literature circles

Creating Rubrics Through Negotiable Contracting and Assessment

What would happen if students were invited to help decide how their work should be evaluated? Would they exploit the opportunity, designing standards so ridiculously low as to guarantee a glut of effortless good grades?Surprisingly, the answer is no. Experience in Mrs. Martha Polin's class at Robert Wagner Middle School in Manhattan shows that students who are given a role in the assessment process of a mural from a historical novel lesson can and do rise to the occasion....

Using Multi-Level, Young Adult Literature in the Middle School American Studies

Talk to middle school teachers about the challenges of teaching today, and you are likely to be barraged with a long list of factors that make their jobs difficult. Class size, lack of materials, poor attendance– the list of problems facing today’s teachers sometimes seems endless. We often hear middle school teachers from all subject areas complain that, “It is so difficult to motivate students today.” Another complaint, often made by teachers is, “My students read on so many different...

Differentiating the Curriculum- How We Established a Multi-Level, Young Adult Literature Bookroom for the Social Studies Department

Recently, the District #2 Office in New York City mandated that all children at the middle school level should read 25 books per year. While the burden of this mandate fell most heavily on the shoulders of the Language Arts department, we at Robert Wagner Middle School in Manhattan began to discuss ways the social studies department could help to increase literacy, a goal important to all subject areas. As we talked, we agreed that it was misguided to assume that the language...

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Creating Rubrics Through Negotiable Contracting and Assessment

Using Multi-Level, Young Adult Literature in the Middle School American Studies

Differentiating the Curriculum- How We Established a Multi-Level, Young Adult Literature Bookroom for the Social Studies Department

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