Middle School/Level Education

The class size debate is still ongoing among researchers, even though smaller class sizes are widely supported by parents, teachers, and the public. To contribute to this discussion, data was taken from the North Carolina (NC) School Report Cards (SRC) datasets and used to address two questions: First, is there a relationship between an elementary school’s performance score and average class size?  Second, is there a relationship between a middle school’s performance score and average class size? Using the results from a linear regression and ordered logit, we find that average class size significantly predicts both NC elementary and middle school performance. However, the estimates suggest that higher average class size is negatively related to elementary school performance, but positively related to middle school performance. These results suggest that the impact of class size on student and school performance may depend on the grade levels in question, for example, elementary or middle school. We conclude that policymakers should act carefully when manipulating class sizes, since the effect may depend on the grade levels.

While most of the studies done on GeoGebra has been focused on the dynamic nature of GeoGebra (e.g. Aydin & Monaghan, 2011; Karaarslan et al., 2013) and the effects of GeoGebra on students’ learning (e.g. Bulut & Bulut, 2011; Edwards & Jones, 2006; Icel, 2011), this study explored teachers’ perspectives by describing their goals regarding the mathematics software GeoGebra and their beliefs about the utilisation of this software. Furthermore, instructional strategies and methods while integrating GeoGebra used by those teachers were investigated; and teachers’ favourite topics to integrate GeoGebra are further examined. Thus, the research questions are:

1. What are the middle school mathematics teachers' goals and beliefs about the use of GeoGebra in the seventh-grade middle school mathematics classes in Turkey?
1.1. For what purposes do they use GeoGebra?
1.2. What do they believe about the effectiveness of using GeoGebra?

2. How do middle school mathematics teachers use GeoGebra in the seventh grade middle school mathematics classes in Turkey?
2.1. In which topics do they use GeoGebra?
2.2. Which instructional strategies and methods do they utilise to integrate it?

Middle school general music is an experience that numerous music educators feel underprepared to teach. Because many undergraduate programs spend little time on this teaching scenario and because the challenges of middle school general music are different from those of elementary general music or middle school ensembles, teachers often lack the knowledge to create an appropriate curriculum for the clientele. The author will share her insight on teaching in this atypical scenario by looking at the middle school child and the middle school experience.

This visually appealing resource presents milestones in children’s artistic development in early adolescence using youth-centered behaviors that include: “I am thinking” (cognitive development). “I am growing” (physical development).  “I am feeling” (social/emotional development).  “I am creating” (artistic development). Its outline format is derived by research on children’s artistic development theories and best practices presented in the textbook Teaching and Learning in Art Education: Cultivating Students' Potential from Pre-K through High School (Routledge, ISBN# 9781138549326).

Held annually, the Teaching Black History Conference aims to improve Black history curriculum decision-making and instructional practice. Individual sessions are led by classroom teachers as well as university professors. This year’s theme is Teaching Black History across the Disciplines: A Black Studies Approach. We are focusing on how teachers can bring aspects of Black history and continue to teach math, science, art, English, etc. This year, our guest panel features Karyn Parsons, founder of Sweetblackberry (http://www.sweetblackberry.org/). You may know Karyn as Hillary from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire, a popular sitcom during the 1990s. Sweetblackberry develops Black history cartoons for school children.

Featured presentations include also Black History 101 Mobile Museum (https://www.blackhistorymobilemuseum.com/) and Teaching Tolerance (https://www.tolerance.org/). The conference is for teacher candidates, practicing teachers, teacher educators, community educators, homeschool educators, and anyone interested in furthering Black History Education.

You can register at www.bit.ly/carter-conference-2018. Registration is only 40.00 and can be paid by cash or check. Please send checks to 303 Townsend Hall, Columbia, MO 65211 attention to LaGarrett King, Director. Make the checks payable to the University of Missouri. Please register by June 1, 2018. Any questions, please email cartercenter18@gmail.com.

