| Course Number: | EDX 5710 S10 |
| Instructor: | Devin Winter, M.S. |
| Location: | Online |
| Dates and Times: | May 31 - Jul 26, 2025. Attend LIVE sessions via Zoom on: Monday, June 2 from 7:00-8:00pm and Monday, July 14 from 7:00-8:30pm. The remainder of the course takes place in an online, asynchronous format. |
| Credits: | 3 Graduate Credits |
| Tuition: | $1,195 |
Looking to boost student engagement in your middle school classroom?
Enhance your approach with a curriculum designed specifically for adolescents! Middle grades education thrives on interdisciplinary, project-based, and student-centered learning, often implemented through a collaborative teaming model. By leveraging technology and shifting to a student-led approach, you can reimagine your classroom workflows and energize your students.
In this course, you’ll explore the unique needs of adolescents and discover effective practices to address those needs. We’ll discover how fostering a culture of respect through relationships, peer collaboration, leadership opportunities, and giving students a voice can significantly enhance engagement. Additionally, we’ll explore strategies that address the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of adolescents by drawing on current brain-based practices and culturally responsive curriculum approaches.
You’ll have the opportunity to choose a middle grades curriculum topic that interests you and create a personalized project aimed at increasing student engagement in your classroom. Project topics may include (but are not limited to!): interdisciplinary learning, accommodating learner variability, integrating social-emotional learning, authentic place and/or project-based learning, blended learning, social justice education, developing metacognition, and effective collaboration.
This course is differentiated and applicable for new and veteran teachers. Join us in uncovering (or rediscovering!) the magic of teaching middle schoolers!
This course may be used to receive credit toward middle grades endorsement through transcript review.
Audience: Current Middle Grades Educators; Grades 5-9 (grades 5-9) and/or those seeking Middle Grades Endorsement for Licensure. Must hold an earned bachelor’s degree.
Middle Grades Proficiencies Addressed:
2.1 Curriculum
2.1 Student Learning Standards:
Middle grades teachers use their knowledge of student learning standards to design, implement, and evaluate developmentally responsive, meaningful, and challenging curricula for every learner.
2.2 Integrated Nature of Knowledge
2.2.1 Middle grades teachers help learners make connections among content, ideas, interests, and experiences by developing and implementing relevant, challenging, integrative, and innovative curricula.
2.2.2. Middle grades teachers create learning opportunities within and across their disciplinary fields that enhance students’ transferable skills.
2.2.3. Middle grades teachers integrate student voice into learning while strengthening students’ informational, critical, technological, quantitative, multicultural, and media literacies.
4.3 Engagement
4.3.1. Middle grades teachers demonstrate their ability to motivate and engage all students and facilitate their learning through the establishment of equitable, caring, and productive learning environments and developmentally responsive materials and resources (e.g., technology, manipulative materials, contemporary media, personalized learning plans).
5.2 Community Involvement
Middle grades teachers partner with the local and global community to bring the community into the classroom and the classroom into the community
5.3.2 Dispositions and Professional Behaviors
Middle grades teachers are continuous, collaborative learners who demonstrate knowledgeable, reflective, critical perspectives on their practice.
Course Objectives:
Course Essential Question:
How can an intentionally designed curriculum address the unique needs of middle school students and invite student engagement?
Course Objectives:
Devin Winter is a literacy instructional coach at a K-8 school and a doctoral candidate at the University of South Carolina, where she is pursuing an Ed.D. in Curriculum Studies. Her dissertation, Stitching Stories: A Case Study on Integrating Museum Archives and Contemporary Narratives in Middle School Education, explores the influence of local histories and contemporary stories on building students’ cultural understanding and advocacy for inclusion. With expertise in blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning, Devin remains committed to building connections between students and their communities through collaborative partnerships and place-based learning. Devin holds endorsements in Middle Grades English Language Arts and Social Studies. For 16 years, she taught a range of subjects, including science, ELA, humanities, and integrated studies, to fifth through eighth graders. She enjoys spending time with her family and dogs, as well as cross-country skiing and mountain biking on local trails.
Required texts are not included in the course tuition.
Balme, C. (2022). Finding the Magic in Middle School: Tapping Into the Power and Potential of the Middle School Years. Zero Circle Press.
Novak, K., & Tucker, C. (2022). The Shift to Student-Led: Reimagining Classroom Workflows with UDL and Blended Learning. Impress.
Muhammad, G. (2023). Culturally and historically responsive education [Policy Research Brief].