Middle school

Dealing with the Tween Years of Junior High

June 16, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Image by cseeman via Flickr

A child reaching junior high is on the cusp of the first big change in his life. Sixth grade is probably the last year of sanity before puberty strikes, bringing with it many changes. A parent needs to exercise great patience in order to get through the tumultuous years.

Up until this point, it was easy for the student to focus on their school work without much distraction. The hormones still haven’t set in and life tends to be much simpler. However, once puberty starts in, the ability to focus on schoolwork starts becoming trickier. The temptations to distraction need to be battled, especially considering that the junior high years can make or break the student’s chances to get into a top high school. And even in systems where there is only one high school to funnel into, study habits need to be formed at this stage to overcome the next set of changes.

This is the stage of life where parents need to sit down with their children and have frank talks with them. Their child’s world is changing, and if there is no parental context, it can be a confusing time. The major issue to deal with is the fact that emotions go all over the map at this point. Having a talk about the consequences of their actions is extremely important.

Eventually, this too shall pass as it has for untold number of tweens. Parents that do their due diligence by working and talking with their children survive intact, as do their kids.

Filed Under: Education, Learning Activities & Games Tagged With: High school, Middle school, Parent

The Education Distinction: Junior High and Middle School

May 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

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It’s an easy certainty: the ideas are interchangeable; the concepts are the same. Junior high and middle school are identical principles, you believe. There are no distinctions between them, just the casual trade of their names.

This is incorrect.

Junior high is not the same as middle school, just as middle school is not the same as junior high. They are instead two separate formats: each with their own rules and requirements. It’s imperative to recognize this, if only to discontinue the assumptions.

The simplest — and most obvious — difference between these systems is their student demographics. Junior highs are defined by teens, favoring only the seventh and eighth grades (composed typically of individuals who are 13 and 14). Middle schools, however, include those who are in the sixth grade. This allows younger children to enter the educational population. This is the greatest distinction between these notions and can be traced back to their conceptions.

Junior high began as a way to bridge the distance between elementary schools and high schools. It was intended for students not yet able to enter their freshman years and was divided into more advanced academics.

This was not enough to satisfy many districts, however. The format was deemed too rigid and middle schools were formed to compensate — with younger students allowed to attend and the curriculum tailored to their needs.

And this difference remains today, with these concepts operating independently of each other (often within the same cities). They are not — and will never be — the same. This must be understood to avoid switching their names and branding them educational twins.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Elementary school, Middle school, Student

Helping Students Avoid Peer Pressure in Junior High

March 7, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Although peer pressure begins way before junior high, it seems to be when it initially becomes more of an issue in children’s lives. Some of our children are particularly strong and have no problem speaking their mind. For more assertive students, the word “no” can be heard often without regret. Still, parents and teachers can reinforce certain guidelines to help them steer clear of undesirable situations.

For many students who are of middle school age, it can be helpful for them to contemplate about negative scenarios that could play out when peer pressure wins. Parents should not be afraid to talk to their children at any age. State the facts about the harm of drinking, smoking and drugs. Many people feel that anything interfering with bodily and mental health isn’t an acceptable means of getting into the limelight of popularity.

It seems that the term “friend” is so widely and loosely used. For some students in junior high, who they are unfortunately can equate with how their peers perceive them. Maybe it would be useful for parents and faculty members to ask children to differentiate between friendship and popularity. As many of us are aware, popularity doesn’t necessarily mean the same as wholesomeness. Consequently, some schools hold mandatory workshops several times within the school year.

Our children can mirror us early on in life and although morality cannot be taught, we need to practice good teaching, parenting and role modeling. In addition it’s important to discuss personal values with kids. Many of us want to be well-liked but we don’t always stop to think about other people’s behaviors.

As adults, we should surround ourselves with others who have things in common with us and come from a good background. As we age, super-stardom may seem irrelevant. True friendship and self-respect remain in their own realm. if there are no boundaries set, than peer pressure might as well win the war for life.

