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Welcome!

Here you will find a host of resources for implementing literacy-building activities and structures into your class or project. These strategies have been used by HTM teachers and include their tips for implementation and adaptation. Enjoy!

About High Tech Middle

 

At High Tech Middle, our curriculum is based on the HTH design principles of common intellectual mission, adult world connection, and personalization.  Teachers, as curriculum designers, strive to create innovative project-based learning experiences that will engage our diverse group of students in complex, adult world projects through which they will develop and apply skills and knowledge.  Our classrooms are fully inclusive, as we want to help all students to reach their potential. 

All of our students participate in a yearly Exhibition Night, where their work is on display for the community, and they conduct Presentations of Learning at the end of each semester to demonstrate their understanding and growth.  Each student also has a designated faculty advisor who offers academic, emotional, and social support through the three-year middle school journey.  Students in all grades are on teaching teams which include Humanities and Integrated Math/Science for the full school year, and take exploratory classes in Maker, Drama, and Digital Design & Fabrication which alternate each semester based on grade level.  We hope you enjoy exploring our students' and teachers' work on our site!

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About High Tech Middle

About High Tech Middle
About Improvement Research

About Improvement Science

 

Introduced to the HTM faculty by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, Improvement Science is a methodological approach to examining and driving the efficacy of a given system - education, specifically literacy development in grades 6 - 8, in this case.

The steps for High Tech Middle's particular forray into Improvement Science included empathy building with students, processing field data to produce a complex and holistic sense of the problems facing literacy development for their students, and lastly, the implementation, data collection, and revision of and around specific practices aimed at mitigating obstacles to meaningful literacy development.

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For the results of HTM's work, please see the pages for Resources by Project and Resources by Skill. If you're curious about HTM's process, see the section below 'About Literacy Improvement'.

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At High Tech Middle, staff, faculty, and students worked together to drive literacy levels across grade levels through the use of improvement science. Their iterative and user-centered methodology was comprised of two-step collarboative process that began with identifying specific targets for improvement (i.e. individual student performance within CCSSELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9 - Integration of Knowledge and Ideas) and specific interventions or solutions to address those targets. See one of our posts on Education Week for a detailed glipse at IR targeting Common Core standards here

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While teachers and admin worked with students on a variety of strucutres, interventions, and techniques, the whole school had the common aim of all High Tech Middle students making one year's progress in reading level by the end of the school year and 8th graders promoting to 9th grade as confident and competent readers and writers.

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Other literacy improvement projects incuded the rennovation of school areas to make them more conducive to reading, instituting school-wide reading time, book groups, and projects/curriculum focused on an interdisciplinary approach to building literacy skills.

About Literacy Improvement

About Literacy Improvement
Aim

 

All High Tech Middle students make one year’s progress in reading level by the end of the school year and promote to 9th grade as confident and competent readers and writers.

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