Walk into almost any middle school ELA classroom, and you will find students reading at very different levels. One student may finish a novel in two days. Another may struggle to get through a single page without support. Some students understand what they read but have difficulty writing about it. Others can decode the words …
Comparing two texts sounds simple enough—until students actually have to do it. Many middle school students can tell you what happens in Text A and what happens in Text B. The real challenge comes when they are asked to explain how the texts are similar, how they are different, and why those similarities and differences …
The moment you announce a poetry unit, you may hear a few sighs from around the classroom. Some students immediately assume poetry will be confusing. Others picture endless worksheets asking them to identify metaphors, rhyme schemes, and unfamiliar vocabulary. A few may insist that they simply “do not get poetry.” Fortunately, poetry does not have …
Small-group instruction can be one of the most effective ways to support students in the ELA classroom. It gives teachers an opportunity to provide targeted instruction, address learning gaps, challenge advanced students, and build stronger relationships with readers and writers. However, running small groups can also feel overwhelming. What should the other students be doing? …
Test preparation season can create anxiety for both teachers and students. Teachers feel pressure to review an entire year’s worth of reading standards, while students may feel as though every class period has become another long practice test. Practice passages can help students prepare for standardized reading assessments, but only when they are used intentionally. …
Have you ever told students to annotate a text only to watch them highlight nearly every sentence on the page? Maybe they circle random words, underline entire paragraphs, or write comments like “interesting” in the margins without explaining what they found interesting. Students are not born knowing how to annotate. Annotation is a skill that …
Teaching students to use text evidence can sometimes feel like teaching the same lesson over and over again. You ask students to support their answers, but they respond with: Middle school students often understand what they have read, but they do not always know how to prove their thinking. The problem is not necessarily reading …
Getting every student to participate in a middle school ELA discussion can be challenging. A few confident students may answer every question, while others avoid eye contact and hope they are not called on. Even students who understand the lesson may hesitate to share their ideas in front of the entire class. Turn-and-talk is a …
One of the biggest reasons students miss questions is not because they do not know the answer. It is because they do not fully understand what the question is asking. This is especially true in middle school ELA. Students may read a passage carefully, recognize the topic, and even understand the general meaning of the …
Teaching writing can feel overwhelming because students are often expected to create strong pieces of writing before they fully understand what strong writing looks like. That is where mentor texts come in. A mentor text is a piece of writing used as a model for students. It gives them something concrete to study, discuss, and …
