Ten Great Sites Every Middle School Educator Should Know! (Education World)

The World Wide Web is home to dozens of sites devoted to the interests of middle level educators and students. This week -- in celebration of the National Middle School Association's Launching Into the Millennium conference and the Month of the Young Adolescent -- Education World has selected ten of the best of those sites to create a sort of middle school survival kit for you! Our list is different from many others in that it doesn't concentrate on the big sites; we highlight a handful of smaller sites too, including some great resources created by middle school teachers.

We don't ignore the big middle school sites; where one of those sites is mentioned, we focus on a single valuable feature offered there.
Here is a quick rundown of the "Ten Great Sites That Middle School Educators Should Know." Read more below about each of the sites.

TEACHER-CREATED SITES
Terrific Web Sites ... Just for Middle School Students
And find sites for middle school teachers too!
The 6th Grade Treasure Trove
Check out the index of great teaching resources!

Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk
Find teacher-created materials for teaching writing, literature, and reading.

The Teacher's Desk
A well-organized resource is presented for teachers by a teacher.

SPECIAL PAGES FROM THE 'BIGGIES'
ERIC Digests Web page
Do a quick search for expert reports on middle school issues.
Middle School Survival Guide
This downloadable guide is for parents of middle school youngsters.

Middle School Diaries
Eavesdrop on the exploits of two middle school principals and a teacher.

National Middle School Association Resource Center
Research summaries and position papers, much more, on hot middle school topics.

MiddleSchool.Net
Bunches of resources "from teachers, by teachers."

Midlink Magazine's
Call for Participation: 1999-2000 Review a listing of on-line interdisciplinary projects that are coming up.

ONE MORE 'MUST'
Middle-L Listserv
Sign up to join this virtual teachers room!

* * * * * *
Now, here's the scoop on most of the ten sites (and a listserv) listed above.

TERRIFIC WEB SITES
Terrific Web Sites ... Just for Middle School Students is an aptly named Web page. Created by Rick Donahue, a computer technology teacher at Eastchester (New York) Middle School, Terrific Web Sites started out as a resource for Eastchester's students; it was designed to provide them with an easy-to-browse list of links that related to the school curriculum and other topics of interest.

And easy to browse it is! Terrific Web Sites offers hundreds of age-appropriate Web sites. Grouped by subject area, then by topic, the list is clean, well organized, and easy to use. In addition to the major curriculum areas, Terrific Web Sites also offers the Fun Sites For Kids section, which includes links to games, on-line magazines, magic tricks, sports information, and more.
"The links come from a number of sources, including my middle school students and the teachers in my school," Donahue told Education World. "The entire Stock Market section, for example, arose from an ongoing project in seventh-grade math classes. The Science Fair section is used by all seventh and eighth graders in selecting topics for their annual research projects.

"I also receive a significant number of e-mails suggesting links," added Donahue. He adds many of those suggested links to Terrific Web Sites, avoiding those that aren't really suitable for his students or that have a commercial tie-in.

"This is only one of the resources available to our students, but one that provides links that have been especially helpful to past students," said Donahue. "Students who use this resource often find that less time is spent searching for appropriate Web sites and more time is spent concentrating on content.

"This is a work in progress," he added. "Individual links are added, revised or deleted continuously, and when I learn of a new unit of study in the school, I attempt to create a corresponding category of links."

For those schools that might want to create their own subject-by-subject resource, Terrific Web Sites would be a terrific example to follow!
Donahue has seen some benefits from the site that he didn't imagine. "Many parents are concerned that there is little of value for their children on the Web," he said. "I suggest that they begin exploring some of our suggested links. That provides proof that access to the Internet in school can be beneficial."

The Terrific Web Sites page also offers an accompanying resource for teachers, Web Resources ... Helpful to Middle School Teachers.

SIXTH-GRADE TREASURE TROVE
At Holy Redeemer School in Kanata, Ontario (Canada), sixth-grade teacher Karen Walkowiak has created a neat site called The 6th Grade Treasure Trove. But don't let the name of the site fool you -- this treasure trove is packed with stuff for teachers of every grade!

