Implementing Effective Practices

Abstract

The authors, both participants in Crabapple Middle School's multi-age project, offer nine principles for middle school educators. IN THE EARLY years of the middle school movement, the developmental characteristics of young adolescent learners were front and center. We middle school teachers were asked to look at our students in new ways. Consequently, we wrote thematic, interdisciplinary units and designed minicourses and leadership clubs. We observed our students as they explored a wide range of domains, including art, music, home economics, and physical education. We began to see the whole child, to view our students as multidimensional beings with talents and abilities not addressed in traditional classrooms. We asked ourselves how we could capitalize on each student's strengths and work to improve each student's weaknesses. The two of us began to explore research on learning styles and found that we needed to know more. A supportive principal enabled us to attend learning styles training and to study the 4-MAT model of curriculum writing. Soon we developed a deep interest in the theory of multiple intelligences and in the connections between our students' developing bodies and their brains. All of this study brought us back to our original intuition that learning does not always occur best in rows of desks with stand-and-deliver pedagogy and that effective learning must incorporate art, music, drama, dance, and movement. We were confirmed in our belief that any child's weaknesses can and should be approached through his or her strengths. When we were asked to contribute our thoughts to this special section, we initially found the task overwhelming. But we took a deep breath, reflected on our beliefs, and found that we could offer nine principles that we believe lead to effective practice for middle school educators. Principle 1. Every lesson should include a kinesthetic activity. Only small percentages of any group of learners respond best to purely auditory stimuli. Therefore, every lesson should include a kinesthetic component. Kinesthetic learners make up the largest category of middle school students, and brief moments of activity can help imprint a lesson. Here are a few examples. In learning the marks of punctuation, a class can move in a line as it reads a text. When students come to a comma, they execute a hula movement. As the reading continues, the students perform other preassigned actions for each mark of punctuation. Or in learning the states of matter in a science class, the students can create a dance of the molecules. Or the Cartesian coordinate system can be illustrated by particular arm and leg movements when students refer to each quadrant. Social studies provides rich material for kinesthetic activities. Each student can be assigned to a particular historical character and given a movement to execute or a line of dialogue to speak when his or her character is mentioned. Both animate and inanimate objects may have such dialogue and movements. For example, the Rosetta Stone might say, I am the key, read me. Principle 2. Teachers must believe that every student has the potential to learn. Educators who judge their students by I.Q. or achievement test scores will limit their expectations and so limit opportunities for student growth. But lessons deemed appropriate for gifted students can be equally beneficial for all students. For example, consider the opportunities presented by an archeological dig. In preparation for this unit, students explore the idea of cultural universals - e.g., clothing, economics, government, language, recreation, religion/values, family structures, and so on. In their textbooks, they study the ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, and Rome and note their cultural universals. Teams of students are then formed for an archeological dig in which one team of students creates and buries its culture's artifacts and a second team digs them up and analyzes them. …