Teachers are the most essential element in a child's success in school. Action Research for Teacher Candidates provides teachers-in-training with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, responsive, and effective methods that generate success in school for both teachers and students. This book provides a formula for data-driven results. It details a process ensuring high-level student achievement.

Too often, mathematics and science are taught in isolation from each other and from meaningful problems that matter to students. This book draws on the authors’ experiences with teacher colleagues, including time spent in their classrooms co-developing and refining lessons. The core of their approach is to encourage learners to pursue solutions to everyday challenges through design-based learning cycles. Students use mathematical modeling to describe or summarize a phenomenon, predict which potential solutions may be successful, and/or to test actual performance against predictions. The authors emphasize connecting grade-appropriate science and math content standards and integrating literacy with evidence-based argument through design briefs and presentations. Teachers will learn how to support productive struggle and structure group learning that promotes equity, while teaching in the classroom or virtually as needed. The middle grades are a pivotal time to engage the next generation so that they are prepared to solve tomorrow’s challenges. Classroom teachers, pre-service educators, and faculty in teacher education programs can use Design Thinking in the Middle Grades as a foundational text for math, science, and integrated STEM teaching. Book Features:  Identifies the content standards, objectives, and practices from math, science, and language arts for each lesson sample. Combines mathematical modeling with engineering design as a tool to facilitate deep learning. Offers a range of design activities to produce both artifacts and processes. Describes design activities focused on easily obtained, inexpensive, or found materials to avoid narrowing access in underfunded schools.

Teachers are the single most important element in helping every child succeed in school. Making Classroom Inquiry Work: Techniques for Effective Action Research is designed to serve those who wish to delve deeper into their action research or as leaders in teacher research and reflective practice. Robert P. Pelton is also the author of Action Research for Teacher Candidates: Using Classroom Data to Enhance Instruction, written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed. These two books serve as both a perfect training curriculum for pre-service teachers at the undergraduate or graduate level and as an excellent vehicle for professional development for in-service teachers.

Teachers are the single most important element in helping every child succeed in school. Action Research for Teacher Candidates has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed. Robert P. Pelton is also the author of Making Classroom Inquiry Work: Techniques for Effective Action Research, which is designed to serve those who wish to delve deeper into their action research or as leaders in teacher research and reflective practice. These two books serve as both a perfect training curriculum for pre-service teachers at the undergraduate or graduate level and as an excellent vehicle for professional development for in-service teachers.