Students have a hard time transitioning to middle school because they feel nervous, overwhelmed, and unprepared for the change of going to a new school with so many students and new faces. We have 6 elementary schools that all come to one middle school. Students are not divided by their elementary school and are put randomly on teams where the friends and students they know are put in different classes and teams.

Since they don't know the other students they may feel that they have to act a certain way to fit in or not be bullied. This problem matters because its important for students to be themselves. 

Another problem is students feel too shy to try out for stuff and do things that they want to do, and they feel that way because their peers might make fun of their activities and interests.

Our main goal is to prevent these things from happening and make these students feel more confident and comfortable about going into middle school in the upcoming year. We prioritize this because we want all the students to have a good mindset to start the year. We are requesting funding to help our team of students at our school Transition group with transportation to go visit the elementary schools for special events, games to play at our social events at our school, incentives to give students like bookmarks, candy, and mini-notebooks or journals to help them be organized.

We estimate our costs will be about $5000 for transportation, $1000 for presents to give to students, and $1000 to purchase games, materials, and supplies.

We are working with the principal and our teachers to come up with ways to get donations and help with transportation costs.

We want to speak to students before they come to 6th grade about what the middle school journey is like and have time to talk to them and do some activities with them. 

We think that it would be nice to do these Transition programs so that more people bond with each other before going into middle school because they don't know where they are going to be grouped.

Main goal to achieve: Letting students know how the middle school runs and what to expect. Be mentors to help them get ready for middle school.

Next steps:

Step 1. Talk to our middle school and elementary school counselors about going to the elementary schools and selecting a date.

Step 2. Contact transportation for a bus driver and activity bus (date,school,times)

Step 3. Organize a donation drive for games, craft materials, books, and writing journals so we can do activities with the kids. Reach out on social media to see if parents have anything to donate and use grant funds to purchase anything we still need.

We have participated in helping with our "Rising 6th Graders" event in January. We made a trifold board poster for our event. We also made brochures that includes information about clubs, electives, some of our staff, and last but not least our school rules and expectations for students of our school. We want to make sure our new students feel welcome and excited. We want to represent our school with pride and excitement. We always want students to be happy to come to our school and look forward to school.

We have our librarian and our teacher. We also have a group of students who came up with the idea in our class, who would go with us and interact with the 5th grade classes. We all contributed to making the plan.

We have worked with our school counselor, to help with the "Rising 6th Graders" program. We have students in a club called the Youth Leadership Council to partner with us for the "Move-up" day in the spring when the 5th graders come to visit the school and tour the campus.  Our principal will involve us by making us part of Open House, and our team will be used as leaders to help guide students. We know they will feel more comfortable recognizing our faces from Open House and Rising 6th Graders family night.

 We are appreciative for our Grant opportunity.

Thank you-

Delaney and Jaycee