Education Commons^™

A Field Trip That’S Not About The Destination But The Journey, Vanessa Scanfeld, Eric James, Vincent Dotoli

Middle Grades Review

This Practitioner Perspective presents a middle school unit focused on designing a day-long field trip as an effective project-based initiative for advancing social and emotional learning (SEL). It considers the social and emotional competencies students develop as they navigate the complexities of this project: researching options, planning an itinerary that meets various parameters, and ultimately taking the trip. It also offers practical guidance to schools for successfully adopting this program.

Detecting A Possible Correlation Between Hands-On Experimentation And Scientific Data Analysis In 8th Grade Students, Breana Dobesh, Phu Vu

Middle Grades Review

This Practitioner Perspective reports on action research that examined the impact of integrating hands-on experimentation on eighth- grade students skills of scientific data analysis and interpretation in a science middle school class. The intervention given to the treatment group was tasking students with completing scientific experiments during their daily lessons, along with collecting and analyzing data from those experiments. Collected data through both control and treatment groups indicated that there was no significant difference in mean test scores between the two groups. Discussions and suggestions for future studies were included.

America’S Middle Schools: Examining Context, Organizational Structures, And Instructional Practices, Ryan Alverson, Mike Dicicco, Shawn A. Faulkner, Chris Cook

Middle Grades Review

The education of the young adolescent has consistently posed a challenge to the educational community. While the general belief is this age group (10-15-year-old children) would benefit from a specialized educational approach, historically, both the junior high school model of the early 1900s and the more current middle school concept have struggled to be fully implemented and embraced by the educational community. With almost a decade passing since the last national survey focused on middle grades schools (McEwin & Greene, 2010, 2011), researchers seek to reassess the context, organizational structures, and instructional practices of middle schools in the United States. …

Integrating School Makerspaces Into The English Language Arts Curriculum, Lou Lahana

Middle Grades Review

School Makerspaces have shown great potential to foster powerful learning outcomes for students, including the enhancement of creative problem-solving abilities, the nurturing of “soft skills” such as grit and leadership, as well as deep STEAM knowledge development. Within the school context, however, little attention has been given to how Makerspaces can promote social activism. Students hold passionate views on issues, such as homelessness, e-cigarette smoking, domestic violence, plastic pollution, and street harassment. How can Makerspaces provide an environment that promotes personal learning and self-expression so that these passions take form as social activism?

This practitioner perspective details the implementation of …

Fostering Student Agency To Build A Whole Child, Whole School, Whole Community Approach, Holly Henderson Pinter, Lisa Bloom, Amie Broyhill, Kim K. Winter

Middle Grades Review

In this practitioner perspective, we explore the concept of student agency through the implementation of a student government association in a laboratory middle school. Interviews with a social studies teacher and her students offer perspectives of the impact of student voice and choice for student experiences. We describe three major lessons learned through this implementation process: students learn to have healthy conflict and cooperative skills; students learn the appropriate processes to enact change in a democratic society; and students learn to conduct service for their peers, school, and community.

Montessori Middle School: The Erdkinder, Luz M. Casquejo Johnston

Middle Grades Review

Montessori Education is over a century old. Since its inception, Montessori schools have been opened worldwide. While most are pre-schools serving three to six-year-old children, many people aren’t aware that Montessori spoke and wrote about middle level education before her death in 1952. Her concept for the Erdkinder, an intentionally designed learning environment for the adolescent ages twelve to fifteen, is described in this essay.

Development And Implementation Of Comprehensive Sexuality Education Programs For Middle School Students, Minta Trivette

College of Nursing and Health Sciences Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Project Publications

Background: Sexual activity in adolescents carries population health risks such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection. Comprehensive sexual health education programs can be an effective strategy to help young people delay initiation of sexual intercourse, reduce the number of sexual partners, and increase condom and contraception use. As of the 2018/2019 school year, Burlington School District (BSD) middle schools did not have a comprehensive sexual health and safe relationship education program.

Purpose: Development and dissemination of comprehensive sexual health and safe relationship curricula for Burlington School District (BSD) middle schools.

Methods: This educational intervention was aimed at middle school health …