Thank you,
LaGarrett King
Director
CARTER Center for K-12 Black History Research, Teaching, and Curriculum

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent middle school students exhibit the disciplined mind traits at science courses and gaining insights about the quality and the quantity of the classroom practices related to the disciplined mind. To this end, the study employed the disciplined mind scale (α=0,89) and the rubric for disciplined mind performance tasks (G=0,85), the teaching and learning environment assessment scale (α=0,93), and classroom observation notes. This study was carried out with 31 sixth-graders and 30 eighth-graders in a school located in the central districts of Ankara of Turkey. Results indicated that there was not any significant difference between sixth and eighth-graders in terms of exhibiting the disciplined mind traits and science courses they took in terms of cultivating a disciplined mind. Additionally, the qualitative data revealed that students' disciplined mind traits they showed were inadequate, and the classroom practices to promote the students' disciplined mind development were insufficient. This study will contribute to future research in terms of deep understanding of the disciplined mind theory and its practice.

Abstract
The rising percentage of nonwhite students in the U.S. public school system accompanied by persistent educational debt and racial inequities presents an opportunity gap for many marginalized students. Scholars suggest that teaching ethnic studies curriculum with critical race pedagogy can help address the opportunity gap. Ethnic Studies centers on providing students educational access, relevance, and tools for social change. However, few studies examine how this curriculum affects middle school students. Based on qualitative analysis of a combination of different data sources such as student evaluations, writing samples, and teacher reflections, I found that an ethnic studies curriculum enabled middle school students to make meaningful connections to their lives and build academic and social confidence that promoted their success. It also encouraged them to develop their capacities for social action. I find that contradictory ideologies may arise from cultivating critical consciousness with regards to responses and recognition of injustices. Results suggest that teachers may help cultivate students’ critical consciousness when they have the content knowledge and pedagogical tools to support their development.

This paper aims to investigate the mediation role of fear of negative evaluation (FNE) in the relationship between perceived autonomy support (PAS) and academic risk-taking (ART) in the context of social studies course. A total of 339 middle school students from Turkey participated in the study. Data were collected through the Learning Climate Scale, Fear of Negative Evaluation in Academic Environments Scale, and Social Studies-Oriented Academic Risk-Taking Scale. Correlation results showed that PAS was negatively correlated with FNE and positively with ART. There was a negative correlation between FNE and ART. Structural equation model analyses showed that PAS predicted FNE negatively and ART positively. In addition, FNE predicted ART negatively. The partial mediation effect of FNE on the relationship between PAS and ART was significant. These results provide empirical evidence for the effect of self-determination theory (SDT) on affective characteristics such as ART and FNE. Keywo...

In this current educational context of high stakes accountability, public schools in Florida are under significant pressure to increase student achievement. This pressure is even greater in high poverty environments as those schools are impacted by multiple challenges, which serve to intensify the problem. Even more startling is the decline in the number of effective and student-centered resources, support structures, and authentic opportunities available to at-risk students within high poverty schools on a national level (Corbett, Wilson, & Williams, 2002). To address this problem, the University of Florida has developed a mentoring partnership that integrates collegiate service learning into a comprehensive leadership curriculum for at-risk elementary and middle-school students.

本稿では、COVID-19（新型コロナウイルス感染症）の世界的・全国的拡大による学校教育への影響をふまえた、地域学習（郷土学習）の在り方を検討する。2020年7月19日に、「新型コロナウイルス感染症（COVID-19）とESD地域学習―『Withコロナ』の経験を共有し『Postコロナ』に活かそう―」をテーマに、Zoomを用いたオンラインシンポジウムを企画実施した。本稿ではまず、このシンポジウムの開催経緯と内容、実践報告を示す。そのうえで、シンポジウム内でおこなわれた議論および開催後の参加者アンケートをもとに、COVID-19の流行の経験をふまえた今後の地域学習の在り方を検討する。結果は3つに大別できる。第一に、地域をめぐるフィールドワークは、地域のリアルな状況を把握するうえで重要であり、関係者の理解を得たうえで積極的に実施する必要がある。第二に、オンライン環境の活用可能性が増していることは地域学習にとって好機になる。第三に、学びの対象としてのコロナ禍が加わった。ローカルな地域の様々な要素とグローバルな要素がリンクしていること、社会構造や政治が私たちの行く末を大きく左右することが実感できる。以上を組み合わせることで、地域学習を通じて、学習者は持続可能な社会の構築を自分事にできる可能性がある。

