Curriculum integration is defined as students choosing topics to study based on their questions. Several middle schools throughout the United States offer students the opportunity to develop the curriculum during the year based on their questions about themselves and about the world. The author provides the rationale, the developmental reasons…

One of the most challenging daily experiences of teaching young adolescents is helping them transition from Piaget's concrete to the formal operational stage of cognitive development during the middle school years. Students who have reached formal operations can design and test hypotheses, engage in deductive reasoning, use flexible thinking,…

Noting the importance of middle school teachers paying attention to the changes in their students' development, in understanding the challenges that lay ahead of these adolescents, and in listening to what adolescents say, this book describes what middle school teachers should know when teaching early adolescents. The book presents background…