In my seminars, I often talk about the special difficulties faced by middle school students and the issues that middle school teachers must be aware of and deal with. As an advocate of positive discipline, I appreciated Shaun Martin’s thoughts on offering specific praise to our middle school students.

Martin, a history teacher in Baltimore Maryland, explains that general praise like, “Good job!” has very little meaning for students of middle school age. Instead, teachers should offer praise that is meaningful to students. Specific praise such as, “You showed your work on number three perfectly!” and “Awesome work! You punctuated every sentence correctly.” offer students precise information and give value to the praise.

To read Shaun’s complete article, visit http://classroom-management-tips.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_praise_students_in_middle_school#ixzz0Ejt9hoNr&A .

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I recently suggested that a colleague use a Jigsaw approach to cover reading material with his college students. After hearing about how successful the strategy was for him, I realized that the Jigsaw is one of those easy and effective teaching strategies that is also vastly under utilized.

While I do talk about Read the rest of this entry »