The January edition of our newsletter is designed to help teachers at Northern Middle School reset and refocus their teaching strategies. This is a time to assess our current position and plan our educational journey from January to May. The strategies highlighted in this newsletter stem from sessions presented in the America’s Promise 250 Grant, along with resources provided by our district.
As the Instructional Coach, my role is to support both teachers and students by identifying quality resources and strategies that can be seamlessly integrated into our classrooms. For instance, Diffit enables teachers to quickly create lessons, activities, graphic organizers, and worksheets. Language Arts teachers can use it to generate vocabulary lists and comprehension questions for novels.
Two valuable resources I’ve used are TeachShare and Magic School AI. Both offer free and paid versions, with the free versions providing numerous options for teachers. Magic School AI also includes a student login feature, allowing students to access assigned AI tools.
ReadWorks, a longstanding resource, offers quality reading passages and question sets suitable for various subject areas, particularly Social Studies.
Khan Academy continues to offer traditional tools like videos and lessons, while also introducing AI features such as a Blooket generator, discussion prompts, exit ticket creators, text complexity adjustments, and real-world context generators.|
The grant has introduced us to Social Studies resources from the Center for Civic Education and PBS Learning Media’s Social Studies Shorts and News Quiz. These resources provide engaging, skill-based inquiry lessons and videos on history and current events.|
Lastly, two inquiry strategies from Heidi Boles—Think About It and Encourage Questioning with Images—are adaptable across subjects. Encouraging students to analyze images and generate questions fosters engagement and deeper understanding, particularly in Language Arts and Social Studies.
My goal is to introduce new resources and revisit effective strategies to energize our efforts for the second half of the year. Let’s move forward, refreshed and focused on achieving our goals!
Jessica Wheeler, Instructional Coach
Northern Middle School
Pulaski County
