Produced by
Collaborative for Teaching and Learning
 Transforming Practice: the Middle Grades is a multimedia CD-ROM designed to enhance the professional development of middle grades educators. The tool provides opportunities for users to:
- Explore the unique needs of the young adolescent
- Develop awareness of national middle school reform movements
- Examine the characteristics of high-performing middle schools
- Investigate exemplars of standards-based integrated instruction
- Identify components that support instructional change
The tool contains a wealth of information regarding the physical, intellectual, and social development of the young adolescent and the role educators play in meeting the unique needs of these students. Additionally, it provides a synopsis of critical research from nationally recognized organizations like the National Middle School Association, the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform and the Center for Early Adolescence. The CD contains approximately one hour of video: thirty-three clips that have been carefully constructed to include administrator, teacher, parent, and student perspectives; classroom footage documenting effective instructional strategies and best practice principles; and supporting print and web link resources.
In particular the third section of the CD, Standards-Based Integrated Learning is designed in response to TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) results indicating a significant lower performance of American students. The lesson exemplars focus on meaningful integration of mathematics and provide the user with a deeper understanding of how to address adolescents’ needs through challenging, arts-infused, hands-on instruction.
Anthony W. Jackson and Gayle A. Davis, authors of Turning Points 2000: Educating Adolescents in the 21st Century (Teacher’s College Press, 2000), observe that teaching and learning for understanding require teachers to uncover  essential concepts embedded in their standards in order to develop a curriculum that reflects and reveals how these concepts are connected within and across content areas. Each lesson on the CD models teaching for understanding by providing evidence of teachers’ deliberate decisions to engage students in real world explorations that promote interdisciplinary connections, deepen students’ understanding of discipline-specific concepts, and the relationships that exist between disciplines.
Finally, the CD provides information describing the supportive infrastructure that must be in place within a middle school to implement and sustain instructional and curricular reform. Instructional leadership, avenues of communication, collaboration, common team planning, and classroom environment are among the essential components addressed within the final section of the CD. Transforming Practice: the Middle Grades will provide an overview of exemplary middle school philosophy and video footage of real schools and classrooms where this philosophy is being practiced. For additional information on this program, please contact Christie Maloney at cmaloney@ctlonline.org.
"ONLINE SPECIAL: Order online and receive a $5.00 discount off your Transforming Practice: The Middle Grades CD. Click on the tab at the top of the page, print out the order form (available in MS Word or Acrobat Reader) and mail to The Collaborative with your purchase order or check."
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