Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
I know that I was nowhere near ready to be put in a school with high schoolers when I was in sixth, seventh or maybe even eighth grade. [snip] There were definitely some things in my high school environment that I don't think I was ready to be exposed to at age 11 or 12 -- and neither were most of my classmates. [snip]
But Cluey is right when she says that middle schoolers do best in a completely different environment from either elementary schoolers or high schoolers . . . I don't think that it's a good idea to push them into the high school learning environment or to force them to stay in the elementary school environment longer than ideal.
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Cluey and sugar and spice have taken most of the words out of my mouth.
As a middle school librarian (grades 6-8 now and grades 5-8 previously), I can tell you that there are things that 8th graders are reading and studying and talking about that the 6th grade students are just not ready for. I wouldn't want to have to separate my fiction into 6-8 and 9-12 levels, or even smaller divisions, depending on reading level and content-appropriateness level.
Middle school is where the kids start to realize that the world isn't black and white, but still (sometimes) have faith in their parents and teachers. They're ready to switch classrooms and have lockers, but need the support of a common team of teachers and students for 90% of their classes.
My school is broken up into grade level pods for this purpose-- 6th grade in one pod split up into 4 teams of ~90 kids, with the same teacher for reading, language arts, jaguar (think study hall plus reading plus character counts and service projects), and one of their core classes, and have two other team teachers for their other two core classes (math, sci, soc. studies). They have one period of PE/health, and one period of exploratory (8 different things like art, choir, tech, drama, careers, world cultures, keyboarding, etc. that they have for 4.5 week slots throughout the year). They *need* to be able to try out different elective classes while getting a lot of elementary-like support.
In 7th and 8th grade, they're on two teams of 150 kids each. Four core teachers (Eng., sci, SS, math) and one exploratory teacher that has the overflow study hall. More rotation, a little less structure. They can take 4 exploratories each of two periods, or have a year-long band or language class in 7th grade, and pick 2 exploratories in 8th grade.
This helps them find out what they're good at. The whole philosophy is gradually lessening the support while they see what they need and how to do it. LOTS of character education in my building, aimed more at service projects and responsibility. This is where they can start debating ethics and really start seeing the good and bad consequences of their choices in life.
When I was in middle school, it was 7th and 8th grade. I was in a team, but it didn't feel like the rest of the school had teams (it was a gifted program in a magnet school). We had 4 electives that we could take, but it was definitely confusing! And yet, it was nice to have that transition between elementary and middle and high school.