Curriculum and Course Offerings

• Greater access to advanced, accelerated, and support courses.
• Greater student access to a variety of instructional tools and settings.
• Better alignment with current curriculum standards and instructional materials.
• Possible to offer exploratory courses and clubs allowing students to sample elective areas.
• Offerings and student choice would increase from sixth through eighth grades.

Greater Flexibility in Scheduling

• Smaller learning communities with teams of core teachers and students.
• Integrated, thematic curriculum projects.
• Extended learning opportunities.
• Can combine the best of both worlds with homeroom and smaller, personalized teams more like elementary and exploratory/elective choices more like secondary.
• Connectedness of a home base and core teacher team with the expanded opportunities of enrichment, acceleration, exploration, and academic support.

• At the middle level, Felner (1997) found that student achievement increases proportionately to the number of middle level "best practices" used within a school.
• Developmental needs of young adolescents differ from those of elementary school children and older teenagers. (Howley, 2002).
• Middle schools should incorporate unique curricula to better effect the transition between elementary and high school programs rather than attempt to approximate one or the other.  
• What a middle level school is called or how the grades are configured is not as important as the programs, practices, and relationships found within the grades that house the students.
• Research studies and extensive, cumulative, empirical evidence have confirmed that when schools implement the middle school characteristics over time, higher levels of student achievement and improved overall development of students result. (www.nmsa.org)

It is commonly known that early adolescence is a unique period in life that presents special challenges and opportunities.  During transition from childhood to adulthood, teenagers experience significant physical, cognitive, emotional, and social change.  It is our responsibility as educators to keep these factors in mind as we meet the needs of our middle school students.  

Young Adolescents need: