The Organizational Demands Of Middle School

Sound familiar?  Five assignments.  My son had only remembered one.  And given that up to 75% of his grades are based on homework, not remembering to do it - or to turn it in when it's complete - can cause major problems for kids, failing grades, and even retention in middle school,

Middle school differs from elementary school in many ways - one of the most important, but underestimated, is the increased pressure it puts in kids' organizational abilities.  Take the above example.  Not only does it show off my son's not atypical difficulty keeping track of his work.  It also shows up just how COMPLICATED the work is that he has to keep track of.

• Five courses with six different teachers
• Due dates of one, two, and four days.
• Different types of tasks, each needing different types of materials to complete them

Cognitive Development In Middle School

Although kids make major gains in cognitive ability as they enter adolescence, often the demands of school outstrip them. As I wrote in my previous post: What MIddle School Parents Should Know: Adolescents Are Like Lawyers, middle schoolers make five major gains in their ability to think:

• They can think about possibilities
• They can think about abstract concepts
• Their metacognitive abilities improve (they can think about thinking)
• They can think multi-dimensionally, playing one idea off of another
• They can think relativistically, understanding things from different points of views.

The misfit on middle schools to early adolescents' development

A positive side of this development is that they are capable of much more abstract, multidimensional thinking.  

Unfortunately, these new abilities often put them in conflict with the demands of middle schools.  

• Middle school requires more rote learning.  As developmental researcher Jacqueline Eccles has written, at the same time that adolescents develop new cognitive abilities, many middle schools ask students to do more ROTE tasks that are LESS cognitively demanding.  Whereas elementary school projects often ask kids to integrate and think creatively about material, middle schools often ask kids to memorize and repeat back information.  Although there are many good reasons for this - you can't think integratively and intelligently in the absence of facts and solid knowledge, it can also be frustring for students who feel that they are doing more repetitive, less challenging tasks.  Math, in particular, tends to focus on review and consolidation rather than learning new skills.
• Thinking about multiple possibilities can cause kids to freeze.  Presented with many different possibilities, kids can freeze up, spending more time thinking and deciding than choosing a path and doing.    
• School's demands for organization may outstrip kids' abilities to do it.  Moving from class to class requires kids to rapidly adjust to the expectations of different teachers.  Assignments are rarely as integrated as they are in elmentary school or as teachers would like them to be.  And the physical act of bringing home all those books and all those papers - and getting them back again - can be daunting.

The responsibility for completing their work lies in your child

It is important to remember that the primary responsbility for completing work well is with your child.  But it's also really easy for us to believe that when they don't immediately do that well, it's from stubbornness, or laziness, or lack of effort.

Begin with the assumption that it's not.  Most kids want to do well.  They certainly don't want to get in trouble and don't want to spend more time on their homework than they have to.  Giving them the tools they need can improve homework quality while at the same time reducing the time it takes to complete it.  

Some strategies that work

Parents can help kids get organized by focusing on the PROCESS and LOGISTICS of school and not just 'helping with homework' and working on content.  By focusing on HOW they do their homework (what time, what conditions) not the content of it, you let them keep control over it while giving them tools to manage it effectively themselves.

In addition to these suggestions, go to this page on Children With Special Needs for a wealth of additional information.  A list of strategies for both teachers and parents are available here at Intervention Central.  

Where things fall through the cracks.  

When my son and I went through his problems with completing and turning in his work, we came up with five key points where things fell apart.  These were the principles we arrived at:

• Eliminate thinking as much as possible
• Make organization automatic
• Use planners or assignment books effectively - you can't count on memory
• Make sure all materials are home when they're needed
• Make sure completed assignments can be found and TURNED IN

Make things automatic.  The single most important thing you can do is to help your child make good organizational skills AUTOMATIC.The less they have to think, the less likely they are to make mistakes. The goal is for good organizational skills to become habitual so your child doesn't have to think about and remember what to do. They go to class, sit down, and open their planner and check the board for assignments.

Organize all materials together in one place. When my son got his supplies list at the beginning of the year, he was asked to get 7 folders and 7 spiral notebooks, plus two three ring binders.  The idea, I know, was to minimize what the kids had to carry back and forth to school.  Kids are supposed to bring home what they need and leave the rest at school.  This only works for organized kids. For my son, it meant that he'd always be home without the notebook he needed to do his homework.  

Last year we had solved the problem by putting everything into one humungous three ring binder.

This year, that didn't work, as the folders and notebooks were just too numerous.  After six month's experimentation, we finally got a new system: a large expanding accordian folder that took file folders and spiral notebooks alike.  It even took his assignment book.