MWSubstack 014: The Book Review Issue
Do you still read books about teaching and leading? Reflecting on the ideas of colleagues is a great way to add some DIY oomph to your PD this summer!
Welcome to MiddleWeb Substack. It’s a twice-monthly, topical, five-minute read for middle grades educators, featuring several of MiddleWeb’s most popular and influential articles, a book review, and a noteworthy 4-8 resource or project we’ve spotted. That’s it!
During school breaks, MIddleWeb editors often put together a "Book Review Festival" post at our website, featuring professional titles educators might enjoy reading. This summer we thought we'd showcase the work of our mostly school-based reviewers in the MiddleWeb Substack space instead.
Here are short summaries, with links to 10 popular reviews. If you'd like to become a reviewer, visit our how-to page at the website.
How to Reclaim Your Energy, Passion, & Time
In Educator Bandwidth, Jane Kise and Ann Holm provide ways to reclaim your energy, passion and time and to gauge your bandwidth with a survey. Factors include balancing priorities, focusing through mental habits, fueling your brain, and more, writes teacher leader Stephanie Choate. (ASCD, 2022)
Unearthing the Joy of Responsive Classrooms
Gholdy Muhammad’s Unearthing Joy offers ways to elevate meaning, reflection and joy so readers can offer cultural and historically responsive teaching most effectively. Teacher leader Sarah Cooper calls it “one of the most beautiful, inspiring, actionable books about pedagogy I’ve ever read.” (Scholastic, 2023)
How to Boost Students’ Intrinsic Desire to Learn
In The Student Motivation Handbook: 50 Ways to Boost an Intrinsic Desire to Learn, master teacher Larry Ferlazzo shows how to use research backed strategies to build a community of learners in the classroom and spark intrinsic motivation. Every strategy comes with real world, practical examples, writes social studies teacher Alexis Lecznar. (Routledge/Eye On Education, 2023).
Teaching for Retention, Application and Transfer
Eric Saunders provides well-researched neuroscience tips on spaced repetition, interleaving, and retrieval that can quickly advance student learning, says NBCT Megan Balduf. Use Stick the Learning to craft brain-savvy curricular experiences and scaffold their implementation. (Solution Tree, 2023)
Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn
Self-confidence is hugely important in learning math. In Rough Draft Math, Amanda Jansen shows how teachers can help students embrace a “revising to learn” approach, gaining confidence and understanding. Math and algebra teacher Michael Hernandez says the book will help him create a safe space for students to make mistakes and grow. (Routledge/Stenhouse, 2021)
Regie Routman “believes that we are most fully ourselves when ‘teaching, learning, and living are interwoven and seamlessly integrated.’ To show us this full self, she shares stories that might help us navigate our own worlds.“ – Read Sarah Cooper’s review of The Heart-Centered Teacher.
All the Tools You’ll Need for Differentiation
In Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom, Carol Ann Tomlinson and Marcia Imbeau offer new teachers and classroom veterans the rationale for designing instruction to meet diverse student needs. Most important, says reviewer Cathy Gassenheimer, they show how to manage differentiation in the real world. (2nd Ed. ASCD, 2023)
A Leadership Blueprint for Growth and Success
Whether read individually or as a group study, Presidential teaching award winner Melissa Collins’ Your Teacher Leadership Journey will help educators understand the growth cycle of a teacher leader and reflect on their own experiences. Collins includes teacher leader roles beyond the classroom, notes reviewer Stacy Haynes-Moore. (Routledge/Eye On Education, 2023)
Filling Your Classroom with Deliberate Optimism
Given the challenges educators are facing today, Debbie Silver and Jack Berckemeyer’s new edition of Deliberate Optimism could not be more timely. NBCT Kathie Palmieri finds lots to like, including a new focus on mental health, Silver’s humor, and the message that teachers “have to take our power back.” (Corwin, 2023)
Add the Power of Poetry to All Your ELA Lessons
Curriculum leader and 8th grade English teacher Kasey Short finds Brett Vogelsinger’s Poetry Pauses “amazing – and a must read” for middle school English teachers. "Filled with practical resources” that can help educators integrate poetry into lessons around any ELA topic or standard. (Corwin Literacy, 2023)
Help Tweens Develop Resilience Superpowers
School counselor Phyllis Fagell’s Middle School Superpowers offers educators and parents productive ways to help tweens deal with change, social missteps, missed opportunities and disappointment as they encounter adolescent challenges. A must read, says consultant Anne Anderson. (Hachette, 2023)
►Explore more MiddleWeb book reviews here.
►Here's how to review books for MiddleWeb.
Next time: In our next edition (early-mid July) we will, actually, for sure, get around to our oft-promised collection of articles about teaching at the middle level. What’s so special about that? Everything!