Mentoring as a factor of successful functional adaptation of 5th grade students to the conditions of middle school

Statement of the problem. The transition of students from primary to middle school is in many ways a difficult and significant stage of adaptation, the complexity of which is determined by new social conditions [Markova, 2021]. In addition, the age of 10-12 years is accompanied by physiological and psychological changes [Kaligin et al., 2021], which makes the process of adaptation to middle school education more difficult. Therefore, the mission of the school is to find a link between the educational process and the mental development of a teenager, ensuring the successful adaptation of a fifth-grader. In this article, we consider the basic principles and methods of a mentoring program for fifth-graders in the secondary school, which can solve the problem of adapting students to middle school and provide an opportunity to receive education at the proper level. The purpose of the article is to identify and justify the need to implement a mentoring program for fifth-graders in secondary education institutions to ensure successful adaptation of students to middle school. The methodology and research methods include analysis of scientific and methodological literature, a method for assessing the state of the autonomic nervous system and the cardiovascular system using the VNS-MICRO hardware complex, and a method for statistical data processing. Research results. The respondents involved in the study were 11 girls, fifth-grade students of Secondary School No. 45. During the experimental part of the research, it was possible to note that the majority of students had an elevated level of the Baevsky stress index, that indicates violation of the adaptive abilities of the students' body to study in middle school.