Free Joe Bruzzese by Parents' Guide to the Middle School Years

Three: At the end of each academic quarter, take thirty minutes to review the map with your child. Add any recent accomplishments as well as new challenges for the coming quarter. A mind map has incredible power to focus a child’s activity and achievement during the year, much as an atlas has the ability to guide us on a direct course toward our destination.
    Step Four: At the end of the school year, take a few moments with your child to reflect on the many challenges, goals, and achievements that added up to a successful middle school experience.
    COACHING TIP
    Follow your child’s lead during this activity. If you sense he would rather write than talk, give him an opportunity to jot down his thoughts on paper. Even kids with a preference for talking about ideas need a chance to record their thoughts in writing or in pictures, so remain open to a variety of different strategies for collecting and recording the information .
    Creating a plan for the future will help your child plot a smooth path to achieving her goals in the coming year. But plans alone won’t be enough to complete the journey. Move from planning into the action portion of the middle school year with an efficient and economical trip to the school supplies store.
Economical shopping
    The annual shopping spree for school supplies signals the official return to school for kids and their parents. The average family spends upward of $500 a year on school supplies. Over 50 percentof school spending is thrown away on items that look necessary, yet often find their way into a drawer or trash can within weeks of the start of school.
    The key to economical shopping is creating a list of what you need before the spending begins. Office supply stores are ready and waiting for the unprepared parent. You, however, will confidently stride past the suggested list of supplies at the storefront and begin the search for the necessary items on your list.
Creating a list
    To avoid any uncomfortable arguments during the shopping trip, before you set out, take ten minutes to sit with your child as she assembles her list of supplies, using the following instructions as a guide.
    Step One: Fold a piece of paper in half and label one side “Supplies for School” and the other side “Supplies for Home.”
    Step Two: List the following items under the “Supplies for School” heading:
One box of pencils (twenty-four pencils)
One box of pens (twelve to twenty-four pens)
Highlighters (four to six)
Three wireless notebooks with perforated paper (eighty to one hundred pages with three holes prepunched in the paper). These notebooks are different from the spiral-bound notebooks. Wireless notebooks have paper you can tear off along a clean edge .
Backpack (Look for a backpack with two to three pockets. Keeping your books and binders separate from your supplies makes it easier to find what you need when you need it.)
    You can anticipate that most teachers will hand out a class syllabus listing any additional supplies students will need during the first week of school. Buy a binder and any remaining suppliesonly after confirming they are needed. Binders add extra weight to a child’s backpack that may not be necessary.
    Some of your child’s teachers may require a separate binder for their classes. For classes with a lot of written assignments, look for the heavy-duty version or a zippered organizer. Binders take a fair amount of abuse during the year, and cheaper binders fall apart, usually at the most inconvenient times.
    With the list of school supplies complete, focus your attention on materials that will be used at home. An important part of succeeding in school is creating a study space at home that has everything your child needs for completing homework assignments and projects efficiently. Homework takes long enough to complete when all of the necessary supplies are present. The key to saving time and minimizing frustration at home is stocking