This brief article describes how Dawn Southworth, upper school art teacher at the Glen Urquhart School (GUS) (Massachusetts), devised the White Shirt Project to engage eighth-graders in art and society. Each year, Southworth purchases white shirts for her eighth grade students to transform into original works of art. Prior to the culminating art…

This article describes in some detail aspects of the Student Voice initiative funded and championed by Ontario's Ministry of Education since 2008. The project enables thousands of students to make their voices heard in meaningful ways and to participate in student-led research. Some students from grades 7 to 12 become members of the Student…

Over the last twenty-five years, the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and Minitex have developed a partnership centered on creating pathways to higher education by engaging local middle school and high school students in immersive programs at academic libraries. These activities vary in scope and content, but…

Gaming, an integral part of many students' lives outside school, can provide an engaging platform for focusing students on important disciplinary core concepts as an entry into developing students' understanding of these concepts through science practices. This article highlights how S'cape can be used to support student learning aligned with the…

In this solar panels and alternative energy project, students were challenged to develop a researchable question about solar energy and electronics and devise a means of answering it. Students worked cooperatively, with specific roles for each member, conducting research, conducting experiments, analyzing results, and writing the final…

"Appreciation" of the arts grows most abundantly when students immerse themselves in the making of art. In this article, the author describes how she made eighth graders appreciate some of the big names from the art of the past.

Eighth-grade teacher Lesley Roessing designed an assignment that makes individual student research useful and accessible to the entire class. She outlines steps students take to create a guide to supplement their reading of "Waiting for the Rain: A Novel of South Africa." She then builds on the research experience in another unit by addressing…

The authors used the 5E learning cycle (engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate) and a pulmonary carbon dioxide mystery to introduce eighth grade students to the study of chemistry. The activity engages students in measurement, data collection, data analysis, media and internet research, research design, and report writing as they search…

Using children's picture books, Deborah Dean provided frameworks for student research papers that avoided the pitfalls leading to voiceless an encyclopedic writing. Research guide sheets; class analysis of text organization, sentence variety, stylistic choices; and peer review all contribute to interesting final papers. (Contains 2 figures.)