In the midst of the pandemic, this school district made a significant investment with recovery dollars to expand enrichment opportunities in art, music, and physical education for students in their K-8 schools. The hypothesis was increasing the quality and quantity of these opportunities, the school district would increase student engagement, lead…

In this five-year co-curricular-making project, participants individually and collectively engage in the messiness of ongoing meaning-making. Such curricular terrain acknowledges the particulars of individuals and place to provide the needed context as 100+ practicing and 140+ prospective educators seek un/decolonized and Indigenized co-curricular…

The lesson described in this article was developed and taught by a team of mathematics educators and physical therapists, with the shared goal of broadening students' perception of how mathematics concepts are applied in the real world. This lesson gives students authentic experience with the Gait Speed Test as a physical therapist would…

Music education in the United States aims to be for every child, yet many students become less interested in school music as they mature. Although previous research reveals activities that upper-elementary students may prefer, much of this research may not represent 21st-century students, the instruments and activities that have enhanced curricula…

In this article, the authors share an account of an eighth-grade personal narrative unit designed to support students in composing accounts of life during the 2020-21 pandemic school year. The article provides an overview of the four phases that comprised this nine-lesson unit and the materials and resources used. Students' voices, perspectives,…

The concept of a learner's identity in mathematics is complex and multifaceted. Based on a review of the relevant research, the authors believe most factors that influence one's mathematical identity fall within these four categories: (1) past mathematics experiences; (2) personal beliefs and efficacy; (3) future self-representation and belonging;…

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and evaluation processes of an activity that focused on the comparison meaning of the subtraction of integers and included the number line model as the primary representation. Finding the answer and determining the sign of the answer in the subtraction questions were targeted as the learning…

This article describes an unexpected playground experience that occurred between the author, a reading educator and former middle grades teacher, and his six-year-old granddaughter. The experience became the inspiration and impetus to provide an introduction to, and a rationale for, the concept of text clusters to middle grades teachers. The…

While physical education class is intended to be fun, getting students to motivate themselves to participate in activities is challenging. This study aims to provide meaningful strategies to promote physical activity in the classroom while meeting all students' needs. The target population is middle physical education teachers. The following…

This is part II of a two-part series on integrating a physical activity component in delivering health lessons to elementary and middle school students. The purpose of this series is to illustrate how health content can be implemented with hands-on activities, physical experiments, visual illustrations that are associated with a specific lesson…

English Learners benefit from rich opportunities to explore and engage with peers. We describe pattern-seeking and argument-constructing activities that support partners as they co-construct representations of networks, such as social networks connecting people. Such activities allow all students to explore relationships between vertices, edges,…

The Building Painted Cubes Task is a groupworthy algebraic task. Students build cubes using linking unit cubes, search for algebraic patterns, and report findings on posters. This task can create spaces for students to see themselves as doers of mathematics.

Spirograph® is a classic drawing toy that has intriguing connections with mathematics. Inspired by earlier articles in "Mathematics Teacher" on the classic drawing toy that targeted higher grade levels, the authors adopt and create activities that make Spirograph mathematics accessible to middle-grade learners.

Cultivating students' self-management ability is the requirement of social development and the progress of the times to school education, and it is also the need for students' growth. For middle school students in adolescence and undergoing tremendous changes in their body and mind, its significance is even more prominent. As an element of direct…

Gamified-integrated STEM is a technique that combines integrated STEM stages with gamification elements and can engage individuals in climate change communication. This paper presents a gamified-integrated STEM activity focused on global climate change. The activity includes gamified-integrated STEM instructional stages implemented in 6 lesson…