here are 10 Ideas to Make Teaching Research Easier!
Read on to get some great ideas for project-based learning in your middle school classroom!
If you’ve spent any time around teenagers, you know… they’re so weird! Whether or not you’re wanting to teach middle school or you’ve already signed your contract, you are ready to go because this is what you went to school for. WRONG! You’re about to become the sole adult in a room of preteens who do not play by anyone’s rules other than their own. True, your college classes prepared you to be a teacher. I quickly found out there were valuable things they left out about being a middle school teacher. Here’s my list of things to know: 1. They smell BAD. There’s not even a way to sugar coat it. Middle school kids smell like a combination of body odor, sweat, feet, dirt, Hot Takis, Skittles, and Axe. Sometimes it’s necessary to find some way to bring it up. I usually stick to addressing it passively by joking with the whole class and telling them deodorant is important because they all stink… because you can do that in middle school. Often times you will have to smile and suffer through it because it’s (hopefully) just a phase, and chances are that kid’s self-esteem is more fragile than an […]
Brain breaks for middle school students are extremely important not only for everyone's sanity, but for their brain development.
Teachers are lifelong learners who are always looking for new and better ideas to help their students learn. Starting off strong is key—with engaging activities from the very first day of school. As a 7th and 8th grade teacher, I tried different approaches to the first day of school. After some trial and error, I
Classroom management strategies for middle school are not the same as elementary strategies. Learn how to manage a middle school classroom.
Managing middle school classrooms can be challenging. Consider using these five ideas to help make managing middle school a little easier!
After reflections and surveys, try one of these 5 ideas for ending your school year in middle school!
What middle schoolers learn, how they behave, and how they interact with others can carry on into adulthood—whether positive or negative.
I read once that Albert Einstein remarked it is a miracle curiosity survives formal education. This observation has stuck with me: a pesky stone in my shoe. Somehow, amongst all the curricular demands, standardised testing, graduation requirements, examination preparation, and everything else which pulls at me, I desperately want to instill a sense of wonder, curiosity, and excitement in my students. I desire for them to love learning, to ask questions, to be curious about what they see, read, and hear. And one of the best – and simplest – ways I have found to do this, is the use of lesson openers which excite and engage. Inspired by the concept of provocations in the Reggio Emilia Approach1, I open learning experiences in an open-ended way which provokes student exploration, discussion, creativity, and ideas. This way, when we move into the content of the lesson, students are already engaged; their curiosity is hopefully piqued, and they’re more receptive to learning. Below are five simple ways I open classes in order to provoke engagement, discussion, and curiosity. Click here to get a downloadable version to stick in your daily planner, or on your desk as a reminder when lesson planning! INSTRUCTIONS: Place an object (which links to the lesson content) in the center of the room. For added intrigue and curiosity, place it under a cloth to ‘reveal’ when students are settled. Then use the exploration of this object to springboard into the lesson of the day: through a discussion, writing exercise, word association game, etc. For example: for a writing class about using varied sentence types, the object could be a bowl of sweets, and students write about the experience of eating one for the very first time. Or, it’s an informational text lesson, using a newspaper article on how social media impacts beauty standards, the object might be a pile of make-up, and students discuss their personal associations with these products. [Nouvelle ELA has a similar lesson for analyzing symbols: get it here] IDEAS FOR GOING FURTHER: Wait a while before you explain the presence of the mystery object: perhaps even have students spend time thinking about it and making predictions for why it is there (you may want to give them one or two clues). Equally, if appropriate, have the desks arranged in groups and place different objects on different desks. For example: in an introductory lesson for a unit on ‘Identity’ place different pieces of fruit around the room, and have students move to the one that most represents them, and then encourage them to explain their choice. WHY IT IS EFFECTIVE: Any time you add a little mystery or present something unexpected in the classroom, it will pique students’ curiosity. When they are intrigued and curious, they’re primed to engage and learn. Indeed, the emotion of curiosity has long been recognized as a vital motivating factor driving learning2. INSTRUCTIONS: Write a provocative statement on the board which links to the lesson content. (e.g. If you’re studying Romeo and Juliet: It is possible to fall in love the first time you meet someone. Or reading Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’? What about: Your dignity is always within your own control.) Then place tape, or indicate an imaginary line, across the room, with one end as “Completely Agree” and the other as “Completely Disagree.” Give students a minute to consider the statement and then have them stand on the line to indicate their opinions. [You might also want to check out the Daring English Teacher's blog post on Introducing Complex Ideas to Students] IDEAS FOR GOING FURTHER: Once students have taken their places, ask a couple of students on opposite ends to speak to each other: to debate and defend their positions. Or, have students turn to the person next to them and discuss, seeing if they really are in the right places, or if they should switch (if they feel stronger than their neighbor on the line). Finally, at the end of the lesson, why not do the activity again and see if any of them have changed their positions? WHY IT IS EFFECTIVE: This not only gets students thinking critically about key themes and issues, but it is also an effective way to make their thinking visible, and to push them to take a