*Now available in paperback with a brand new title: Kaboom Academy!* “Graduates of Wayside School will fit right in at the decidedly unconventional Kaboom Academy.” —Kirkus Reviews Forget everything you know about middle school while reading “this amusing and lighthearted story [that] pokes fun at traditional education, while celebrating nonconformity, individuality, and even oddity” (School Library Journal). A new middle school has just opened in Horsemouth, New Hampshire: Kaboom Academy. It’s a place where cannons go off in the middle of school assemblies, pills contain actual information, and multiplication is made, er, real. (Read: You ever wonder what it would be like if there were two of you? How about four? How about eight? Well, you’re about to find out!) The school’s new students—and the Journalism 1A class in particular—can’t believe all the shenanigans that go on. Who’s really in charge of this groundbreaking academy for boys and girls who’ve fallen out of love with learning? And what does it mean to “blow up the model for middle school”? A 2015 Children's Choice

"Formerly published as Middle-school cool."

Agnes Parker tries to maintain her old persona and keep a low profile in middle school, but her best friend Prejean's problems, persistent harassment from the eighth-grade boys, and a friendship with an interesting boy in her art class make it difficult.

Imagine handling students state-by-state data on the number of gallons of soft drinks sold per person in one year. Imagine using it to lead a vibrant problem-solving session in which students energetically pose and answer mathematical questions: Why does it say sold instead of consumed? What is a soft drink? Is it the same as a soda? Who would collect this kind of data? Why would they collect it? How was gallons per person calculated? What was the total amount of soda sold in our state? How many 12-ounce cans is that? 20-ounce bottles? How many of each per person? Understanding Middle School Math gathers 50 cool problems like this that lead to deep thinking. Problems such as the Renovation Problem, in which students uncover ideas about how perimeter, area, length, and cost affect a construction project. Or Chocolate Algebra, where they discover linear relationships among the pocket money available to buy two differently priced chocolate candies. Arthur Hyde combines the latest research and decades of classroom experience to braid language, cognition, and math. His approach can help any student, including underprepared ones, with the rigors of math in middle school and beyond. He has created and adapted problems that strongly connect math to the real world, to students lives, and to prior knowledge. Problems that scaffold content and processes, and give students multiple entry points into learning. Every problem has been extensively field tested and refined by classroom teachers. And for each cool problem practicing middle school teachers describe how they used it to differentiate over a wide range of students and extend learning. For fantastic problems your students won't soon forget and teaching solutions that are exciting, substantial, and transformative, turn to Art Hyde. Read and use Understanding Middle School Math and pass your love of math on as you meet your classroom goals.

The first year of middle school can be exciting, or scarey, just ask Ginny.

When best friends Jenny and Addie start sixth grade, Jenny quickly discovers that Addie is interested in joining the Pops, the coolest seventh grade clique in school.

Twelve-year-old Lane Cisco has good friends, a secret boyfriend, and the position of sixth-grade captain at Rio Chama Middle School, but life gets complicated when her off-beat cousin Angelina arrives for an extended visit.