All Middle School resources

Journal Article

Drawing to Learn to Draw Out Student Understanding

By Christine Karlberg, Laura Henriques, and Alan Colburn

Middle School Pre-service Teachers Biology Interdisciplinary Life Science Literacy STEM Teaching Strategies

Web Seminar

Archive: Book Beat Live! Instructional Sequence Matters: Using Explore-before-Explain in the Classroom, July 20, 2021

Explore-before-Explain teaching is all about creating conceptual coherence for learners to better prepare students for the reality of their world. ...

Postsecondary Elementary High School Middle School General Science

Journal Article

Under the Sea

By Jayma Koval, Sabrina Grossman, and Marion Usselman

Middle School Biology Interdisciplinary Literacy Technology

Journal Article

The Great Sunflower Project

By Jill Nugent

Middle School Citizen Science Environmental Science Life Science Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Wrapping It Up

By Kaitlyn McGlynn and Janey Kelly

Middle School Inclusion Literacy Pedagogy Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

How Can We Use and Interact With Graphs Better? (Data Literacy 101)

By Kristin Hunter-Thomson

Middle School Pre-service Teachers Interdisciplinary Literacy Technology

Journal Article

Visual Literacy

By Patty McGinnis

Middle School Literacy Teaching Strategies Technology

Lesson Plan

Force and Motion Ideas

The purpose of this assessment probe is to comprehensively elicit students’ ideas about the relationship between force and motion. The list of possible answers includes several distracters that are based on learning research; thus the probe will te...

By Page Keeley and Rand Harrington

Middle School High School Assessment Physical Science

Lesson Plan

Spaceships

This probe is designed to elicit students’ ideas about changing the direction of motion in the absence of air. Many students will have seen movies or television shows in which spaceships turn by banking or using wing flaps. In outer space, where th...

By Page Keeley and Rand Harrington

Middle School High School Assessment Physical Science

Lesson Plan

Making Sound

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about sound. The probe is designed to reveal whether students recognize that sound is produced by vibrating matter. ...

Middle School Assessment Physical Science

Reports Article

Freebies for Science Teachers, June 22, 2021

By Debra Shapiro

Middle School Early Childhood Elementary High School Administration Biology Careers Chemistry Curriculum Disabilities Distance Learning Earth & Space Science Multilingual Learners Environmental Science Equity General Science Inclusion Instructional Materials Interdisciplinary Lesson Plans Life Science Literacy Multicultural News Phenomena Physical Science Physics Professional Learning old STEM Teaching Strategies Technology

Lesson Plan

Will It Form a New Substance?

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about chemical change. The probe is designed to find out how students determine whether a new substance with a different chemical makeup is formed when matter undergoes a change. ...

By Page Keeley and Susan Cooper

Middle School High School Assessment Physical Science

Lesson Plan

Equal and Opposite

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about pairs of forces that fit Newton’s third law. The probe is specifically designed to reveal whether students can identify third law force pairs as involving different objects. ...

By Page Keeley and Rand Harrington

Middle School Assessment Physical Science

Lesson Plan

Ice-Cold Lemonade

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about transfer of energy. The probe is designed to determine whether students recognize that heat flows from warmer objects or areas to cooler ones. ...

By Page Keeley

Middle School Assessment Physical Science

Lesson Plan

Chicken Eggs

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about food, transformation of matter, growth and development, conservation of mass, and systems. The concepts underlying this probe are complex. It is not important that students kno...

By Page Keeley and Joyce Tugel

Middle School High School Assessment Life Science