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Are you looking for middle school organization tutoring?  We can definitely help.  At the Study Hut we get an insider’s look at how students transition from elementary to middle school.  One general theme that has become second nature for us to address is organization with a little middle school organization tutoring.

Kids get to middle school and have to adapt to having more teachers, assignments, and methods of learning.  A lot more is expected of them and sometimes there can be an unspoken assumption that students have all the tools to stay organized and on-task.  What we’ve noticed is that there is often a disconnect between the organizational skills they’ve acquired in elementary school compared to the level of organization required to be successful in middle school.

Middle schoolers have to work hard to adapt to all the changes that come with transitioning schools and increased expectations.  This transitional time is an excellent opportunity to get the help in the form of middle school organization tutoring.  On top of that, they are also expected to navigate a large variety of electronic and traditional methods and materials.  Some teachers have really embraced new technology and created a digital relationship with their students where notes, homework, supplemental learning tools, power points, quizlets and study guides are all available through apps like notability or e-backpack that kids access on tablets.  Other teachers may feel like they have a great system in place using old fashioned pencil & paper, the whiteboard, photocopies and a text book to teach their material.  In the midst of getting accustomed to their new learning environment, students are caught between two very different teaching styles.

This can result in confusion and missed assignments, especially if the student does not have a reliable way to stay organized.  And while there are many great tools and apps out there that lots of kids are quick to embrace, at the Study Hut we stress the importance of working with an old school spiral-bound planner.   We stand behind this method for many reasons.  Planners create a central focal point where kids can write down daily homework assignments and upcoming tests or quizzes.  We also teach students to use their planners for extracurriculars, sports, family events, vacations and other times commitments to help them learn the skill of time management.

In the case that the teacher uploads assignments to an app, making a “mental note” to check notability later simply does not have the same impact as creating a habit of writing down homework assignments in each subject’s designated space in a daily planner.  Even if the homework has not been uploaded by the time school gets out, we’d rather see a student take the time to jot down “check notability” in her planner than take our chances with the kid who leaves that box of his planner blank assuming he will remember to go on notability.

Research supports writing information down by hand after studies have shown that participants retain content better if they have written it down compared to typing it out.  So even if an assignment is written down on an app on a student’s tablet, that same student’s classmate who wrote down the assignment statistically has a better chance of remembering to do it.

After seeing many kids transition from feeling stressed and overwhelmed by school to gaining a sense of competence and self-reliance, it is not an exaggeration to give much of the credit to a functioning organization system.  And while it is important to remain open to the new ways that technology is being incorporated into education, a paper planner is still the best tool for a kid to use  while he or she is figuring out a system to stay organized in middle school.