This paper describes the implementation and outcomes of a summer workshop for middle school mathematics and science teachers. The focus was on engineering-oriented activities that integrated mathematics and science concepts. The paper describes four such activities: Forces and Math, Pendulums and Graphing, Water Rocket Design and Analysis, and Yogurt Cup Speakers. The summer workshop was the culminating event for a cohort of engineering graduate students supported by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) program. The workshop activities were developed by the GK-12 Fellows during the school year and tested in their Teacher Partners' classrooms. The activities were designed to integrate math and science learning through real-life problems. Seventy-three science and math teachers from forty-six schools participated in the workshop. Information available to report on outcomes of the workshop was obtained from an exit survey administered to the participating teachers. An interesting finding is that the math teachers strongly agreed that the activities were applicable to math and improved their ability to teach math, but the science teachers were less positive about the math content of the activities. An opposite trend was observed for the questions about science. The science teachers strongly agreed that the activities were applicable to science and improved their ability to teach science, but the math teachers were less positive about the science. The two types of teachers performed the exact same activities at the exact same time, and usually in a small group that contained both math and science teachers, yet perceived the workshop differently. This may be interpreted that because the workshop activities used engineering problems to integrate math and science concepts, the math teachers thought it was a good math workshop and the science teachers thought it was a good science workshop. This finding could have implications for future in-service and pre-service teacher professional development efforts.
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