Last week, MiddleWeb posted “MiddleWeb’s Most-Read Posts of 2019 (So Far).”

I follow MiddleWeb’s posts for several reasons. First and foremost, this blog involves many different voices and keeps me in touch with a wide range of topics in teaching and learning. MiddleWeb posts often discuss issues related to coteaching mostly between classroom and special education teachers. This gives me the opportunity to listen and/or comment about coteaching between classroom teachers and school librarians. I also tune in because I only spent one year as a junior high school librarian so knowledge of the middle school perspective and experience is my weakest instructional level.

So, these ten most-read posts were curious to me. I am presenting them here in reverse order as they were posted on MiddleWeb. I have added my brief connections to learning through the school library.

10. How We Help Our Students Remember Stuff
Repetition in various contexts and environments helps anyone crystalize their learning. When classroom teachers, specialists, and school librarians coplan and coteach, they organically support repetition.

9. How a Tiny Spark Can Ignite Student Writing
It is so important for students to write in response to the literature they read and the resources with which they interact. Reading (in diverse genres and formats) and writing (using various tools) must be at the core of library learning experiences.

8. The Break-Up Letter: Bringing SEL Alive in Class
I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Marilee Sprenger reminds educators that (adolescent) emotions impact learning, which was also affirmed in the 1980s in the library profession by Carol Kuhlthau’s information-seeking research.

7. How Do I Strengthen My Student Relationships?
School libraries are often the place where students who don’t feel they “fit in” go to find a safe, comfortable, and welcoming environment. We should listen to all students with open hearts, and maybe listen even harder to those who find shelter in the library.

6. Six Steps Toward Fair and Accurate Grading
I am teaching this summer, field-testing new assessment rubrics, and revising them based on student feedback and learning outcomes. If I were coteaching, I believe that my initial and revised assessment tools would be even more effective.

5. How Principals Can Allay Resistance to Change
Yes! to principals who help pave the way for change. Nurturing and sustaining relationships with leaders helps school librarians contribute to change processes in their schools.

4. Eleven “Provocations” You Can Use as Class Starters
For me, these are what the Open phase of the Guided Inquiry Design Framework (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, and Caspari 2012) is all about! Yes! to provoking learning!

3. Creating Classrooms That Teach the Whole Kid
Dina Strasser writes about setting norms that address all aspects of students’ social, emotional, and academic lives in school. School librarians must be sensitive to norms set in classrooms. A whole-school approach to norms is ideal.

2. We Can Do Lots More for Students with Dyslexia
Yes! And school librarians as literacy teachers must keep current on research and strategies to support special-needs readers. (Many of these strategies are equally important for English language learners, striving, and struggling readers and learners.)

1. English Learners Need to Use Academic Language
And this most-commented on post brings me back to #10 above. Classroom teachers and school librarians develop a shared academic vocabulary when they coplan and coteach. This is a win-win-win for educators and students.

These posts show what educators, especially at the middle school level, are most concerned and excited about. This is important information for school librarians who share responsibility for student success. Thank you for spotlighting these posts, MiddleWeb. I look forward to your next installment of the most-read (must-read) posts.

Works Cited

Kuhlthau, Carol C., Leslie K. Maniotes, and Ann K. Caspari. 2012. Guided Inquiry Design: A Framework for Inquiry in Your School. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

MiddleWeb. 2019. “MiddleWeb’s Most Read Posts of 2019 (So Far).” https://www.middleweb.com/40685/middlewebs-most-read-posts-of-2019-so-far/

Image Credit
GDJ. “Social Media Connections Networking.” Pixabay.com. https://pixabay.com/vectors/social-media-connections-networking-3846597/