stand. Moreover, requiring students to give reasons for why they picked where they did, helps them back up their opinions with evidence and reason. INSTRUCTIONS: Think about the content of the lesson, and then try to mimic something of the mood/setting/theme in the classroom environment. While pinterest-worthy classroom transformations are wonderful, that’s not what I am talking about here. You can set the mood in quick and easy ways, which will engage students’ senses when they walk in the door. For example: when studying Lord of the Flies, visually project a jungle screensaver on the board, with ambient sounds. This doesn’t have to be just for literature lessons: if you’re spending the lesson writing, have students enter with ambient coffee shop sounds, or stormy weather (great for writing horror stories!). Check out the website A Soft Murmur for this: go play around with their sound settings. IDEAS FOR GOING FURTHER: If possible, engage more senses: play with lighting, images, smells, touch, etc. Or – to really engage students’ imaginations – before playing the ambient noises, have them settle down, and close their eyes. Then give them a scenario to imagine as you slowly turn up the volume on the ambient sounds. For example: in a lesson on Emily Dickenson’s “The Railway Train,” start by playing the sound of a train and ask students to imagine this sound as an animal: what would it be and why? WHY IT IS EFFECTIVE: Engaging the senses is a powerful learning tool: when we create a multisensory experience in the classroom, not only does it pique students’ curiosity, but it can also make the learning more memorable. Indeed, when engaging multiple senses, we optimise the learning mechanisms in the brain, and tap into the many different ways different students learn best3. INSTRUCTIONS: It is as simple as this: play a current song or music video, show an extract from a current TV series, use a trailer for a recent movie: anything which links the content of the day’s lesson with students’ interests and lives outside of class. For example: before we studied The Great Gatsby (click for resources), I played Lorde’s Royals and asked students what the song meant to them. Before telling students anything about Lord of the Flies, we watched the trailer for The 100 and discussed what such a situation would be like. IDEAS FOR GOING FURTHER: Have students suggest the media you present: at the end of a previous class, explain the broad content of the next class (themes, main topic, etc.) and ask students to suggest appropriate songs, video clips, games, etc., which would make for engaging lesson openers. This way, they too are making connections to their learning, and you are making sure the references are highly relevant! WHY IT IS EFFECTIVE: When we incorporate students’ personal interests and entertainments in the classroom environment, their learning becomes more relevant, engaging, and multi-dimensional. The key here though is making sure it is really something which students’ are currently interested in: not just what we might assume they will be interested in! And the best way to ensure this, is to really spend time building relationships with students, finding out their interests, and knowing what’s currently popular. INSTRUCTIONS: Before class, think about the key theme, topic, or skill which you aim to explore or develop. Then, think of 3-5 key words related to this; write these on the board, or around the room. When students enter, draw their attention to these words, and instruct them to work in pairs to construct a question using the words. For example, before a lesson on Fahrenheit 451 (click for resources), you might use “knowledge” “future” “technology” and “books.” A possible question students might generate: In the future, will books become useless, as we use technology to access knowledge? And this doesn’t have to be limited to lessons on literature: in a lesson about essay writing, words such as “style” “structure” “opinion” and “voice” might generate some engaging questions. IDEAS FOR GOING FURTHER: Once students have formed a question, provide the means for discussing or answering the question: this might be through small-group discussions, through accessing online sources, or through analysis of a text. The key here is you need to be flexible and open to going where students’ questions take the lesson. Why not even ask them how the class should proceed in terms of answering their questions? WHY IT IS EFFECTIVE: Too often, by the time they reach middle/high school, curious questioning has been replaced by incessant answering: students become adept at answering questions, but often lack opportunities to inquire and question. Developing this ability to ask questions will help with developing critical thinking skills, and engaging discussion proficiency. Moreover, students will be hooked from the start of class, and invested in finding out the answers to their questions. So that's it: if you have ANY questions, please feel free to reach out: come find me on Instagram, or email me at [email protected]. Looking for other high-interest, provoking lessons to excite and engage? Check these out: Active Learning Exercises for Reading & Writing by Room 213 READING Escape Room (Activities, Trivia & Puzzle Games for High School ELA) by The Classroom Sparrow MAKER CHALLENGE - Team Building Activity by Presto Plans RESOURCES: 1Strong-Wilson, T., & Ellis, J. (2007). Children and place: Reggio Emilia's environment as third teacher. Theory into practice, 46(1), 40-47. 2Markey, A., & Loewenstein, G. (2014). Curiosity. In International handbook of emotions in education (pp. 238-255). Routledge. 3Shams, L., & Seitz, A. (2008). Benefits of multisensory learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(11), 411–417.
There are so many positive classroom ideas for high school that high school teachers should steal from the elementary world...
The start of the school year can be exciting and overwhelming for teachers. Whether this is your first teaching job or you are a veteran, starting with a blank slate and a fresh start in the fall c…
10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.
You don't have to spend hours finding theme activities for middle school. Check out my ideas and resources for teaching theme!
Teach students in upper elementary, middle school, and high school
Get an outline for teaching all the reading and writing standards in your Middle School ELA class.
