This article presents a framework for school administrators developed by Mesa Unified School district used in identifying and assisting the subtly struggling adolescents. Mesa's "safety net" approach targets middle grades students in the midst of their formative, pre-high school experience. Here, it is stated that the first step to identify a…

A prominent theme permeating national science education reform reports such as the "National Science Education Standards" (National Research Council [NRC], 1996) and "Project 2061: Science for All Americans" (Rutherford & Alhgren, 1990) recommends the incorporation of cooperative learning in the science classroom. Although…

The organization of this book is based upon the principle -- generally accepted in schools today -- that every situation in the school requiring or stimulating social intercommunication or individual self-expression affords significant opportunity for developing language ability. These situations, which are vital and meaningful to the pupils, are…

We examine aspects of flexible mathematical thinking in middle school students and its contribution to the growth of their mathematical understanding. We inductively analyzed data collected from video-episodes of an interactive, problem-solving based after-school mathematics class. Flexibility is essential in such classrooms since students must…

The SAT is designed to measure the verbal and math reasoning abilities of high school juniors and seniors. These abilities develop over a long period of time and are independent of a particular school curriculum. The performance of seventh and eighth graders on the SAT is amazing, especially when considering their age. Although these students do,…

This article describes a writing activity that is employed after graded exams are handed back to students. Students are asked to reflect on their performance and to demonstrate understanding of mathematics related to the exam and/or unit of instruction. The article provides examples of student writing, scoring rubrics, and suggestions for…

In this study, the authors improved the understanding of the cognitive processes underlying the reflective-impulsive cognitive style (RI), which was initially measured by J. Kagan, B. L. Rosman, D. Day, J. Albert, and W. Phillips (1964) on the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT). The authors determined the relationships between the RI style and…

The relative influence of interest and self-efficacy beliefs on each other over 1 year was examined in 2 longitudinal samples of students, 1 of elementary school students (Grade 5, N = 126) and 1 of middle school students (Grade 7, N = 221). Interest and competence ratings on the Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and…

Recent events, such as the anthrax scares and the SARS outbreak, have forced teachers to focus on issues such as disease control and bioterrorism in their own backyards. Students are aware of the current biological issues in the news and are curious about infectious diseases and the issues relating to biological warfare. In order to address the…

Coordinate graphs of time-series data have been significant in the history of statistical graphing and in recent school mathematics curricula. A survey task to construct a graph to represent data about temperature change over time was administered to 133 students in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. Four response levels described the degree to which students…

Collaborating with three university researchers, three seventh-grade teachers and their students worked on one component of a three-year NSF-funded research project examining the media messages about information technology and careers that middle school students receive from television, popular magazines, books, videotapes, movies, and Web sites.…

Numerous studies have demonstrated a decrease in the expression of internality in French sixth graders as compared to fifth graders. The present study examines normative clearsightedness in addition to internality across four French school grades (fourth to seventh). The results confirmed the sixth-grade drop in internality and showed that the…

This study contributes to the field by identifying a broad range of traditional and newer middle grade policies and practices, and determining in California which of these differentiate higher- from lower-performing schools serving similar student populations, with performance measured by the state's standards-based tests. Based on a sample of 303…

In the 2008-09 school year researchers from EdSource and Stanford University conducted a large-scale study of 303 middle grades schools in California. The team surveyed 303 principals, 3,752 English Language Arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 6-8, and 157 superintendents of the districts and charter management organizations that oversee the…

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of learning together technique of cooperative Learning method on student mathematics achievement. The study was an experimental research in which pre-test -- post-test design with control group was applied. The study was conducted in spring 2004 with 70 pupils studying at 7th class in Balikesir,…