COS

Student Characteristics

Individual middle school students progress from preadolescence to adolescence at vastly different rates. They undergo physical, social, emotional, and intellectual changes that affect their daily learning experiences. Sensitive to the perceptions of peers, they are beginning to assert their independence when dealing with adults. However, this process is neither sequential nor predictable, and often includes periods of fluctuation between adolescence and preadolescence. Students begin to broaden their literacy repertoire with exposure to additional genres, new writing forms, advanced literary elements, and extended vocabularies. In turn, the newly acquired communication skills lead to increased critical-thinking abilities. As middle school students move from concrete thinking to abstract concepts, they begin to question others’ messages and points of view while learning to express and justify their own.