Education Commons^™

More Than Civil Engineering And Civic Reasoning: World-Building In Middle School Stem, Alejandra Frausto Aceves, Daniel Morales-Doyle

Occasional Paper Series

This narrative essay describes a project in an urban sixth grade science class that began as an effort to link civic engagement with disciplinary learning in chemistry. The ways in which students took up this project prompted the authors to see urban infrastructures as engineered sites of learning with world-making possibilities. By interrogating the ways in which science and engineering practices are imbued with values and happen in places, teachers can engage young learners in critical examinations of their built worlds. The authors argue that there is an opportunity in K-8 engineering education to avoid reproducing some of the pathologies …

Curriculum Drama: Using Imagination And Inquiry In A Middle School Social Studies Classroom, Catherine Franklin

Occasional Paper Series

This essay provides a vivid window into an eighth-grade class engaged in a legislative curriculum drama. Students acted as members of political parties within the Senate and participated in legislative hearings, discussed costs and benefits to legislation, and engaged in debates. Curriculum drama formed a bridge that linked the task of teaching and learning about a defined unit of study to the authentic interests, concerns, and energies of the students

Wrong Place, Right Time, Rachel Mazor

Occasional Paper Series

Mazor recounts working in the three distinctly different environments during her first year of teaching: sixth-grade math, pre-school social studies, and first-grade reading. Each of these experiences taught her specific skills that she later applied to assignments; additionally, each experience helped her develop her own style as a teacher.

Strengthening Nyc Middle-Grades Learning In & Out Of School: Five Recommendations To The Mayor, Partnership For After School Education, Ford Foundation, Bank Street College Of Education

Books

A paper urging Mayor de Blasio and his team to consider insights and recommendations about middle-grades learning in New York City. Moving away from outdated assumptions about adolescence and schooling, this work suggests and expands upon the following:

1. Reframe middle-grades learning as a community responsibility.

2. Focus accountability on student learning and development in and out of school.

3. Strengthen middle-grades schools as centers of youth development.

4. Incentivize innovative designs.

5. Prepare and support a range of adults to foster middle-grades learning in and out of school.

A Curriculum Unit For 8th Grade Students Of Spanish: ¿CóMo Eras Tú De NiñO? (What Were You Like As A Child?), Cheyenne A. Jones

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The following Independent Study, written in partial fulfillment for a Master of Science degree in Middle-Level Education from Bank Street College, is a nine-lesson curriculum unit on the study of imperfect tense verbs in Spanish. The unit, titled ¿Cómo eras tú de niño? (What Were You Like As a Child?) was designed for 8th grade English-speaking students of Spanish.

Multilevel Text Sets In A Middle School Classroom, Merryl Gladstone

Graduate Student Independent Studies

As students reach middle school, they are expected to read on grade level and to have mastered the complex process of reading. In fact, many students are still mastering the skills necessary for fluent reading of grade level material. The struggling readers need to read instructional level material and receive instruction in decoding, fluency and comprehension. Indeed many middle school students would benefit from reading instruction, as the reading demands in middle school are very different than those faced in elementary school. Middle school reading draws much of its material from expository texts, while elementary school programs typically use narrative …