Hands-on learning isn't just for younger students! These hands-on activities for middle and high schoolers will help older students enjoy learning and stay actively engaged in the process.
Effective classroom management strategies are essential for a positive and productive learning environment for middle and high school students.
Get your students thinking like a historian from the get-go with these tips and ideas for your first Social Studies lesson of the year.
So… you’re a first-time middle school ELA teacher. Welcome to the madness, I guess! I’m kidding, but in all honesty, middle school isn’t quite like high school or elementary school. Middle school is its own unique level that you need to be prepared for as you get ready to run your classroom. But before we
Science vocabulary is crucial in science teaching, and as a teacher, It’s super important to do things to increase students’...
Get an outline for teaching all the reading and writing standards in your Middle School ELA class.
Try one of these 16+ free engineering design challenges and engineering projects to get middle school students brainstorming, building, and innovating with the engineering design process!
Manage your middle schoolers during speech therapy with my 10 best strategies for behavior management to encourage and motivate!
The biggest challenge with teaching middle school is the race against the clock! Ideas for how to structure a 60 minute class period.
I develop curriculum for middle school math. I focus on using critical-thinking skills in my content so the math makes sense to the students.
Check out these 9 first week of school activities for your students. They help to forge those lasting bonds for a successful year!
My rule #2 for teaching middle school in a series showing teachers how to bring out the best behavior in adolescents.
Teaching middle school is like no other teaching assignment - like no other task on Earth for that matter. As a teacher, you need to be just the right mix of cool and strict - but most important, calm. You need to have a good relationship with your students overall based on mutual respect. But that's much easier said than done. Here's the thing about middle schoolers in particular: They want to look good in front of their peers. What their peers think of them is of utmost importance to them (whether they are in touch with that reality or not). Therefore, they will "save face" if they think you, the teacher, are criticizing them or making them look bad in any way. (Meanwhile, you meant no harm; you were simply calling them out on a behavior they clearly exhibited). The thing is you can't call them out in front of their peers. I mean you can, but you shouldn't. Whenever possible, call out their less-than-stellar behavior one-on-one, without their peers hearing it. This could mean going to their desk and whispering, or waiting for a good time to call them to your desk ever so calmly. It's easier to call them out from wherever you are, but if you want your class under control and to maintain respect, somehow arrange a private convo instead. The Goal is this, which is my #1 Rule for Teaching Middle School: No Power Struggles Have you ever noticed how some kids act so differently when their peers aren't around? Let's say a kid in your class before lunch was really pushing your buttons and disrupting class, but then he forgets his lunch in your room. He comes back to get it. You two talk. He's really nice and respectful! You have a pleasant conversation. You're wondering if this is the same person or perhaps a twin brother you weren't aware of. What is going on? IT'S BECAUSE HIS PEERS AREN'T THERE! I'm using a boy as an example, but the same thing applies to girls. Do NOT try to address a student's behavior in full view of his or her peers (a.k.a. the audience). You could get yourself into a full-blown power struggle before you know it. At first, by drawing attention to his or her behavior in front of his or her peers, you may inadvertently say something or suggest something that makes the student, from his or her perspective, look bad or uncool or different in some way. If you're not careful, you might find that the child you're disciplining escalates the situation, essentially trying to look good at any cost, even if that means receiving a negative consequence. For some kids, receiving a negative consequence is just more attention (and even negative attention is attention) and the whole situation will most likely make most of the students in the class think you're the bad guy and he or she is the good guy. You don't want that. There should not be a bad guy or a good guy, just you the teacher calmly in control. What you want to do is simply find a way to calmly speak to the student one-on-one. Keep your voice calm, logically explain everything, follow through on a fitting consequence OUT OF VIEW OF THEIR PEERS and most likely you'll avoid the full-blown power struggle. And, whenever possible, DO POINT OUT POSITIVE BEHAVIORS IN FRONT OF THEIR PEERS. Give them the good attention they want deep down inside. Say something like "Hey everyone, I really like how Alex is using his notes to write his essay. Wow, he's almost done." I heard you are supposed to give five praises for every one disciplinary comment. I say I heard that, because I need to work on that lol. GOOD LUCK! Here's another trick I learned. When you provide your students with high-interest learning resources they feel are relevant to them and interesting in some way, they will actually behave better. They will get sucked into whatever you are trying to get them read, write, or do and forget about misbehaving. So, that's why I created these high-interest informational texts and tasks. I went out of my way to make the articles super interesting to middle schoolers by writing about things that interest them. And, guess what? It worked. I keep hearing from teachers how kids get so into these passages. They actually want to answer the questions. They even want to discuss the articles as a group. And teachers keep reporting how much time and hassle I have saved them. I did that by aligning every text and task to a specific Reading Informational Text Standard and did that 10 times to cover all 10 of them individually. Now teachers don't have to go searching for the right articles that bring out the right skills. Try both volumes and use them all year long! Your students are actually going to behave better because they won't be bored! I even made them in both PDF and interactive Google Slides in case you want the easy distance learning option! And don't forget to pin this so you can read it again or share it with a friend. Best wishes to you this year! You got this!
