Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 8: Effective Assessment

This chapter of Meet Me in the Middle is important because it addresses the problems of assessment. Make assessment rigorous yet at the same time motivating. Giving the students some identity with the assessments help the students feel as if they have more ownership over the products and assessments. When students are being assessed, they should have the ability to use different medias and methods. The students should never have to take a boring test or essay. However, the assessments that the students complete should be easy to grade; teachers shouldn't make it any harder for themselves than they have to. Students will enjoy learning and assessments more if they have the ability to decide some of the aspects for that lesson or assessment.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction- Fitting the Lesson to the Learner

Differentiated instruction is important because it can help students of any level. Taking risks is essential to good teaching because if you don't change your instruction and try different techniques, you aren't helping your students. Sometimes there will be lessons that flop and times when they will exceed. With every success and every failure, teachers should take a mental note of how those techniques excelled or failed and why. Teachers shouldn't be nervous to try different things such as having students read a fiction book and explain the different aspects of science throughout the book. This can be more interesting for students and can increase their literacy in science.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 6: Accountability for High Standards

Holding the students and the teachers accountable for high achievement is the focus of chapter 6. The first part of the chapter talked a lot about how we as teachers can help students become more accountable for their own work. By giving the students more accountability, the students will feel as though they need to put effort and thought into what they are making or doing. The teacher also has to take the responsibility for teaching students how to learn instead of what they should know for the test. This is an important skill that many students are missing because of the standardized tests. As teachers, we should support each other to teach how to learn not what to learn. If we work together we can make a huge difference in the world of learning for all of those who walk through our school.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3: Brain Research Applied to Middle School

This chapter was a lot like the book that we read for our book talk, A Whole New Mind. The author did a really good job showing some different ways to help students with their memory. The idea of the triad question really stuck out to me. I like that the students will have to pay attention even through the answer a student is giving because they may be called upon to answer on the answer. This also reinforces the habit of having a discussion about the topic instead of simply spitting out an answer. This is a handy tool that will help with students memory. Another neat idea was the inclusion of emotion in learning. Students, especially at the middle level respond well to emotional cues and tend to learn better when emotion is used in a question.

Student Oriented Curriculum

This book was really good because it brought up a lot of really interesting ideas for teaching a class. I liked all of the ideas for learning who the students are in the classroom. It is really important to bring a group closer together in the beginning of the year so they can work together and create a strong bond. Building the schedule was powerful because it demanded me to look at how I wanted to set up my schedule to benefit my learning the most. One of the strongest things I found about the book was the idea that the students didn't take any tests or quizzes. The students were accountable for their learning and the progress that they made. This type of teaching gives power to the students and builds students learning abilities.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 13: Outdoor Activities

This chapter was another chapter that really caught my interest because there are so many ways that i can bring my class outdoors. Science is the study of the environment and how the environment reacts with outside and inside forces. By bringing my class outside and giving examples of what I am teaching, I can relate the material to the students lives. This chapter talked a lot about bringing students on camping trips and some activities that you can use to manage a large group of kids and keep it relevant to school. I really liked the idea of taking the kids out and showing them that school is not only relevant in the classroom, but in the world around us.

Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 4: Active Learning

I was really excited when they started talking about active learning because that is where we lose a lot of students. I love having hands on activities which are easy to incorporate in science. However, active learning can occur in any subject, there were a ton of really good ideas provided by the author. With an abstract subject such as chemistry, using hands on approaches can make a huge difference for students attempting to learn the material. A class should not consist of all lectures, there are times when physical manipulation with the subject can be the best method for explaining to students what you are trying to get across.