What I Told My Student Heading Into Middle School
There’s a ton of advice I can give a child when middle school is the next step. I can give advice on friendships, being responsible, and building trust.
However, this post is all about the academic advice I gave to my tutoring student and his mom as they begin the adventure of middle school in a couple of weeks when school begins. My student attends a 5-8 grade middle school locally.
So what did I tell him and his mom?
Well, I kept my advice simple. Moms are busy. They have jobs away from home. They have jobs at home. They have children in different grade levels at different schools. I wanted to give her some advice that would “pack the most punch.”
Allow him to read aloud to you most days (if not every single day).
This student is not motivated to read on his own and often skips lines, substitutes words, or guesses words. In a nutshell, I told the mom to have him read whatever—a chapter from the current summer read we’ve been doing, a nonfiction book on a subject he likes, or even a current story that pops up on her phone.
This part is very important: I asked her to hold him accountable. I said that even if she can take 10-15 minutes daily to sit with only him allow him to do the reading. Hold him accountable. Stop him when the reading gets sloppy by skipping words and substituting. Don’t be nasty, but tap on the page where the mistake was made or gently say, “Look,” or “be careful.”
The other thing I told her was to help him see words in smaller chunks. I referred back to a word we had read in his chapter earlier: “unwittingly.” un-wit-ting-ly I told her that she can circle any chunks or underline any chunks to show him. Even if she has a book she’s not allowed to write in, she can write the word on a post-it and stick it in the book.
This supervised practice is going to improve his skill as a reader. It will also allow his mom to check his understanding and help build his vocabulary by discussing new words. Most of his work this year will come from textbooks, so that reading practice will be quite powerful.
Ensure he gets multiplication fact practice DAILY.
The more days he goes WITHOUT practice, the longer overall it takes to memorize them. I told the mother that even if it’s an app to practice or a workbook to complete with a multiplication chart to use a cheat sheet (or even writing the facts over and over)—-any of this is better than nothing.
What I see from my tutoring students coming from the public schools is the nothing option. The parents expect the teachers know what they’re doing. The teachers feel like they can’t give a bad grade based on the lack of knowing math facts, and the kids fall in the middle.
I have some students who attend a private school locally who use skip counting as an option. While it’s not perfect (and likely would work better set to music), it is SOMETHING for the child to fall back on when they cannot always have a multiplication chart. You can find skip counting songs for numbers 2-12 online.
The better a child knows multiplication facts the better he can do all sorts of fraction operations (including least common multiple and greatest common factor to add/sub. fractions and to reduce fractions). The better a child knows multiplication facts, the better he will be able to work division problems and understand word problems and what answers are reasonable or not.
Learning multiplication facts should not take years for most students. I am not seeing enough review and discipline around them in schools. Parents, your life will be easier with your child’s math grades and homework if you buckle down and have your child learn them. It’s like what ABCS are to reading. That’s how important learning multiplication facts are to upper level math!
Now, my student needs to improve on handwriting and spelling as well, but the aforementioned areas of improvement will have the most impact. I chose to start the mom there. I’m excited to see how it helps him in his middle school journey!
What academic advice would you have given? Comment below.
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