Grade 5 is the runway to middle school — our checklist

Lockers, seven teachers, and a schedule they manage alone — middle school assumes skills nobody teaches in Grade 5. We ran a home checklist through the spring so August wouldn't be a cliff.

The checklist

• A planner habit — one line per day, checked at dinner, THEY write it
• Typing to 25 wpm — middle school assumes it silently; ten minutes of a free typing course after homework
• Packing their own bag — every night, no rescues. Forgotten cleats teach faster than lectures
• Emailing a teacher themselves — once, supervised. Subject line, greeting, question, thanks. The skill transfers to everything

What we'd skip

The middle-school-prep workbooks. The skills above are executive function, not content — and content is the one thing the school actually handles well.