Education's Middle Child Grades 5 to 8

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Walk through any middle school in the United States, and what you'll notice are the big feet - just a hint of the physical, social, and emotional changes that make Grades 5 to 8 so challenging to many teachers.

"We have sixth-graders who are 6 feet tall and wear a size 15 shoe. They wake up every morning and their bodies are different. It can be a very emotional time," says Sue Pope, a sixth-grade mathematics teacher at Ellicott Mills Middle School in Howard County, Md.

Her reading colleague, Kathy Benditt, furnishes her classroom with soft chairs she bought at a yard sale. "Sixth-graders are not designed to sit in hard chairs, and reading is a …