The Difference Between Middle School and Junior High School

Middle School is nornally for grades 6-8. These schools are centered around helping the students become independent by giving the studetns the guidence they need in an orderly fashion. The students are normally placed on teams with a group of teachers who have planning at the same time so that the teachers are working together to benefit the students.. The class schedule for the students are flexible and the still have an advisory period where the teacher help them get udjusted before they began their day. To help the students with their independence, middle schools combines cognitive and affective development which focuses on assisting students with emotional and personality formation as well.  Most importantly, a middle school is always recognizing student achievement.

In a junior high school, they concept of how the students carry on day to day is almost like how a high school. Junior high is normally for grades 7-9 are said to focus on helping students with cognitive development, or memory and information process. Instead of having teams of teachers, they are arranged by departments. The studetns follow a similar schedule like high school where they are in classes for 45-50 minutes at a time.The concept of the junior high school has slowly been decreasing and the middle school concept has been becoming more popular.

These are just a few diferences in teaching in a middle school and junior high.

Middle School

• Fosters collaboration of teachers
• Adapts to flexible block scheduling
• Teachers organized by teams with common planning time
• Work spaces of teamed teachers adjacent to one another
• Encourages multi-materials approach to instruction
• Empowers teachers
• Varied delivery systems are used with high level of interaction among students and teachers

Junior High School

• Fosters competition of teachers
• Requires regular period day of 45-55 minutes
• Teachers organized by departments with no common planning time
• Work space organized by discipline taught
• Depends on textbook-oriented instruction
• Empowers administrators
• Lecture style teaching used a majority of the time with a high percentage of teacher talk time