"The Treasure Trove began as a part of my professional development plan," Walkowiak told Education World. "I am extremely grateful for the kind support that my colleagues, globally, have demonstrated."

The best way to start sorting through the treasure here is to follow the link to the Treasure Trove Index. Here, you'll find an alphabetic listing of some of the site's great resources. Looking for holiday-related activities? You'll find plenty of them. What middle level teacher wouldn't find value in the Treasure Trove's pages devoted to :

Writer's Workshop -- Here, you'll find tips for running Writer's Workshop in your classroom along with grading rubrics for stories, articles, and poems.
Debates -- On these pages, you'll find tips to help you organize a debate and set expectations along with tips for students as they prepare for the debate and plan arguments.
Public Speaking -- This section offers tips to help students choose and present topics as well as easy-to-use rubrics for student self-evaluation and whole-class evaluation of presentations.
But we haven't even gotten to the best stuff yet. You'll find plenty of practical resources, including ready-made lesson plans, activities that would make great additions to your school's Medieval Faire, a procedure for developing student portfolios, tips for helping students plan their role in parent-teacher-student conferences, and much more. Scan Treasure Trove's index. You're sure to find something of interest there!

Although she is not teaching this school year at Holy Redeeemer, Walkowiak wants Education World readers to know that she is still maintaining the site.

THE MIDDLE SCHOOL SURVIVAL GUIDE
Every middle school educator has faced it -- exasperated parents who turn to you for advice. They can't control their child ... they can't understand him ... they can't deal with her ... they've tried everything, and now they're throwing they're hands up, ready to throw in the towel.

This one's for the parents!

But there's lots of good advice here for teachers too. School principals might also adapt some of the information for use in the "tips" sections of newsletters that the school sends home to parents.
The following site is a .pdf file that requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in. The file is large; it might take a few minutes to download.

Created by the Middle School Coalition of the Jefferson County (Kentucky) Public Schools, the Middle School Survival Guide was created to help parents (and students) through those "warm and wonderful, bewildering, sometimes scary, silly and exciting" middle school years. It's a guide to trying to understand, to setting rules and guidelines, and to dealing with the turmoil that can be part of life with a middle school-age youngster. It's all here, a veritable ABC of advice to parents about young adolescence -- tips for dealing with everything from basic etiquette to piercing and tattooing, from building self-esteem to dealing with emerging sexuality.

The chapter heads say it all. Among the topics addressed are these:

Changing Relationships -- This chapter is broken down by typical changes exhibited by 5th-6th graders and 7th-8th graders.
Discipline -- Read basic rules from successful parents.
Establishing Party Rules
Gangs -- Learn about what parents can do.
Eating Disorders -- Use this handy Q&A.
Special pages for kids introduce issues related to alcohol use and "Eight Habits for Successful Middle School Students." A special page for parents offers tips for supporting their kids in school.

COME TO KIM'S KORNER!
Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk is another teacher-developed site that's brimming with valuable materials for creating classroom lessons. Developed by eighth-grade language arts teacher Kim Steele, the site is a gold mine of ideas for teaching writing, literature, and reading. A section packed with ideas for managing the classroom is a bonus!

"I began Kim's Korner after I searched and searched for information on the Six Trait Analytic Writing Model and found very little," Steele told Education World. "I thought I would share a few of my ideas with others who were also searching. With each page I created, new ideas for other pages crept into my mind.

"I learned more about creating Web pages, and soon I couldn't stop myself!" added Steele.

Middle school teachers should be thankful that Steele "couldn't stop herself," because Kim's Korner is a bounty of practical ideas and resources.

If writing is your focus, you'll find ideas in Kim's Korner for teaching modes of writing, the writing process, writing organization, voice, word choice, and more. Each section offers hands-on materials and rubrics that will make clear to students what is expected of them.

Ideas for teaching reading and literature include original materials -- including spelling contracts, ideas for teaching Accelerated Reader, and suggestions for building and maintaining a classroom library. Links to lessons on other sites that provide ideas for using graphic organizers, alternative book report ideas, and more are also included.

