Central Middle School

Adjustment to Middle School

Helping Your 6th Grader Adjust to Middle School

• Talk to your student everyday.  Ask him/her what they are doing in school and how he/she feels about how school is going. 

• Encourage your child to make friends with other children who have a positive attitude about school and think homework is important.  Get to know his/her friends.

• Help your child become more organized.  Insist that he/she use the agenda to write down assignments.  Request that he/she show you the work when complete.

• If your child is not bringing home the agenda and/or homework, contact your child's team either through email or by calling his counselor.  There will be very few evenings he/she will have no homework assigned.  A good tactic is to require your child to spend a minimum amount of time on homework.  If they bring home no work, make up some homework to do or require them to read or write for the specified amount of time. 

• A set time for homework to begin is helpful.  Ideally, it should be completed before any other activity.  However, with sports practice and other extra-curricular events, this is frequently not possible.  If this is the case, encourage your child to ask for homework ahead of time and plan
accordingly.  Weekend free time may need to be spent working ahead on homework.

• Help your child when needed, but remember it is his/her work to do.  Making mistakes is part of the learning process.

• Encourage him/her to ask questions in class or after class if they do not understand.  Teachers are often willing for students to come in early or stay late occasionally to give extra help.  Check with your child's teacher about available homework help.

• Instruct your child to tell an adult at school if they are being bullied or harassed or if they observe another student being bullied or harassed.  Staff is unable to help unless they are made aware of a problem.  Name-calling is a form of harassment and will be dealt with as such.  Every student has a right to feel safe at school.