Middle school students need to know about energy concepts and how they can reduce their energy use. New energy-monitoring tools provide powerful opportunities for students to engage in authentic investigations rich in the science practices described in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012), while at the same time advancing their…

Students at the middle school level are expected to use appropriate tools and techniques, including mathematics and graphing, to analyze and interpret data and communicate experimental findings. Measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode--see sidebar for definitions) are often used as descriptive statistics when students conduct…