Lessons from the Middle: High End Learning for Middle School Students »

Sandra Kaplan is associate clinical professor for learning and instruction at the University of Southern California. She has served as the lead consultant for the Carnegie Middle Schools Project, Texas Education Agency, from 1993 to present. Dr. Kaplan is a past-president of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), of which she has been a member of since 1982. She also is a past-president of the California Association for the Gifted. One of the world's foremost authorities in the field of gifted education, she has made presentations at the World Congress on Gifted and NAGC and TAGT conferences. Recent honors include the Award of Achievement from the California Association for the Gifted and the Distinguished Service Award from NAGC.

From writing mysteries, to the human genome project, these model lessons for the core academic areas will excite your students and save you planning time. In addition to the 12 model lessons provided, the book includes a step-by-step guide to developing lessons that emphasize depth and complexity. All of the materials focus on ways to align the middle school curriculum with established national standards and offer strategies to evaluate learner achievement.

The writers who contributed lessons to this book are all outstanding educators who were selected based on their subject area expertise and experience in curriculum writing. They worked tirelessly, writing, revising, and rewriting, creating model lessons that have set a high standard for middle school teachers.

The lessons have been grouped by grade level as they share a common theme. The grade level designations are, to some degree, for demonstration and example purposes only. In a particular classroom, lessons from other grade levels may be equally appropriate.

The most important goal of this book is the hope that, with the examples of curriculum excellence and the theoretical background, teachers will begin to develop standards-based lessons and units of study that will promote high-end learning for gifted students in middle school.