The Classroom Management section includes links to organizational tips; ideas for bulletin boards, review games, and student rewards; suggestions for making new staff members feel welcome in your school; and more.
Take a few minutes to explore the nooks and crannies of Kim's Korner.

EAVESDROP ON LIFE IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL

"I spent the two weeks before the beginning [of school] at break-neck speed, trying to finish getting staff in place for the upcoming year. It's almost hard to describe the pressure I feel to get the 'best staff' for our students. Teachers are becoming very transient, and they may choose to change schools as late as early August ... but to find a superb teacher without a job in early August is almost impossible. ... Summer is the time of year when I most feel like I am in a business. It is a dog-eat-dog world, and middle school teachers are certified to teach fifth and sixth grades at our elementaries and ninth grade at our high school, so sometimes we compete against ourselves within our district."
Those are the reflections of Michelle Pedigo, principal of Barren County (Kentucky) Middle School (selected as a "School to Watch" by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform). Pedigo is one of two principals and one teacher who will be sharing the ups and downs of life in their respective middle schools in this year's installments of Middle School Diaries, one part of the award-winning MiddleWeb Web site.

"As MiddleWeb begins a second year of school-diary publication, we once again invite you to indulge your curiosity and look over the shoulders of our diarists as they reflect on their daily experiences and ponder the mysteries of successful schools," said MiddleWeb's editor, John Norton. Each of the three diarists will post weekly entries in their on-line diaries.

This year, teacher Deborah Bambino continues to share her diary entries about life in a Philadelphia middle school. Last year's entries are now available in book form. See Education World's review of Bambino's Teaching Out Loud: A Middle Grades Diary this week on our BOOKS IN EDUCATION page.
The diaries are just one feature of MiddleWeb, a site that every middle school teacher and principal should bookmark! In another popular feature, Newswatch, MiddleWeb posts links to news stories of interest to middle level educators. Educators who wish to keep abreast of the latest news about middle level schools from newspapers around the United States can sign up to receive a weekly e-mail that will include links to the latest stories.

Take a look at MiddleWeb -- and sneak a peek at those diaries!

THE TEACHER'S DESK
Is your desk cluttered? Or is it neat and organized? Whichever is the case, you really must check out this teacher's desk! The Teacher's Desk Web site was created by Angela Anne Ackley, a fifth- and sixth-grade language arts teacher at Sts. John and Paul School in Ashtabula, Ohio.

This Teacher's Desk is very well organized! Here, you'll easily find bunches of links to great sites for teachers. You'll also find an excellent message board too. But the highlight of this site is its compilation of Over 250 Lesson Plans. In that section, you'll find lesson plans for Spelling/Vocabulary, Writing, and Reading. The Spelling links -- more than a dozen of them -- include links to spelling games that are review ideas. The Writing lesson plan page offers links to "Paragraph a Week" ideas, forms for evaluating writing, and more than a dozen creative writing tips.

"When I first began using the Web as an educational resource in September 1996, there just wasn't much out there for teachers," Ackley told Education World. "Oh, there were many sites for lesson plans, but when I visited them, they were simply pages of links to still other sites, which in turn were pages with links to other sites. There was little content-rich material at one single site. My evenings spent searching were often frustrating and fruitless."

Then Ackley met two seventh graders! The two were well versed in HTML. They took on responsibility for developing their school's Web page, a job Ackley supervised. "At the time I didn't know HTML," Ackley said, "but I did have a strong background in using computers and a desire to learn more about the Web in general. Watching those two seventh graders talk about tags, colors of backgrounds, .gifs, .jpegs, etc., and put together our school Web site lighted a real fire in me to be able to do the same. They challenged me to learn HTML and help create the school site along with them. They actually gave me HTML lessons via e-mail on the weekends. The Teacher's Desk was my homework assignment at first."

Ackley launched The Teacher's Desk in January of 1997 with approximately 20 lesson ideas. Three years later, it is a virtual warehouse of lesson ideas. Poke around on this Teacher's Desk today, and you're sure to find a great activity for your students tomorrow!

