This article was written by middle school science teacher Todd Williamson for the Integrating Technology column of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, an online magazine for elementary teachers. All versions of this article are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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If you’ve used a search engine like Google or Yahoo anytime in the past two years […]

Data overwhelms our modern lives. How to make sense of the numbers in newspaper stories, in campaign speeches, in scientific experiments? Statistics offers tools to help us organize and interpret data. Even at the middle school level, students can work with statistics in real-world situations, whether actual or simulated. To actually apply statistics to real […]

This article first appeared in Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears online magazine August 1, 2008. The article has been modified to include middle school math and science examples. All versions of this article are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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Over the last few years, blogs have evolved into an exciting web-based publishing tool for individuals […]

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 […]

If you want to “hook” your class on math right from the start, you may want to consider one of these real-world projects. Students deal with real data in these investigations—collecting, presenting, and analyzing their findings. As they work on the NCTM Data Analysis and Probability Standard, they apply school mathematics in contexts arising outside […]

Sometimes geoboards are left on the shelf because we don’t know what to do with them. They can be powerful tools for students to study, length, area and perimeter. (But remember to be careful with the perimeter part because the length of one unit is only measured on the horizontal or vertical, not the diagonal.) […]

Factors and their multiples are so important to students’ work with fractions and number theory. These concepts come under the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Number and Operations Standard for the middle grades. The resources here are all hands-on, if only virtually. Important to their success is the classroom talk that the resources […]

Although the NCTM Standards do not have student expectations for learning mathematics history, exposure to this history can help students see real-world connections in mathematics.
Approximating Pi
Mathematics and science owe a great deal to Archimedes, including a way to approximate pi. Here is historical information along with an applet to approximate pi using the perimeter […]

Really understanding what fractions are, how they fit on the number line, and how to operate with them - add, subtract, multiply, divide - is central to learning decimals and percentages. According to the NCTM Principles and Standards, students in the middle grades should be expected to acquire a deeper understanding of fractions, decimals, and […]

Why take class time to investigate fractals? Granted, they are geometric figures and worthy of study for that reason alone. Moreover, their use in art and other areas connects mathematics to the world outside the textbook, as recommended by the NCTM Connections Standard. But a study of fractals also opens discussion of algorithm, dimension, and […]