Includes link to PD video

"We encourage you to use this guide as a resource when analyzing sets of assignments across multiple days or weeks within your classroom, school, or district. It can also be used to call out important features to consider during the assignment formation process.

We add a note of caution about its effectiveness when examining a single assignment. And we caution against the notion that each assignment in a given classroom should include every feature or meet every indicator within this guide."

Third in a 3-part series about 'tween brains. This final installment links the neurological research about preadolescent brains to specific and do-able classroom management and instructional strategies.

Cool infographic/flowchart that helps teachers and parents match up kids with books based on "what they get excited about outside of the pages."

"In middle school, we ask students to dissect texts and perform literary analysis. However, that does not mean that we have to limit how we assess their understanding of the books." This post offers five alternatives to the traditional book report.

The author, Julie Coiro, is a standout in the field of digital and information literacy, but I am not surprised by her research findings that more than 70 percent of 700 middle-schoolers demonstrated "shortcomings" in ability to critically evaluate information.

Why should kids know how to evaluate online information, when we really don't teach them how to evaluate information in general?

That doesn't diminish or take away from Coiro's assertion that "the problem is not likely to go away without intervention during regular content area instruction." I agree. Let's teach critical literacies across the content areas.

The remainder of Coiro's column seeks to address this question: "So, what can you do to more explicitly teach adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information?" What would be interesting is to engage preservice teachers in a dialogue about how Coiro's suggestions for critical evaluation of online sources apply (or, do not apply) to ALL sources of information.

"Imagine that this is the CliffNotes of 'tween brain research, but your research should not stop at this because, frankly, the more you know about how they learn, the more you can pass on to them the secrets of how they process and embed knowledge. In the end, this leads to greater achievement."