Seven tips for middle school students who will be reading and commenting on blogs. 1. Assume it’s public Some blogs are private so that only the class can see them. Others are public and the world can read what you say. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell how the blog you’re commenting on is set up. [...]
Archive for the ‘middleschool’ Category
The 12 students I teach at the end of every day have just returned from PE, sweaty and ready to go home. I have the pleasure of teaching them touch typing at just those moments. In my 4 years of teaching, this is universally the students’ least favorite class. Forget the bad timing, that’s not [...]
Head-to-head Typing Contest Originally uploaded by mgolding Something interesting happened on Friday that I’m excited to share. I set up my middle school keyboarding class in a March Madness-like competition. The goal was to infuse class spirit and assess the kids’ typing speeds (we use Typing Master software). Students battled each other for the highest [...]
I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about the classes I have this fall. The lineup is incredibly exciting. My only gripe is that I’ve been assigned first period planning. Several seasoned teachers have given me the upshots to the early planning period, so I’m going in with an open mind. Here are my [...]
While listening to Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing podcast, I learned about the chance to submit essays to This I Believe. Selected essays are read by their authors on NPR. I’ve heard the NPR program a few times and have been really moved by several of the essays. When I visited [...]
A group of my students worked on robotics this semester. As their final project, they had to design an obstacle course, build it, and program the robot to navigate it. Their course was dubbed “City of Destruction” because of the resemblance. The students are Ben in the 9th grade, Gavi in the 6th grade, and [...]
I wrote a cute little webquest about traveling to another place and writing home about sights seen. It started merely as a project to demonstrate that students can use email effectively. I think, though, that the webquest could also be used in a social studies classroom (maybe with some minor modifications) or even a language [...]
Alice 2.0 is free software that allows users to manipulate 3D graphics via a programming language to create virtual worlds (either with a virtual reality, immersed experience or with a movie-like experience). I’ve been successfully using this software with my 4th, 5th and 6th grade students. I’ve structured the lessons so that each day the [...]
