How to Help Your Middle School Student Get Organized

Middle School, in my opinion, is a make or break time in education. It is the time when kids are going to decide if they are going to do well in school or give up completely. The key is helping them to be successful students….if they are successful they have a better chance of enjoying school.

There are a few ways to help your child become successful but one of the most important places to start is organization. If your child is disorganized it becomes difficult and frustrating for them to locate the materials they need and they will soon just give up resulting in missed work and being unprepared for tests.

Start with your child's backpack. It should be just large enough to fit all they need and keep it organized and have various pockets to keep smaller items separate and organized. Too large of a backpack will leave too much room to have stuff just floating around and too small will result in your child just shoving things in to fit.

It is easier to keep organized if you minimize what they carry each day to and from school. Unless a teacher specifically requests it there is no reason to have a separate binder for each class. My students put two classes in one binder and separate the classes with a folder.

The inside front cover of the section for each of my classes has the course syllabus/class outline then a table of contents page. My students have a section for vocabulary, a section for their "do now" work and an "everything else" section. Each student is required to keep every piece of work for the class in their binder for at least an entire semester then they clean it out and put the first semester's work into a folder. Every time a new piece of work in put into the binder it is numbered and written into the table of contents. This allows the students to find anything they need quickly. An example of an entry might be:

PageAssignmentDate
32Chp 5 notes10/20/05
33Colonies worksheet (chp 5)10/21/05