Melinda R Morgan

So, You Want to Teach Middle School! Melinda R Morgan

When it comes to teaching middle schoolers, simultaneous engagement can be a tricky, even a bit dicey at times. Engagement is not about keeping our tweens and teens busy and out of mischief, rather, it is about engaging our students in meaningful activities that require them to think critically about relevant content, and ideally, to do so on deep levels. This involves intuiting which engagement strategies are the best fit for the content and skills our students will be learning. ?It also involves understanding which types of activities will draw students in, and which ones are likely to be dubbed by them as beneath their social dignity or, in a word, lame. In this edition, we will explore several fun activities & instructional strategies that promote and encourage student involvement. We will consider the application of these activities in varying types of lessons, and we will look at how these strategies can support students with special needs and students who are English language learners.