There is a growing reliance on plastic, even though it is a synthetic material that does not decompose. This article presents a series of six mathematics activities that use plastics as the context to teach environmental education to seventh-grade students. The activities can increase students' awareness of the plastic problem while also serving…

Area should be experienced, not simply calculated. This task invites students to physically experience areas and the spatial relationships between them, as well as their own community.

Life experiences can affect students' educational experiences as they continue through the middle years (grades 7-9). Children carry negative experiences, societal and family influences, and early educational experiences with them. All of these factors can contribute to student anxiety while learning mathematics. Anxiety in mathematics may present…

In this article, Sanders-Bustle recounts what happened when university art education students created socially engaged art (SEA), "Project Unway" and "Project Unity," in the hallways of a middle school. The events represented in this article stem from activities that took place in a secondary art education curriculum course…

In this article, the author describes a choice-based art unit she designed for her 7th-grade students, discussing how choice impacted student motivation and how this relates to playful exploration, meaning making, and sharing. With the implementation of a personally meaningful found-object unit, students' motivation increased because of the…

Teaching middle school mathematics, I have found that classroom dynamics have a profound impact on the quality of mathematical discussion. Wanting to improve classroom discussion in order to better facilitate both small-group and student-driven learning, I started the school year by randomly grouping students every week for their small groups. I…

Notebooks are commonly used in middle school classrooms as a place for students to record information delivered via lecture, classroom discussion, or independent work. A primary reason teachers ask students to use notebooks is to capture and organize information. In many cases, students are expected to use these tools with little direction,…

Mediation analysis is a statistical approach used to examine how the effect of an independent variable on an outcome is transmitted through an intervening variable (mediator). In this article, we provide a gentle introduction to single-level and multilevel mediation analyses. Using single-level data, we demonstrate an application of structural…

Ask a room full of sixth and seventh graders at Fossil Ridge Intermediate School in St. George, UT, to name their favorite part of the day and the answer is, in unison, always the same: REAL (respect, explore, achieve, lead) Time. This 35-minute block embedded into the school's schedule three days each week provides immediate, specific…

This research brief highlights findings from the technical report (published separately). Student-level analyses were conducted with the SEL Skills Survey and the Student Climate Survey to determine if a single measure of students' SEL skill acquisition and perceptions of school climate is possible. [For the Technical Report, see ED629195.]

Where to locate the 7th and 8th grade is a perennial question. While there are many variations, three approaches are most often used---include them in a 7-12 secondary campus, maintain a separate middle grades campus, or include them as part of a K-8 program. Research says that grade configuration is inconclusive at best and there is no research…

A comprehensive self-management intervention was utilized to increase the on-task behavior of three African American students within an urban middle-school setting. The intervention was designed to necessitate minimal management on the part of the general education classroom teacher by utilizing an electronic prompting device, as well as a…

On entering Mr. Wilson's seventh-grade classroom, the authors immediately noticed the students talking about mathematics and their teacher listening to them. To create an interactive learning environment that would stimulate and perpetuate discourse, Wilson discussed two main issues with his students: (1) What the students and teacher would do in…

Five middle school teachers are among the few people wandering around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, squinting at labels describing the plants that will bloom soon. The author and her colleagues are on a reconnaissance mission, trying to plan an interdisciplinary field trip for the seventh grade. They represent different departments--science, math,…

Studying geometry is an integral component of learning mathematics because it allows students to analyse and interpret the world they live in as well as equip them with tools they can apply in other areas of mathematics. Therefore, students need to develop an understanding of geometric concepts as well as gaining adequate geometry related skills.…