High-quality afterschool and summer programming serve an important role in Nebraska communities. They engage students emotionally, intellectually, and socially (National Research Council, 2015). They provide safe and caring supervision for children who might otherwise be unsupervised outside of school hours, they also discourage negative…

Redmoor Academy is a Key Stage 3 (age 11-14) school in Leicestershire, UK, with a student cohort just over 500 pupils. The Academy has a long history of encouraging pupils to consider how STEM subjects relate to each other and to their future careers, and has made great inroads into ensuring that all teachers of STEM subjects are delivering the…

As a result of cheaper, accessible, and user-friendly technologies, there is an increasing volume of videos created by children, yet these works often lack excellence. Strong pedagogical practice is important to nurture excellence in video production, but there is scant literature in this area. In this paper, I examine best practices through a…

This paper proposes that project-based active learning is a key part of engineering education at the middle school level. One project from a comprehensive middle school engineering curriculum developed by the authors is described to show how active learning and state frameworks can coexist. The theoretical basis for learning and assessment in a…

This article describes a cooperative project between eighth graders and first graders called "Going Green in the Neighborhood." The project entailed the first grade students sketching home designs on paper to make a model community, and the eighth grade students taking those drawings and making them into 3D computer models and then…

This descriptive narrative presents a university/school partnership that led to an inquiry-based approach to language arts instruction, resulting in increased opportunities for reflective teaching and learning, students' environmental awareness projects, the integration of science, and the individualization of instruction at the middle school…