Resources for a Brand-New School Year

| By Elizabeth Mohn |

A new school year is a new opportunity for teachers to engage students and to find new ways of sparking students’ love of learning. Research has shown that educators can help promote student engagement by using particular tools and methods—such as by reinforcing a topic’s relevance to students and by varying learning activities. With the start of the 2022–23 school year just around the corner, many teachers are seeking new resources to aid in their lessons and revising existing lessons. Gale In Context: Middle School has new and updated resources that can help teachers create or revise engaging lessons in literature, science, social studies, and more.

Teachers looking for resources to engage students in literature lessons can find many literature and English language arts portals, articles, and other resources. One method for engaging students in literature lessons is by allowing students to research, read, and analyze books that they find interesting. Teachers and students can find information about all types of books and series. For example, students who are avid readers may want to access the themes or historical context of a series, and they could find such resources in the new The Lord of the Rings portal or His Dark Materials portal. Students may also be interested in learning about modern social issues—such as police brutality or the Syrian refugee crisis—through the lens of fictional narratives, such as the novel All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely or the novel Refugee by Alan Gratz. Reluctant readers might be interested in researching and eventually reading graphic novels, and they can learn about two popular selections through the new Maus or Pashmina content in the Graphic Novels portal. Teachers can also find additional audio, video, and text resources for various books and series as well as about different categories of literature. For example, teachers could extend their lessons about Anne of Green Gables with resources such as the new Canadian Literature article.

Teachers can also find engaging sources for science lessons. One method for creating engaging science lessons is by creating lessons that feature multiple types of media, including audio, video, images, and text. The new and updated science portals in Gale In Context: Middle School have up-to-date science information presented in multiple formats. For example, teachers can access videos such as “We’re Facing a Climate Disaster. Why Is Greta Thunberg Hopeful?” and audio clips such as “How Can Cities Adapt to Rising Heat?” to enrich their lessons in the recently updated Global Warming and Climate Change portal. To give climate change lessons more context, teachers can invite students to do their own research in the system, where they can access new content through the new greenhouse effect or carbon cycle content. Teachers looking for multimedia resources for biology lessons can find them in the Ecology portal. Teachers can also find more ecology resources, such as new content about animal adaptations, biological communities, and trophic levels.              

Gale In Context: Middle School also has resources to help teachers improve or expand social studies lessons. For example, the updated Judicial Branch portal provides teachers with engaging, informative video content, such as “Senators Question Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.” It also gives students the ability to do their research by providing links to related topics such as “Government Systems” and “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The new article “Federal and State Courts” can help students better understand the structure and function of courts.

Engaging students from the first day through the end of the school year is an important goal for many teachers, and the new and updated resources from Gale In Context: Middle School can help teachers achieve that goal.

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