This year I’ve been more careful when choosing the news items I bring into my 8th grade U.S. history classroom daily for our 5-minute current events discussions. Why? … Continue reading
“A Balanced Approach to Teaching Current Events,” MiddleWeb
Author: Sarah Cooper
Sarah Cooper is an administrator and middle school teacher at a school just outside Los Angeles. In her free time she enjoys running, listening to Broadway musicals, walking around the neighborhood and exploring new bakeries.
@sarahjcooper01
sarahjcooper.com
“Teaching Current Events in the History Classroom,” MiddleWeb
I loved Sarah Cooper’s first book, Making History Mine: Meaningful Connections for Grades 5-9. It was the first book I bought when I became a middle school social studies teacher, and I found it filled with great ideas and connections. So I was absolutely thrilled to be able to review her new book… Continue reading
“We Won’t Be Having Class Debates This Year,” MiddleWeb
As we start the school year, I’m just not feeling the debating spirit. Last November, I wrote about an electoral college debate gone awry in my eighth-grade history classes. The topic felt too stale and too political… Continue reading
“An Op-Ed Project Based on Personal Choice,” MiddleWeb
Assigning opinion pieces on current issues gives our students voice and lets us hear their strong and sometimes fiery perspectives. When I’ve assigned op-eds in both world and U.S. history, students have responded best when… Continue reading
“Invigorating Our Teaching of Writing and Revision,” MiddleWeb
Ruth Culham’s Teach Writing Well: How to Assess Writing, Invigorate Instruction, and Rethink Revision made me want to become an even more active writing teacher, one who encourages students… Continue reading
“Creating Citizens in the History Classroom,” MiddleWeb
Imagine that the ever changing world is your curriculum. That is the way it is for social studies teachers. History changes each day – from local news to news of the world. The job of a social studies teacher is… Continue reading
“Add 5 Minutes of Current Events into History Class,” MiddleWeb
Four years ago, I made a huge shift in daily classroom practice: I started talking about current events just about every day in my eighth-grade U.S. history classroom.I procrastinated making the change because… Continue reading
“It’s Like Having Coffee with a Master Teacher,” MiddleWeb
Leafing through Regie Routman’s Literacy Essentials feels not so much like reading a book as like having coffee with a master teacher, or maybe wading in and out of a calm ocean… Continue reading
“Making a Project ‘Pop’ with One Simple Tweak,” MiddleWeb
Sometimes it’s the simplest tweaks that make a project pop – and this one turned out to be even simpler and more effective than I had envisioned. Eighth graders at my school do an individual or partnered community impact project each year… Continue reading
“7 Ways to Help Students Do Research in the Stacks,” MiddleWeb
Asking students to use books for research sometimes feels old-fashioned even to me, an inveterate reader. So much exists online, in subscription databases and on the free web, and students instinctively reach for their phones or a keyboard to discover information. Yet doing research for my own master’s degree in history over the past few years… Continue reading
Sarah Cooper 