5 Middle School Student Organizing Essentials To Help Them Succeed

Do you remember your middle school years? Do you remember being afraid of how you will manage changing classes all day long? It can be quite stressful. Remember, middle school is a transition to high school.  It allows students to be more independent and find their style of getting their work done. It's a great place to learn essential organizing habits and test out different ones to find the one that works. Unfortunately, many kids and parents do not get the guidance on how to figure out what works.

Here are five organizing essentials that will help you and your student make this middle school year a huge success.

Organizing Essential #1: Make a study space for your student.  

Not all students have a designated study area.  Find a place that has a minimal distraction and allows the student to focus. Have items like a desk, a chair, a place for supplies, and a laptop or tablet so they can get online to do research or get homework from the teacher's website.

Organizing Essential #2: Have a useful place to transport papers from school.

Many middle schoolers can quickly lose documents from their binder to their lockers to their backpack so having a folder or something for each subject will help them stay on top of the paper clutter. Check out the way we set up our son's backpack for inspiration.

Organizing Essential #3: Get a great planner to help manage their time.

I particularly like "Order out of Chaos" Academic Planner (affiliate link).  It has areas for managing time as well as managing your assignments. Click this link that talks about last week's post on ways to improve the student's success with using a planner.

Organizing Essential #4: Create a place to store stuff that needs to go to school.

Have an area in your home that your students know is their place to store anything that comes home or anything that needs to go to school. This could be a cubby system that keeps your student's stuff organized like this one below. Or it could be a section in a closet.  Here is an example of one I had for my kids. Click on the image to read more about the transformation.

Organizing Essential #5: Have an area to store all the afterschool activities.

This can be in an insulated garage, a section of the bedroom, or in a mudroom or larger foyer. Customized containers for a particular sport helps keep the items organized. Check out my organizing small sports equipment post to give you some ideas. 

I hope these steps help you keep your middle school students organized and on track for a successful school year.  Do you have any tips that will help middle school students? Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you.

Please note these are affiliate links through Amazon, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn affiliate fees if you decide to make a purchase.