Quick Answer for Busy Parents
SAINTS Skills is a required course every 6th grader takes at St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes Middle School, teaching executive functioning tools including organization, listening, studying, and test-taking. The course also explores how students’ brains actually work, how they work with each other, and how they engage with people outside their immediate community, framing these as skills meant to last well beyond Middle School into Upper School and college.
A Required Course, Not an Optional Workshop
Many schools offer study-skills workshops as optional add-ons, available to students who seek them out or are referred by a concerned teacher. SSSAS builds SAINTS Skills into the required 6th grade curriculum instead, meaning every single student, regardless of how organized or focused they already are, spends real class time developing these tools during their first year of Middle School.
Why Make It Universal?
Requiring the course for every student, rather than only those who seem to need extra support, reflects an understanding that executive functioning skills benefit all students, even naturally organized ones, and that waiting until a student struggles is a less effective approach than building the foundation proactively for everyone.
Curious How SAINTS Skills Fits Your Child?
Cardinal Education helps families understand how a school’s academic support programs align with a student’s needs during the transition to middle school.
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What SAINTS Skills Actually Covers
The course teaches concrete, practical skills: organization, listening, studying, and test-taking, the kind of executive functioning tools that support success across every subject rather than being specific to any one class. But SAINTS Skills goes further than logistics alone, also focusing on how students’ brains work and how they work with each other and with people outside their own immediate circle, connecting practical study skills to a broader understanding of learning and social dynamics.
| Skill Area | What It Covers |
| Organization | Managing materials, time, and assignments |
| Listening & Studying | Effective classroom engagement and study habits |
| Test-Taking | Strategies for demonstrating knowledge under exam conditions |
| Brain Science | Understanding how students’ own brains work |
| Collaboration | Working effectively with peers and people outside their community |
Why Teach This in 6th Grade Specifically
Sixth grade marks the start of Middle School and, for many students, the first time they’re managing multiple teachers, more complex assignments, and greater independence than elementary school required. Placing SAINTS Skills at exactly this transition point means students build foundational habits before they’re expected to apply them across three years of increasingly demanding coursework, rather than trying to retrofit these skills onto students already struggling with the jump to Middle School.
A Foundation Built to Last
SSSAS explicitly frames SAINTS Skills as preparation for “Middle School, Upper School, college, and beyond,” signaling that the course isn’t meant to solve a short-term problem but to establish habits students will keep using for years after they leave the Middle School campus entirely.
Maximize Your Child’s Executive Functioning Success at SSSAS
The SAINTS Skills program gives every SSSAS 6th grader an incredible head start on organization, time management, and study habits. However, mastering these executive functioning tools takes ongoing practice and personalized reinforcement at home.
At Cardinal Education, our academic coaches work alongside families during the middle school transition to tailor these core strategies to your child’s specific learning style. By reinforcing class concepts through targeted coaching, we help students build lasting independence and academic confidence throughout middle school and beyond.
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