6 YA Books to Put You in the Holiday Spirit
Light the menora, hang the mistletoe, and slip on your fuzzy socks—here are 6 YA books that will help get you in the holiday spirit!
ELA: Beyond Sentence Writing for Vocab Comprehension
Teaching vocabulary—integrated in a text or in isolation—can be tricky when it comes to thinking of engaging ways to create meaning. We fall back on the old “write a sentence that shows the meaning of the word” assignment. But we all know that when students are developing an understanding of a...
ELA Activity: Eavesdropping Poetry
In this creative writing activity, secondary ELA students will use what they overhear in the hallways to write poems! Download the lesson template and hear from ELA teacher Jennifer Nash how she implemented this activity in her classroom!
What's Trending? 5 YA Fantasy Books Teens Love
I’m a #BookTok-er. It’s basically my entire For You Page (#FYP). And when you’re on BookTok, you come across repetitive recommendations.
ELA: Instagram Activity for Learning Vocabulary
For this activity, students are tasked with creating an Instagram post imagining that their assigned vocabulary word was a person posting on social media. All aspects of the post should relate to the meaning of the vocabulary word. It is more than okay if more than one student is assigned the same...
Middle School ELA: Words of Doom
"The “Words of Doom” were an addition to our spelling instruction in middle school ELA. They could easily be adjusted or modified for upper elementary classrooms.
Practical Tips and Strategies for Welcoming English Language Learners into Your Middle School Classroom
It’s that time! The school year is beginning and you’re ready to welcome up to 180 new learners into your classroom. Whether you’re in your first year of teaching or your thirty-fifth, the first day of school can bring both excitement and trepidation.
ELA Activity: Practice Annotating Texts
Annotation is a life skill, especially for our college-bound students. Reading something with a purpose, a strategy to comprehend at a higher level, and interact with a text are all things every person needs to function in our society. It is our job as educators to help nurture that skill as we...
Interview with a Character (ELA Activity)
There are so many more interesting methods to writing a character analysis than writing an analysis paragraph. Oftentimes, English or language arts teachers forget that there is creativity in language and we should embrace it while also staying on track to grade based on our standards or curriculum...
Developing Stamina in our Readers and Writers
How do I get my kids in reading and writing shape, so they can move forward? Here are 6 questions I am asking myself as I attempt to help students build their stamina.
