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The Middle Years of Schooling Association (MYSA) invites all those committed to the education, growth and development of young adolescents to their 6th International Conference, 21 - 23 May2009. The Conference will enable participants to: explore ways of connecting in the middle years of schooling

Various explanations and solutions have been proposed over the last ten years in relation to the ongoing problem of student lack of engagement with the middle years' curriculum in Australia. Identified contributors to this problem include an irrelevant or trivial curricular focus and ineffectual teaching and learning strategies.

In late November I wrote a blog post outlining five resources for free spelling games. That blog post was among the top twenty most read posts of 2008 therefore I am sharing some more online spelling games for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. 1. Spelling Wizard from Scholastic.com lets students, parents, and teachers create their own word search and word scramble games to play online. Each game can have up to ten words. To use Spelling Wizard simply enter ten words into the list field then select word search or word scramble. Spelling Wizard is probably best suited for students in Kindergarten through second grade. Scholastic also offers a free tool for creating online spelling flashcards. 2. Read Write Think has an online activity for young (K-2) students based on four childrens' books. Read Write Think's Word Wizard asks students to select one of four books that they have read or have had read to them. After selecting a book the Word Wizard creates a simple online spelling exercise based on the words in the book chosen by the child. 3. Spell Bee was developed at Brandeis University with funding from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Spell Bee allows students to play spelling games in a head-to-head format. Spell Bee allows teachers to create accounts for students so that teachers can track student progress. 4. MSNBC has an interactive spelling bee based on the words from the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. There are three games to play and the words get progressively more difficult the longer you play. The words are read to students who then type the word into the spelling box. Just like in a real spelling bee, students can get the definition and or hear it used in a sentence. The difficulty of the words in the game make it best suited for middle school and high school students. 5. Spelling Bee The Game is an online spelling bee similar in style to the MSNBC game mentioned above. Aft

Excellent middle school website with animations, lesson plans and everything! Hip tip to Holly Barlaam over at the Diigo in Education group for this site.

Graph supporting argument is useful for reading promotion. "Studies show that kids from low-income families who have access to books over the summer not only beat the summer slide, but make even greater gains than kids from wealthy and middle-class families."

Andrew Churches post re:  a project out of Harvard University. The essence of this project is a series of routines or perhaps "mantras" for thinking. They are simple and to the point. While more suited to Middle school students they are good, apt and appropriate. Some of the truth and understanding routines will definitely have a place in senior classes.

Fabulous section on middle and high school

Free website for elementary/middle school-age kids with book trailers, educational games and literacy-related resources.

A good tool for story creation that features some sophisticated editing tools perfect for middle or high school students. Students begin with story starters or a completely blank book. The site includes numerous templates and images to insure a professional looking book. Mixbook also offers accounts designed for teachers.

"Get your hashtags ready: Twitter is a far more effective source of CPD than more traditional approaches, research has found. Indeed, teachers believe they derive more from the 140 characters of a tweet than they do from several hours of seminars or lectures. Academics from two US universities surveyed 755 members of school staff about Twitter. They found that the most popular use of the social media website was for CPD, with many praising Twitter's advantages over more traditional methods. Twitter, many teachers told researchers, allowed them to create a virtual staffroom, filled entirely with their own choice of colleagues. Indeed, a middle school English teacher explained: "I have learned so much from other teachers. It has transformed my teaching. And this is my 18th year [in the profession].""

"Eight basic principles for the "Innovative Classroom," around which one teacher designed a middle school course called Physical Computing. Some of the projects and tools are specific to that course, but the fundamental ideas could be applied to almost any course at any level"

"The principal of Northern Beaches Secondary College, Steve Pickering, and his colleagues were inspired to introduce this project-based learning after visiting progressive schools in Adelaide and the US a few years ago. He believes working in groups on real issues improves student engagement, especially in middle years, by leveraging team loyalty and promoting a sense of achievement. It also moves education towards student-centre learning and lets children make unique contributions they would not be able to on their own."

The BBC's Skillswise website is a great resource for a wide variety of content areas. On the grammar and spelling page there are 21 activities suitable for students of middle school and high school age.

Great database of debate or argument topics for middle school or above

Lure of the Labyrinth is a digital game for middle-school pre-algebra students. It includes a wealth of intriguing math-based puzzles wrapped into an exciting narrative game in which students work to find their lost pet - and save the world from monsters! Linked to both national and state mathematics standards, the game gives students a chance to actually think like mathematicians.

This site has some actual lesson plans and activities for the NXT robots.

The following lesson plans are for free use by Teachers of Robotics using the LEGO NXT Mindstorms Education kit. There are Junior, Middle and Senior School Lesson Sequences and plans that build on Robot Educator. They are designed to be used in an approximate 6 week block, but feel free to access single lessons.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

"Welcome to PBL-Online, a one stop solution for Project Based Learning! You'll find all the resources you need to design and manage high quality projects for middle and high school students."