MOTIVATION AND MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS
"Few educators would argue with the premise that student motivation is an important influence on learning. Motivation is of particular importance for those who work with young adolescents. Considerable research has shown a decline in motivation and performance for many children as they move from elementary school into middle school. Often it has been assumed that this decline is largely caused by physiological and psychological changes associated with puberty and, therefore, is somewhat inevitable. This assumption has been challenged, however, by research that demonstrates that the nature of motivational change on entry to middle school ..."

So begins the abstract to ERIC Digest 421821, Motivation and Middle School Students. The Digest goes on to outline suggestions for middle school teachers and administrators who wish to enhance student motivation.

"Motivation and Middle School Students" is one of hundreds of articles that can be accessed on the ERIC Digests Web page. ERIC Digests are funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education. Each Digest is a short report (1,000 to 1,500 words) on a topic of prime current interest in education. The reports, reviewed by experts in the field, are designed to provide an overview of information on a given topic plus references to items providing more detailed information.
If you're working on a research project for a college class, if you're on a committee charged with exploring a current issue in your school, or if you just have an interest in furthering your own knowledge about the kids you teach, ERIC Digests offer a great starting point. Using the ERIC Digests search engine, I was able to find 175 Digests that deal with the issue of motivation! You can also search the Digests by the date they were added to the library. A search of the most recent additions revealed a wide variety of Digests that deal with issues of interest to middle level educators. Following are just a handful of the titles:

Integrated Curriculum in the Middle School
Model Programs for Middle School Teacher Preparation
Parent Participation in Middle School Language Arts
Grouping Students for Instruction in Middle Schools
The Transition to Middle School
Student-Led Conferences at the Middle Level
Middle Level Education in Rural America
Gifted Learners and the Middle School: Problem or Promise?
Looking for materials on inclusion, parent involvement, discipline, looping, multi-grade classrooms...? Just plug those key words into the ERIC Digest search engine and off you go!

NMSA'S 'RESOURCE CENTER'
If you're an educator who is doing research on a hot topic related to middle level education, the National Middle School Association Resource Center is a great place to start! In the Resource Center catalog, you'll find links to best-sellers, curriculum case studies, parent resources, and much more.

Many of the resources found in the NMSA Resource Center are available for purchase. But the Web page also includes many freebies! Among the free resources you'll find are research summaries on issues of exemplary middle schools, young adolescents' developmental needs, heterogeneous grouping, evaluating the effectiveness of programs, the effects of inclusion, and more. Position papers are available too -- including papers on the middle level curriculum and student teaching at the middle level.

Go right to the source -- go to the National Middle School Association for great resources!

AND A LISTSERV TOO!
OK, so this is number 11 on our list of ten -- but this isn't really a Web site! It's another fine resource from the people who produce ERIC Digests -- it's the Middle-L listserv.

Every middle level educator should sign up for the Middle-L Listserv. It's one of the most active listservs around; currently, about 900 educators are members. Members receive all the posts that are addressed to the list and are free to respond to list members' comments on issues of a wide variety. Among the issues being discussed as I write are violence in society, school vouchers, teachers who have to find their own substitutes, tips for persuasive writing activities, a debate on the self-esteem movement, how to make studying your state fun, schools that use no bells. ... You get the idea. Any topic of discussion is fair game on Middle-L.

Like any teachers' room, many topics are being discussed at once in Middle-L, and all kinds of personalities are involved. Flare-ups happen from time to time, feelings are hurt, and laughs and tears are shared. Middle-L is not for the faint of heart.

Join the list and sit back and watch and listen for a few weeks before joining in any discussion. You'll get a sense for the list, how it works, and some of the people involved. You'll also get a sense about whether you can handle the flow of mail. As I said, this is an active list. You'll receive 30 or more messages a day. (You'll become a pro at using the delete button on your keyboard to delete messages on topics that don't interest you!)
Another option is to sign up for the Digest version. You'll receive one message each day with the collected messages for the last 24 hours.

All middle level educators should join Middle-L -- to see whether it's for them. It's professional development on the fly. You can't help but learn something new each time you open your mailbox!

Article by Gary Hopkins
Education WorldÂ® Editor-in-Chief
Copyright Â© 2006 Education World

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Originally published 10/25/1999
Links last updated 10/04/2006