The "EncycloMEdia" project provides a stimulating project-based opportunity for gifted and talented students in the middle and upper grades. Its first component is an arts-integration piece in the form of an altered book. The second component is a cumulative assessment document containing students' text-based analyses that correspond to…

There are many important questions teachers and administrators need to ask as they grapple with how to ensure high school graduates are college and career ready. What does it mean to prepare students for a world that is rapidly changing--a world in which science and technology are altering how we live, work, play, and interact? If teachers focus…

A call for educational reform motivated this school system to devise an enhanced version of STEM in their middle school. This case provides rich descriptions of how eighth grade middle school teachers, from multiple disciplines, enacted a STEAM team model that integrated Language Arts into STEM. These STEAM team teachers were systematically…

What do paleontologists, dinosaur tracks, and the nature of science have in common? They're combined here in an inquiry activity where students use methods of observation and inference to devise evidence-based explanations for the data they collect about dinosaur tracks, much like the methods used by paleontologists. Students then debate the…

This paper discusses a K-12/university collaboration in which students participated in a four-day scenario-based summer STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) camp aimed at making difficult scientific concepts salient. This scenario, Jumpstart STEM-CSI: Chocolate Science Investigation (JSCSI), used open- and guided-inquiry…

This comprehensive book offers a practical pathway for developing twenty-first-century skills while simultaneously strengthening content-area learning. "Digital Learning" contains a wealth of research-based practices to integrate the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Education Technology Standards (NETS) for both…

Statistics is the art and science of gathering, analyzing, and making conclusions from data. However, many people do not fully understand how to interpret statistical results and conclusions. Placing students in a collaborative environment involving project-based learning may enable them to overcome misconceptions of probability and enhance the…