"Using Technology to Motivate Middle School Students Middle school students are motivated by experiential learning activities. Effective technology-based activities require students to do more than look up information; they require students to "do" something with it."

I thought this site might be a good place to get ideas.

"Every time you read a text you read it the same way, right? Novels, textbooks, magazine articles and Internet web pages are all the same if they are written in the same language, aren't they? The answer to both of the questions is "not really". Readers employ different reading strategies and prior knowledge based on the genre (type of reading) and topic of the text. For this reason it is important that teachers help students, especially those in middle and high school, learn how to "tackle" their particular content area's texts."

I always think it is important to help students with content area reading, so I found this site appealing.

"Searching for middle school books that make the outside world disappear, the books that make me look for the next opportunity to read a few pages. Book summaries and images are directly copied from Follet's Titlewave and other reviewers as credited. Comments are my own. Eleanor Funk Schuster, Librarian"

I'm always looking for book suggestions for the kids. I like that there is a description of the book and often a link to the author's site.

I like that this was separated in genres, but it is not a visually appealing site. There is a lot going on which I find hard to navigate sometimes.

I thought there were a lot of good sites have students practice grammar.