Filed Under: Education, Students Tagged With: Middle school, Parent, Peer pressure

What to Expect in Third Grade

December 17, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Transitioning from second grade to third grade can seem like an insurmountable task at times to any young child. In second grade they were tested on such facets of education like cursive and in math being able to solve story problems. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the education and curriculum only begins to get more difficult as they progress through elementary school. In the third grade the student has progressed half way through their elementary education and teachers and administrations will start to show the students what they will need to advance onto middle school, high school and hopefully college. Parents too, should take an even more engaged role as the second line of defense when it comes to making sure the child is absorbing what they are being taught in third grade.

English becomes a key component of the third grader’s education as they will start to learn what it really takes to construct a sentence as well as putting together actual paragraphs and truly understanding what goes into that. Third graders will be called on even more to figure out ways to sound out and figure out words that had previously been unknown to them. From here on out elementary school kids will not longer be able to lean on the excuse of a word being “too big” or “too hard” when talking about reading and writing it. Using a dictionary comes into play quite often at this grade level as students are expected to find out ways to solve these problems on their own more and more.

In mathematics, parents should prepare to help their children deal not only with solving multiplication tables reaching up to 9×9 but there will be timed tests that will show not only that the student is able to solve the problem but can solve it in a short amount of time and under a bit of pressure.

Filed Under: Students, Teacher Tips Tagged With: Education, Middle school, Student

Beginning Junior High Or Middle School

December 15, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

If parents thought that having their child start grade school was stressful they haven’t seen anything yet when it comes to beginning middle school or Junior High. In comparison, most students are going to see a dramatic change in the amount of homework they will be expected to take home and complete each day as well as brand new areas of study they haven’t really prepared for at all even in the sixth grade.

Middle school or Junior High is basically when a child really start preparing for the rigors of college or the real world and it is witnessed in the amount of work and the range of work a student is expected to take on. Seventh grade is where most students are first really introduced to a foreign language. While for the most part, Spanish and French are the two most popular language courses offered some schools go above and beyond as they see the world shrinking all the time and offer Asian dialects such as Chinese or even a dead language such as Latin. These are generally preliminary teachings that are geared towards softening the ground when students will have to spend at least two total semesters learning a foreign language in High school.

Seventh graders will also take on much more difficult concepts in the area of math. Seventh graders will begin studying such terms as mean and median and mode as well as other statistical investigations. Solving equations that include a variable as well as understanding the degrees involved in an angle are also going to be included in a seventh grader’s curriculum.

Finally, while a student had some education in history when they were in grade school, middle school will focus the attention on certain spans in history including the middle ages and some of the early parts of our modern history.

Filed Under: Students, Teacher Tips Tagged With: Elementary school, High school, Middle school, Student

Middle School Education

November 14, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

: Image via Wikipedia

The final year of elementary school prepares a student to be independent and organized. Entry into the middle school years require these skills. Homework will become more extensive with assignments of at home work in various subjects. Parents can assist their children by providing homework folders and assignment books or wall calenders to use for tracking progress and staying on task. Personal responsibility should be emphasized to children attending middle school. Parents should establish rules that outline a child’s responsibilities to their middle school education. Teaching a child good time management skills will contribute to success in their school work.

The language arts program introduced to middle school students will focus on comprehension of the materials being read. Children will be introduced to classic stories and be expected to report on the reading material. The study of grammar and punctuation will include learning about nouns and adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions and other elements of sentence structure. Compositions will be written by students to support these areas of study and increase a child’s writing ability. Math learning will include geometry, algebra and introduction to statistics. Math problems will become more complicated in the middle school educational process and utilize complex word problems that require a solution.

Social studies activities will include extensive study on the history of America and world history. Students will also learn about how the United States government was established and how our governmental system works. Science studies will include the study of earth and space, life science and chemistry. Environmental science will be studied with emphasis on the impact physical life has on our environment.

The middle school years become a time of stronger peer influence on a child. Issues of bullying can introduce themselves during middle school. Parents need to be vigilent in understanding social aspects of the middle school edcuation period.

Filed Under: Students, Teacher Tips Tagged With: Education, Educators, High school, K through 12, Language arts, Middle school, Student, United States