This article explores using the RAFT strategy (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) for writing in science classes. The framework of the RAFT strategy will be explained, and connections with Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA/Literacy will be discussed. Finally, there will be a discussion of a professional learning experience for teachers in…

Many policymakers, curriculum specialists, teachers and administrators, bloggers and other commentators have raised serious questions about the Common Core State Standards. One set of questions asks whether states and districts have the money for professional development, curriculum materials, planning time, and other logistics that would be…

This article describes the experiences of one Minnesota middle school that implemented a year-long integrated STEM program with the cooperation of graduate student fellows from a local university. The authors, two of whom were among the graduate students involved in the project, describe their impressions of the program, share some lessons they…

The authors describe the development and implementation of the Career Institute, a program designed to provide opportunities for young adolescents to explore their interests and abilities in relation to their current educational experiences and future college and career goals. They share details about how the school-wide career development program…

Increased emphasis on content coverage and test scores can be an obstacle to many middle level practices, such as curriculum integration and differentiated instruction. While an increasing number of well-prepared, exemplary middle grades educators know and understand this situation, these educators are often not the ones leading school change.…

Integrating mathematics and literacy creates opportunities to introduce new vocabulary, make connections among abstract concepts, and showcase ways that mathematics applies across curriculum. In addition, integrating multicultural literature in the mathematics classroom can provide familiar contexts for culturally diverse students and it can…

The authors maintain that developing an awareness of the skills and tasks involved in proficient reading is necessary in the middle grades and that success with these skills and tasks develops through peer interaction and meaningful activity, not through teacher-dominated discussion. To that end, in this column, the authors introduce the…

The process through which teachers transform the curriculum over time is best explained by incremental change theories. Teachers will tinker at the margins of the curriculum, effecting incremental change, until they begin to feel comfortable with the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries, and they are willing to cede control of some curricular…

September 11, 2001, was a critical teachable moment that provided the author of this article and his team with an avenue to middle level curriculum that was relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory. Hurricane Katrina opened a similar window of opportunity for middle level educators to focus the minds of young adolescents on important…

Middle school students are acutely aware of their social surroundings. In the process of emerging from childhood they attentively observe one another, looking for clues to belonging. Striving for independence from adult authority, young adolescents endeavor to blend in with their contemporaries. From clothes to music, from posture to attitude,…

In this article, the author first reviews a range of concerns about middle schooling in America, most of which are shown to have salience in Australia, to provide a context for a more detailed examination of integrated curriculum as a significant issue in contemporary middle schooling. Two examples of integrated curriculum in the Australian…

In this article, the authors recount their experience designing a program for one of their restructured middle schools that reflects a national movement in middle level reform. Inspired by Howard Garner's (1993) theory of multiple intelligences, the authors, together with a team of teachers, administrators and parents in their small mid-western…

Today, with the requirements of NCLB and state standards, schools are locked into a culture that seems to assume one size fits all. Teachers' focus is on preparing students to pass tests rather than on developing thoughtful curriculum. In this article, the authors discuss how teachers can move away from the constraints of disciplines and topics…

Collaborating with three university researchers, three seventh-grade teachers and their students worked on one component of a three-year NSF-funded research project examining the media messages about information technology and careers that middle school students receive from television, popular magazines, books, videotapes, movies, and Web sites.…

This article describes the results of a "teacher as researcher" project, which helps preservice teachers learn how to develop meaningful curriculum by creating interdisciplinary connections between literacy (reading and writing) and one (of both) of their two areas of specialization, and supports the author's own learning about how to best help…