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You're in the right place for action steps and take-aways if you're a busy Middle School ELA teacher who prefers personal family time over prepping for class. You want to teach with confidence while also leaving at a very decent time each day. On that note, welcome to the library where I only share the kind of recommendations + advice that'll uplevel your classroom without taking away from your personal life.
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Latest from the Blog
Embedded Quotes: Easy Ways to Teach Your Students!
Teach your English / Language Arts Students How to Use Embedded Quotes Middle School Grades 6-7-8 Whether I’m teaching expository reading and writing or literary reading and writing, teaching my students how and why to use embedded quotes at the middle school level can be tedious and daunting. Click
How to Say NO to Extra Credit!
Extra Credit is a Major Time-Suck! How to say NO to students, parents, and administrators when they ask about extra credit in your middle school English Language Arts classroom. “Can I do anything for extra credit since my grade in 7th grade ELA is 88? I really have to have
4 Ways to Make Small Groups Work
The goal with implementing these four strategies for keeping students on task during group work is that each one serves to maintain student engagement. Each strategy is interesting for kids and allows for creative interactions between students to promote learning. 1) Use Music Strategically While playing soft, instrumental music in
Reading Aloud Doesn’t Have to Suck!
Kids Reading Aloud: It Doesn’t Have to Be Painful! Easy, actionable steps to take to ensure your students can read aloud with real voice and tone: First of all, I just want to say that this particular blog post is focused on helping your Language Arts students learn to read
Teaching FLASHBACK in Your Middle School ELA Class
Teaching Flashback Activities for Your Middle School ELA Classroom Elements of Fiction: Flashback [Let’s say your students are reading a story and it begins like this:] Underneath the creaky, weathered deck of the front porch a pale, peeling hand was hurrying along the edge, coming up and over the top. It’s just
Teaching TONE in Your Middle School ELA Class
Teaching Tone Activities for Your Middle School ELA Classroom What is the TONE of the text? It’s not what you say… It’s how you say it. But how does that work when you’re reading and you can’t actually hear the person’s voice? The secret is in the words the writer uses.
Teaching Mood in Middle School ELA
Teaching Mood Activities for Your Middle School ELA Classroom MOOD Writers create it by using words, details, and descriptions to make a story seem gloomy, creepy, imaginary, pitiful, lighthearted, comical, or somber. Of course there are other mood words that a writer can use, but we can stick with these for now!
Theme vs. Topic Activities
Theme vs. Topic Activities 6th Grade Language Arts Even though 6th graders have been learning how to identify the topic of their reading selections since pre-K, it gets all muddled when the teacher throws in theme and main idea, too. Theme? Topic? Main idea? They’re not all the same
Teaching Plot Analysis with Video Clips
Reviewing or Introducing Plot Analysis with Videos in Middle School English Language Arts Before analyzing plot, like really analyzing it, it may be helpful to review some basics. Regardless of where you are in the school year, you can count on kids in your class who just can’t remember
Methods of Characterization
Teaching Characterization in 6th Grade ELA How Writers Show Characterization appearance inner thoughts & feelings outer actions & speaking what others say about that characters how others treat that character Terms to Know & Teach character traits character attributes protagonist / antagonist direct / indirect characterization static / dynamic characters conflict
Activities to Teach Setting
Ideas for Teaching Setting in 6th Grade Language Arts Setting: How to teach it in quiz, easy ways. If you’ve ever been in my shoes, then you know what it’s like to teach a novel or to spend weeks on an amazing series of short stories at the beginning
Teaching Conflict
Kid-friendly movie clips to help show, teach, and explain different types of conflict Conflict can be superfun and easy to teach! Start by using the image above, which I use as a bell ringer in one of my four-week units on teaching elements of fiction. I just throw that little PowerPoint
Quick ELA Lit. Centers – 6th Grade
SUPERQUICK literature centers in the 6th grade ELA classroom Why I use literature centers in my 6th grade language arts classroom I need a way to reteach important concepts all through the year Students need a way to work on extension activities without much teacher input When I need to spend time working
Easy No-Prep Language Arts Reviews
NO PREP NEEDED! REVIEW ANY 6TH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS UNIT USING YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARY! 1) GENRE REVIEW This is a no-brainer since you’re in the library, but it’s how you implement the review to make in interactive and memorable. Here’s what to do for this “scavenger hunt”
Extra Time at the End of Class
How to fill that extra 5-15 minutes at the end of class We’ve all been there: “That lesson didn’t take as long as I thought!” “I ran out of time last class but now I have 12 more minutes in this class! What the heck??!!” It’s Thursday afternoon and