The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History’s scholarly Making the Framework FAIR report (2014) recommends substantial revisions to California’s K-12 History-Social Science Framework in order to bring it into compliance with the FAIR Education Act. The law, passed in 2011, mandates inclusion of the roles and contributions of LGBT Americans and people with disabilities in the state’s primary and secondary school U.S. history education. To date, efforts to get state agencies, school districts, and educators to fully implement the FAIR Education Act have been insufficient, particularly in relation to transgender history. As the state undergoes History-Social Science Framework revision, it should adopt the transgender-inclusive changes suggested by Making the Framework FAIR report for grades 2, 4, 5, 8, and 11. This represents a golden opportunity to create comprehensive and lasting change across elementary, middle, and high school, in California and beyond.

After their middle school developed a curriculum on comics, six students met with a teacher-researcher for a year to continue the critical conversations that started in language arts class. In this article, we explore how students purposefully used superhero texts to engage in critical inquiries related to gender and sexism.

Stone, J.C. (2005). Textual borderlands: Middle school students’ recontextualizations in writing children’s books. Language Arts, 83(1), 42-51.

This article examines a children's book writing workshop for middle school students of color in which 12 girls participated. The curriculum was developed to create intersections between students' in- and out-of-school lives. The students' writing within the workshop is analyzed by unpacking their "recontextualizations" of settings, characters, language, and popular culture.

Ten middle school principals of Title I charter schools were interviewed in this qualitative, phenomenological narrative study to explore the influence of parental involvement on students’ success in Title I charter schools in Texas as perceived by middle school principals. Each interview was analyzed before combining them to develop a complete picture of the phenomenon. Coding and pseudonyms were used for each participant to maintain anonymity and confidentiality of data and records in the study. The findings suggest that most of the principals considered parental involvement as a combination of different expectations set for both parents and school. Thus, school and the parents must work together and take joint responsibility for the students’ education in school. Other findings from this study suggest that charter school principals are experiencing less parental involvement as students move from elementary to middle school. Finally, the findings from this study affirm that all principals strongly believe that parental involvement has a strong influence on students’ success.

This dissertation was a qualitative examination of the band participation of three adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This investigation of individual experiences and perceptions could help readers understand what adolescents with ADHD value about their band participation and what academic, interpersonal, and
behavioral challenges adolescents with ADHD face during band
participation. Research questions included: (a) What is the nature of band participation for three adolescents who have been diagnosed with ADHD? (b) How do adolescents with ADHD, their music teachers, and their parents describe the band participation of adolescents with ADHD? (c) In what ways do adolescents with ADHD interact with their music teachers and peers in bands? Data collection methods included interviewing, observing, and a researcher joumaling; analysis involved data coding, selecting representative quotes, sorting thematically, and summarizing. Important themes included isolation from peers, a sense
of belonging, the perception of peers as family, music learning and achievement motivations, behavior management strategies such as self-monitoring and hyperfocus, and ADHD-symptoms of impulsivity, inattentiveness, and hyperactivity. All participants were high-achieving musicians. Notable findings included close relationships with band
directors, the use ofhyperfocus to manage individuals' ADHD impulses or to be musically expressive, diminutive descriptions of individual skills by adolescents with ADHD, unknowingly supportive behaviors of band directors toward students with ADHD, and positive social interactions with peers when advanced musical skills coupled with leadership roles exist for adolescents with ADHD.

Music and technology are inseparable within the lives of today’s adolescents. It seems like our students spend all of their time with their cell phones - tucked under their pillow texting at night and stealing time in between (and during!) class to text their friends and update their Facebook statuses. With the advent of portable digital music players, their music is always nearby providing a soundtrack to their lives. This soundtrack accompanies the profound changes – physical, mental, and social – occurring at home, with friends and at school. Our students’ lives revolve around their relationships with each other. They are simultaneously exploring and hiding from the world, testing the waters of friendships and their own self-expression, while negotiating their changing identity. Music, mediated by all kinds of technologies, performs a key role in this process.

