Today, increasing numbers of teachers at all grade levels are recognizing that inference is a powerful way of thinking and an important 21st century skill for all students to use and develop across the curriculum. Increasing numbers of teachers are also recognizing that developing and implementing integrative curriculum is important at all grade…

Wilhelm offers us a definition of "third spaces" as "more democratic and dialogic spaces than a classroom, as well as a metaphor for a space in which new, hybrid, and challenging discourses and real-world knowledge and applications are created." With helpful background and examples, he urges us to create such spaces for our students, adamant that…

A middle school language arts teacher reflects on his experience in utilizing a school-housed online social network to create avenues for authentic audience, purpose, and response to student writing. With many technology proponents advocating a 21st century education, the fact that interacting with the Web 2.0 environment is essentially a reading…

Shanklin understands the value of civil, public discourse in a democratic society and the need to impart that to our students. She tells us that "when students enter a community where their use of growing literacy abilities is both respected and expected, they are more likely to use what they do know, and even to push themselves further, to…

Georgia Heard spent a week with students in New Mexico, encouraging their search for "self-portrait poetry"--poetry in which they saw themselves. She witnessed courage, pain, tragedy, and hope in the choices and writing of those struggling students, and came to learn that at least one among them had found a life-changing outlet.…

This article chronicles how the process of reviewing and grading student written work became an integral part of a middle school teacher's writing workshop practice. In addition to discussing how reading student work can bring educators back to the heart of the profession (including the belief that spending time with drafts can reap more rewards…

This is an introduction to a high school student's perspective on what the ideal language arts classroom should look like. It is based on a middle school language arts classroom structured around a Nancie Atwell style workshop model. The workshop model in the classroom was grounded in real life literacy experiences, allowed for choice in writing…

Looking backwards, discussions around sexual orientation and sexual identity have been noticeably absent at the middle grades. As a result, middle grade teachers may find it difficult to know how to effectively select age-appropriate materials that include LGBTQ issues and content. To move the field forward, the authors specifically highlight four…

This article describes the author's experience co-facilitating a project for which seventh-grade students designed and created original video games based on Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time". The author provides an overview of recent literature on video game implementation in the classroom and explains how the project was designed and…

Teachers are so often caught in between the proverbial rock and hard place when it comes to spelling. Parents, administrators, and test-scorers all want to see accurate spelling, but no one wants you to spend much time on it. And you shouldn't. Wilde offers here a treasure chest of specific lessons to use with whole classes or individual weaker…

In this article, the coeditors of "Voices from the Middle" present an interview with James Maguire, author of "The American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds." During the interview, Maguire talked about his experiences with the National Spelling Bee to provide some insight to middle-level teachers and students. Maguire…

The authors describe a collaborative relationship between a new middle level language arts teacher and a teacher educator in which they implement "classroom committees." This project enabled students to be responsible for their classroom environment as they worked together to problem solve issues that were important to them. Bryant and Daniels…

Educators are seeing a ray of hope as policymakers across political lines acknowledge that prescriptive education is not working and as educators find success in involving students actively in real work and meaningful goals within their communities. Glickman and Thompson define service-learning, offer successful examples from real classrooms, and…

At the minimum, one of every four middle school students will struggle to cope with the grade-level textbooks they are typically assigned to read. Few reading programs used in middle schools have any research evidence that they actually improve student reading proficiencies. Only three programs had even modest evidence of a positive effect, and…

Radcliffe describes how one middle school teacher works with her struggling eighth-grade readers to break the cycle of failure and begin new literacy lives. Five principles guided her over-age middle school students toward success after years of failure: accepting the challenge, building strong teacher-student relationships, creating literacy-rich…