Everywhere our students are hearing about the HINI influenza. Their interest offers an opportunity to co-teach with a science teacher in an investigation of what we know and don’t know about this pandemic. The New York Times has created an interdisciplinary lesson Pandemic Panic: Researching the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic that asks students to […]

Reading the math textbook or handouts or extended response problems presents built-in challenges. The vocabulary of mathematics can be confusing, with some words meaning one thing in a mathematical context and another in everyday settings. Symbols can look alike, and different symbols can represent the same operation (for example, *, x, and • for multiplication). […]

You probably already incorporate games in your teaching. We even highlighted math games in an earlier post - Let’s Talk Teaching: Math Games. Games are a great way to focus students’ attention as few other teaching strategies can. The ones selected here deal directly with the math content covered in the middle grades. Each has […]

Do you need an innovative way to engage students in data collection and analysis? Or maybe you’d like to teach life science concepts in a more authentic context. Whether you are a science teacher, a math teacher, or both, you may want to consider a citizen-science project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Focusing on bird […]

In my years of teaching grades 6 through 8, I generally used games only for reviewing before a test. What I didn’t realize was how effective games can be for teaching the content. Each of the games below has a learning objective; each could be embedded in a lesson plan for middle school math. And, […]

Middle schoolers may not easily see the connection between data analysis problems invented for the classroom and math problems encountered in their daily lives. You will spark their interest in data analysis by showing them its value in finding solutions to real problems in many settings — from buying a soda to taking after-school jobs […]

Algebra can be hard to visualize. Learning to show relationships between symbolic expressions and their graphs opens an avenue to really seeing algebraic patterns. According to the NCTM Standards, at the middle school students move from plotting points to exploring the graphs of lines, including slope and intercept.
An Introduction to the Coordinate Plane
This is a […]

Graphs are part of the language of newspapers, of political discussion, of science and business. Our students need to be able to read and write in this language if they are to sort out the meaning of the barrage of numbers that hits them in daily life. As stated in the NCTM Standards, middle grades […]

Students are naturally curious about the world they live in. What better way to satisfy this curiosity than by giving them hands-on opportunities to collect data and find answers to their questions? These resources provide opportunities for students to collect data and to present and analyze their findings. These skills are an important part of […]

Measurement is one of the core NCTM Principals and Standards for School Mathematics content standards, and rate is central to its practical application. While most middle school students know the distance-rate-time formula, they may still benefit from a closer study of the relationship.
Understanding Distance, Speed, and Time Relationships
Students see two runners move along a track. […]