Teaching language standards can feel old-school. However, we also don’t want
our high school colleagues saying, “These students can’t even write sentences. What do they do down in middle school?” There has to be a balance somewhere; our kids do need to know the foundational skills. Like everything else in our classrooms, we need to have a strategic plan to ensure growth here, as well.
At NWC, we carefully embed the language standards into meaningful lessons. Never taught in isolation, these skills are weaved into real-world challenges the students and groups are tasked to solve. By practicing or integrating them naturally into classroom activities, this accomplishes two things. First, students are reminded of the importance of these standards, and two, students get the meaningful repetitions necessary to build mastery of them.