Building Leadership Skills in the Middle School Classroom

Hi everyone, Shyra here from Junior High Core Values.  One of my passions is encouraging student leadership in middle school students. They are right at that age where they want responsibility and want to have some input in their lives. Providing ample opportunity for positive leadership is important to keep students motivated and engaged.  There are many benefits to encouraging student voice in the classroom. Throughout the years, I've found that the more invested the students are, not only is academic achievement increased, but there are fewer behavior problems. 

There are four key leadership qualities that I like to help my students, and our student council, develop. At the beginning of the school year, we learn about each quality. Throughout the year, students look for opportunities to demonstrate their leadership ability and continue working on these skills.

Class Meetings/Class Council  In my classroom, we use a class economy. Each of the sixth graders has a job for which they receive a salary, pay rent, can earn bonuses, and pay fines (for talking, being out of uniform, missing assignments, etc) Every week we have a Town Hall meeting where the class mayor leads our citizens in a discussion about topics related to school. It is AMAZING to watch them discuss the things they think are important and make decisions.

Student Advocacy  My 8^th grade social studies students are learning how to advocate for issues they think would make school a better place. When we studied the Constitution, each of them wrote a bill about an issue they would like addressed. We then debated each bill, sent some back for revision, debated some more and voted.  The students needed to consider what would have the best impact on school, any costs to their projects, how the project would be received by administration, and what the parish/broader community would think. Our winning bill, a proposal to finish a mural on the side of the school building, has now gone on to our principal and school board.

I encourage you to always provide student choice and solicit student input in order to build positive leadership qualities in your own students.

  

Service Learning in Middle School

As middle school students seek to identify their place in the world, and indeed to form a sense of identity, providing them with opportunities to look outward and make connections is extremely important. ( It's not ALL about you okay?)

One very good way to do that is through service learning projects. Now, depending on your past experience with them, they can range the gamut between an amazing educational experience and well, mortal dread. I've been here and there on that spectrum, but happily (mostly) find that incorporating service learning throughout the curriculum is an extremely positive experience.

What's great about teaching middle school, is that the kiddos have the ability to be more hands on as well as share their opinions.  Whenever we start a service learning cycle in my classroom we follow the following basic structure.

1) Identify a need. I always tell the students to look around them, to identify a problem that they see in our community and in our world.

2) Persuade. Once a need has been identified, the students write/create a persuasive piece to convince us all that their cause is a worthy one. (Whoohoo! Language Arts tie in!)

3) Voting  As opposed to the younger grades, it's important that middle school students have a choice in what they are working for.

4) Research  After the class has identified what issue they want to tackle, the next step is research. We take the time to look at the history and development in the need and to chart data and statistics ( social studies and math)

5) Call to action. At this point in our cycle, we are educating the community about our identified need. In the past my classes have written, given assemblies, performed skits, produced videos, made posters, or given mini lessons in each classroom.

6) Action! The hands on part of service learning. Depending on your project, this could mean meeting at an offsite location, facilitating collections of some kind, assembling an object or two. Earlier this year, there was a completely devastating fire in a community about 100 miles from us.  While help for the humans came right away, a few of the students noticed that the animals weren't so lucky. We were able to skip a couple of steps in the cycle and go right to the "Call to Action". My class was able to collect 4 truckloads of pet and animal supplies to help the displaced or abandoned. It was a fantastic experience to finish loading the last carload ( luckily I had parents willing to caravan and bring all the donations up)

6th Graders sending off the last carload of animal/pet supplies.

7) Reflection/Check-In  If we want students to have total "buy-in", this is a step that we can't forget to include.  We always take the time to write about and discuss our service learning projects. We also make sure to check in after a period of time with the agency that received our help. Any thank you letters or certificates always get hung up on our Accomplishment Wall so that the students can see that they had a positive impact on the world.


How do you incorporate service learning with your students?

Student Choice with Writing Menus

Writing.

Some people hate it, others love it.  Over the years, I’ve found that the students who dislike writing do so because they don’t have enough options.

When I work on writing with my sixth graders, I like to give them as much choice as possible. Because of that, I use something called a writing menu. At the beginning of every other month I give the kids a menu with 12-16 writing choices. The assignments are designated as appetizers, entrees, and desserts.

Appetizers are quick writing assignments, things that can be fully answers in 1-3 paragraphs. Entrees are your standard 5 paragraph essay and are graded as summative assessments.  They are required to complete a pre-write, first draft, peer review sheet, and final draft for all entrees. They need to complete 3 of the 4 choices. Entrees are really the “meat and potatoes” (Ha!)  They are designed to be detailed and to make the kids think a little deeper. I always link it to whatever novel we are reading in literature.  The “dessert” assignments tend to be more fun. They are either super creative or involve technology in some way. ( We are a 1:1 iPad classroom)

In total, at the end of the month, the kids must complete 9 of the options with three of them being entrees.  We only use a writing menu every OTHER month because in the “off months”, after some feedback, we spend time making our writing stronger and working on revisions.   

I’m fortunate to be able to have the time to work in small literacy groups and conference with the kiddos each week, otherwise I think I would adjust the procedure a bit. We also spend a lot of time giving each other feedback on our writing.  At the end of the month, we have portfolios with 9 writing samples for each student.

We keep ALL writing that we do in binders for the year.  I have found that it’s important for the students to see how they have grown from August to June, especially the reluctant writers.

I love hearing the discussions the kids have about what they’re working on during literacy group time.  I love hearing them give each other feedback on traits such as organization and sentence fluency. 

Writing menus aren’t for the faint of heart now. Keeping track of 207 writing assignments and individual student growth ( which is why we keep all drafts)  takes some organization skills.  This is why it is very helpful to conference weekly with students because really, by the end of the month, I already have a very good idea of what they’ve written.

The writing menus I use are tailored to things we’re talking about in class, but you are welcome to see a copy of what we worked on in September here. September Writing Menu  as well as a copy of the writing rubric that I use most often Writing Rubric.