Maine-Endwell Middle School

Helping Your Child Transition to Middle School

I remember my first day of middle school vividly. I was in the nurse’s clinic by fourth period and I threw up on the school bus on the way home. What a way to start a brand-new stage of life. Although my reaction to the transition from elementary to middle school was embarrassing, who could blame me? The changes middle school brings — adjusting to a new teacher for each subject and keeping up with hectic schedules — could make anyone queasy. Although you can’t prevent first-day jitters, you can help your child build effective study habits that will help him begin the year with confidence.

Getting organized

Keeping up with a more complex schedule creates the biggest challenge for middle-school students. Ed Vittardi, principal of North Royalton Middle School and National Middle School Association North Region trustee, emphasizes the importance of providing students with strategies for navigating their schedules.“During the middle-school years,” Vittardi explains, “it is vital that the team of teachers work with students and their parents to help provide the work habits to approach their schedule.”

Many schools encourage — and even require — that students use a planner. Help your child find one that will work for her and spend time teaching her how to use it. You might even use your own planner as an example to show how you organize your schedule. Buy a planner that is easy to carry to and from school and emphasize the importance of consulting it every day.

Setting goals

When helping your child learn to use a planner, also teach him how to set goals. While it will be relatively easy for a student to learn to plot daily homework on his calendar, long-term planning for projects and tests can be much more difficult. Parents can help students break up larger projects into smaller tasks and plot each step in the planner. Encourage your child to spend some time each day on every subject, reading over class notes, reviewing chapters and trying to absorb the material.

Developing good work habits

Completing daily homework assignments, in addition to working toward long-term goals, demands efficient and smart studying. Help your child develop a better understanding of her work habits and help her balance extracurricular and social activities by setting aside time each day to complete schoolwork. If certain days of the week are busy with baseball or dance classes, students can limit those days to short-term homework and use the off days for long-term studying.

Developing effective study habits involves learning when to study and when to take breaks. Encourage your child to study more difficult topics first, when he has the most energy. Alternating between more difficult and easier tasks can help a student avoid burnout. If you see that long stretches of studying leave your child exhausted and frustrated, encourage very short breaks to dance or run around. Extroverted students who balk at spending so much time alone can talk with a parent or sibling about what they’re learning to provide a social interaction that will also help reinforce their studying.

Parents also need to help students get rid of distractions so they can make good use of the time they spend studying. At the same time, respect your child’s individual work habits. Even though you may feel distracted by music or activity when you’re working, your child may focus better with more noise.

Emphasizing effort over intelligence

Researchers from the University of Michigan have found that students perform differently in middle school depending on how they think of their own intelligence. If they think of themselves as being smart, regardless of context, they might not make the extra effort needed to excel, and, as a result, lose motivation and confidence when they don’t do well.

The other group, kids who blame a poor grade on a lack of effort rather than a lack of intelligence, adapt more easily to the challenges of middle school. Instead of losing confidence in their abilities, they simply work harder to do well.

Parents can help their children adapt to the more rigorous academics of middle school by emphasizing effort versus innate smartness. A compliment like, “You worked so hard to get an A on your math test” will be more meaningful and motivating than, “You are so smart.”

Staying involved

Parents can support their children’s successful transition to middle school by staying involved. Dr. Katharine Owens, professor of education at the University of Akron , explains, “Parents tend to back away a bit from overseeing the details of middle-school students’ daily routine” as students become more independent. However, she encourages parents to stay involved: “An active interest in the child’s school experience is essential for success at every grade level.”

By Kathy Brown of Ohio