Do you have ideas to help a 12 year old in 6th grade?

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My 12 year old has greatness that he needs some more help showing his teachers at school!

Does anyone have ideas that have worked for you in school for organization and socialization?

I'm looking forward to hearing what has worked for you.

Thank you for taking the time to share your ideas with us!

Tell him to write about how he views the world (or a portion of it) and hand it over to the teachers. That worked for me. ;D

Socialization: couldn't do it at all. No idea.

Organization:
- learning to write every single thing down in agenda (takes lots of practice)
- having agenda signed by teacher at end of school and parents in evening
- using computer calendar or Palm Pilot with pop-up reminders or alarms for due dates and schedule items
- dividing locker or cubby with shelves, boxes and labels
- making cardboard dividers for desk tray (if he has one) and using boxes and pencil cases (so it isn't just one big mass of pencils and papers and chewing gum and shoelaces and dead rats)
- lots of hole reinforcements so when holes get torn they can be repaired (and don't just lie around in backpacks when they fall out of binders)
- using a computer wherever possible (things with handwriting on just looked so messy to me and I didn't want to bother with them)
- finding out what material works best (I could not organize binders at all and ended up using notebooks for everything, since you can't lose pages of those... for worksheets, I had one accordion file with a pocket for each subject)

1. Find his special interest
2. Build on it.

eg: if he's got a special interest in writing stories, he could write something for the school annual or he could write something for a teacher.

If he's good at art, there are always posters to do...


What is he good at?
What are his special interests?

is LOVING school since she helped the teacher set up an aquarium for the classroom. She's in charge of feeding & caring for them now. She's very engaged in school and can tell that she has the respect of the teachers.

She was anything but engaged a few years ago when all she ever heard was how far behind the other kids she was.

I didn't think of these things and we will try them!

Show him plenty of love and affection, and give his imagination plenty of play. This should have enourmously beneficial results on his long-term cognitive development, speaking from a purely physiological standpoint. You would be surprised.

If you want him to take better notes, an idea that comes to mind is making his time watching television or movies contingent upon him taking well-constructed notes on whatever he is watching. Have him write down the names of characters, draw simple diagrams to represent settings and positions, and so forth. If he plays video games, the same applies: have him use good notes to help him through his games. This is one of my more imaginative ideas, though.

Organization was one of my strengths. I have to say that I was even a bit compulsive in that regard. Socialization, unfortunately, was my biggest weakness.

I can't give any constructive advice. The things others have said are great, though. I like the idea of using one's special interests and organizing everything they like about them. I have done it with subjects as diverse as breeds of cats and countries and their capitals.