Journal Summary: February (2)

From the journal Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School I read the article "Transitions from Middle School to High School: Crossing the Bridge". The article discusses the different challenges students may face when transitioning from middle school to high school. Students have difficulty with the alignment of instruction and curriculum. If the students start to fall behind after transition from elementary to middle school they will end up falling even more behind going from middle school to high school. The students could also have difficulty with the content from middle school to high school. In high school everything is more focused on a specific area like algebra and geometry, where middle school covers multiple topics. The third challenge is the physciological and social factors of moving to high school. Students can be unmotivated and want to just fit in with their friends. Ways to help ease the transition process for students is to have collaboration between middle school and high school teachers, try to have the content be structured so students don't get lost, and make the classroom culture be easy to address social factors. Finally the article talks about the importance of creating a learning community to find the best ways to help with the transition for students.

Since I also read the article on transitioning from elementary school to middle school I was already a little familiar with some of the topics covered in this article. Similar ideas from this article and my other one is working with other teachers from the other grades to know what students already know and need to know. The idea I took most from this article is creating a professional learning community. I think this would be important to incorporate into your professional career. By creating this community it will help teachers to be accountable for helping students with their transitioning. It is also beneficial because it causes teachers to evaluate how they are doing at helping the students. Most times it seems teachers come up with plans to help students but then never come back to it to see how it really worked. If the learning community continues to meet and evaluate their ideas and plans the better we will become at helping students be successful.