This chapter presents an emerging picture of promising practices with digital media and technology and advocates for a relational pedagogy (Ruthmann & Dillon, in press) where
teachers actively design musical experiences informed by their students’ musical and technological lives. Practical strategies for easing into initial creative experiences with music and technology are shared, followed by projects that explore the affordances of new mobile and online music technologies in the classroom and community. This chapter concludes with two digital remix projects – one for student-created video games and another that explores music videos as source material for original creative works. All of the projects are united by the common theme of active, social music making with technology.

Digital storytelling is a short form of multimedia production that can foster digital literacy and facilitate subject matter learning. This study describes how middle school students learned about mental health by composing digital stories, showing how this also influenced their attitudes toward mental health in their own lives. Using a qualitative multiple-case method, we explored three immigrant students’ digital storytelling in a psychology class. We use a visual grammar derived from systemic functional linguistics to analyze their digital stories, examining representational, relational, configurational, and social functions. Our analysis shows how students chose design elements to reflect their learning about and reactions to mental illness. We analyze how students projected relationships with the audience and how these projected relationships both reflected and influenced their learning and personal development. We conclude that digital storytelling can be an excellent pedagogi...

In this chapter, I flip the script. I use the work of a mother as an instructional case for TESOL educators. After problematizing dominant conceptions of LTELs, I examine the experiences of a middle school parent and future teacher: Susana Ávila (all identifying names are pseudonyms). Rather than focusing on what schools should teach Mrs. Ávila about advocating for her son’s education, I use her advocacy experiences to discuss what K-12 TESOL educators can learn about advocacy for LTELs.

Creative Physical Education offers a flexible extended learning experience for 7- to 14- year olds that focuses on physical, cognitive, and interpersonal knowledge and skill development. A combination teacher’s guide and student workbook, Creative Physical Education has everything you need, including a CD-ROM of printable and adaptable class materials.

Creative Physical Education presents a project framework that you can adapt to fit the needs of your class. Great for physical education teachers looking for a fresh approach, Creative Physical Education also makes an excellent structured project for classroom teachers working with physical education.

Creative Physical Education begins with a teacher’s guide that details the underlying pedagogical models behind the project. Rather than focusing on one approach, Creative Physical Education integrates a number of pedagogical models and describes how these can be combined to form a creative PE project. This all-in-one resource includes a student workbook with all the worksheets needed for each part of the project. The project worksheets are included on the accompanying CD-ROM and can be modified as needed and printed for use. In addition, homework items offer ways to reinforce concepts learned in class.

Creative Physical Education progresses students through team building, game creation, organizing a season, and practicing skill development. In the first part of the project, you’ll help students discover the essentials of working in teams, the benefits of a team approach, and characteristics of successful teams.

The developing teams will then create their own games. Creative Physical Education provides you with all the necessary tools and ideas for this task. Through this section, the student teams discuss the ingredients of a game, plan their own team game, and teach it to other teams. The students are also involved in evaluating and reflecting on the games of others. After this, you’ll help students use their games to create one game for the whole class, which they play over the course of a larger-scale sporting season. Through regular participation, students improve their knowledge and skills and learn the strategies of their game. This section of the project also helps students experience a range of roles, always as a member of a team.

In the final section you’ll help students improve their tactics and skills through practice. By critically assessing the teamwork, skill, strategy, and fitness requirements of their particular game, students learn how to improve their individual and team performance. Activities in this final part also allow students to celebrate their success and reflect on their project.

This student-directed creative PE project offers students a new way to enjoy and learn from sport while also offering the possibility of integrating other curriculum areas with physical education. With step-by-step guidance and a full set of class materials, you’ll have everything you need to implement a fun, creative learning experience for your class. Find new ways to move, create, and collaborate with Creative Physical Education.

This item was written in response to the following editorial call-for-papers: Using social media and email, we [the editors] reached out to our field, asking for words of inspiration, for a charge to lead us into this upcoming school year, and for words that might serve as “rocket
fuel” to launch us into our work.

Home economics is an effort to teach students about care for a home and family and to open new career avenues. Modern home economics courses offer inclusive education to all students, including those in middle school. This paper attempts to construct a home economics curriculum for middle school students.

Given the growing interest and representation of superheroes in comics and other media, we are interested in the ways young people read superhero texts and how those readings influence their conceptualisations of gender within and outside educational spaces. In this article we explore students’ responses to (re)presentations of gender in superhero texts (which include graphic novels, comic books, films, YouTube, and more), and examine how they reproduce and/or challenge assumptions about gender identity. This ethnographic study focuses on six seventh-graders across a school year in the United States. Our findings suggest that (1) students employ superhero texts as a multimedia resource for inquiring into gender, (2) superhero texts contribute to students’ complex and evolving understandings of gender, and (3) students both critique and reify gender ideologies that are surfaced through their transactions with comics and related media.

The aim of this research is to develop a valid and reliable Computational Thinking Test (CTT) that can be used at the eighth grade level. The computational thinking skills defined in the literature were identified and then the problematic situations which could measure these skills were established. Our CTT included 10 problem cases which were constructed in connection with the subject areas of science and mathematics education programs. The test was sent to five field experts and they were asked to evaluate the construct validity and content validity of the test items. The test, revised according to the expert feedback was then administered to 110 eighth-grade students from a state secondary school. Analysis results indicate that CTT is a valid and reliable (McDonald's ω = 0,79) test that can successfully measure the computational thinking skills of 8th grade students.

Many today are seeing the need and importance of teaching Christian apologetics in a variety of different settings. This is intended to help fulfill that need. Following Dr. Norman Geisler’s Twelve Points that Show Christianity is True, this Guide or curriculum is designed to help you prepare and teach Christian apologetics. This Guide contains what is required for instruction in a single resource to teach others successfully in apologetics. It is for the homeschool parent, Sunday school teacher, Christian school teacher, pastor, campus minister, leader in your church or anyone who wants to educate others in Christian apologetics. Dr. Norman Geisler developed the Twelve Points over many years of teaching and instruction at various levels and settings. They have proven to be an invaluable way to learn, communicate, teach and classify the steps of Christian apologetics in a systematic manner. The Twelve Points serve as domains of learning that are memorable, usable and practical. This Guide is intended to help any teacher educate students both young and old in Christian apologetics.

print edition
http://www.amazon.com/Teachers-Guide-Twelve-Points-Christianity/dp/1530369576
ebook
http://bastionbooks.com/shop/12-points-teachers-guide/

This ebook is also available on Amazon in Kindle format.
http://www.amazon.com/Teachers-Guide-Twelve-Points-Christianity-ebook/dp/B00X1ZFQT6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1430752456&sr=1-1

This is an excerpt from my book, '10 Essential Instructional elements for Students with Reading Difficulties: A Brain-Friendly Approach.  This book describes research-based instruction that is based in neuroscience as well and cognitive psychology.  It is published by Corwin Publishers and will be published in 2015.

Educators are expected to take into account students' linguistic experiences when designing literacy instruction. However, official school records traditionally provide limited information about students' linguistic histories. This article presents educators with a linguistic survey that can help bridge this gap. The survey is an easy-to-use classroom resource through which educators can gather information about their students' linguistic experiences. Notably, it is based on ideas about and research on bilingualism that are not traditionally discussed in mainstream literacy education. To illustrate the survey's potential for instruction, the article includes a case study of a 10th-grade student and discusses the implications of the type of information garnered by the survey for literacy pedagogy. As a whole, this article supports educators in making more linguistically informed decisions about literacy instruction.

Direct instruction is a very structured form of teaching where students receive information directly from a teacher. Here the responsibility for students’ learning rests firmly on
the teacher. This chapter excerpt describes the salient elements of direct instruction.  Video mini-lectures are included.