Need help teaching writing skills to your homeschooled teen? I have the solution for you and it's the only high school writing curriculum you'll ever need!

Homeschool elective classes made easy with these fun online art classes, music resources, and more!

Are you wondering how to homeschool 4th grade? Get ideas for fourth grade homeschool curriculum, resources, and routines from a relaxed, minimalist homeschool perspective.

The best free online homeschooling websites, resources and printable worksheets recommended by 2,000 homeschoolers.

Hello darlings! Do you teach vocabulary to your students? I think this is one thing we are missing in the upper grades and we are doing a disservice to our students. As they move up levels in reading, the thing that I notice that holds my students back the most is the challenging vocabulary they ... Read More about Adding Vocabulary to your ELA Block

💡 20 Things for Students to Do with Informational Text 💡 https://t.co/DsKHcop7vI via @juliemconlon #ela #edchat #reading #edutwitter

We've been learning about the parts of speech in the most fun ways. A parts of speech printable and flip book, writing our own mad libs, and more.

This is a culmination of my own anchor charts, plus the best anchor charts that I could find online. This is a great place to find effective charts that get to the heart of what you are teaching in workshop. If you have a favorite chart that you'd like to add, please contact me! Also, if I have not properly given credit for an anchor chart, let me know so that I can fix it.

These engaging 6th grade short stories are a fantastic resource to help you teach reading in your middle school ELA classroom.

Book reports and summaries are a thing of the past. Engage your middle and high school students with five book report alternatives that will leave them asking for more and, most importantly, building vital reading and analysis skills along the way. 1. Assign one pagers at the end of a novel. One pagers are engaging, allow for creativity, and lead to higher level thinking and analysis. Assigning a one pager is easy and works for any novel. Follow these simple guidelines: • Make it standards base

Usually when I make an anchor chart, it's for students. This one, however, is for a special group of educators I'm presenting for at an upcoming convention. I thought the resources were too good not to share!

Freedom Homeschooling lists free high-quality homeschool spelling & vocabulary curriculum for all grades. Complete programs, not supplements.

Once upon a time I taught students how to write. High school students. Middle school students. I was an English teacher. I hate to admit this piece of trivia because I overuse clichés. I misuse commas. I abuse prepositions. And I have a fragment habit. It can be embarrassing to announce this to the whole wide web. However, …

Teaching students how to annotate text can be an intimidating task. Likewise, for our students, annotating text can be equally as daunting, especially if they don’t have a process of their own that works or steps to follow. However, teaching text annotation can be a simple and straightforward task if you follow these five steps.

1. Attach an image (photo, magazine, etc.) to a notebook page and write about it. 2. What things will people in the future say about how we live now? (Examples: They ate that? They believed that?) 3. Pick one from each list to make a creature and animal combination. Now write a short story or scene in which this creature appears. List 1 List 2 Vampire porcupine Ninja armadillo Zombie pig Pirate goat Mummy lobster Clown possum Banshee shark Wraith moray eel 4. Imagine a future in which we each have a personalized robot servant. What would yours be like? What would it do? What features would it have? 5. What does your name mean? Free write about names: names you like, names you don’t, how a name can affect a person’s life, how you feel about your own name, why your parents chose your name, etc. 6. Create a brand new holiday with its own traditions, rituals, foods, and activities. 7. What road-trip would you take if you suddenly could? Write about it. 8. List six true sentences that begin with the words “I'll never forget…” 9. Imagine that we lost all electricity, water, and gas for a month without any time to prepare. Write about how your life would change and how you would survive. 10. Make your bucket list for the next 5 years, the next 10 years, and for life. 11. Tell this story: “Well, I thought it was going to be a regular summer doing all our regular things…” 12. List 10 places in the world that you would most like to visit, 10 places you’ve been, and 10 places you would never want to go. 13. Think about hospitality in your family. What’s it like to have guests in your house? Do you prefer to have friends to your house or to go to a friend’s house? 14. Pick a family member of two and write about his or her reputation in your family, or tell a family legend. 15. A guitar pick, a red balloon, and a wicker basket. Write a scene or a poem that includes these three objects. 16. What animal would judge us the most? Write a scene (based on truth or fiction) where two or more people are doing something silly, and they're being observed and criticized by animals. 17. Write about your own worst family vacation memory. 18. Write about your best family vacation memory. 19. Imagine that someone says to you, “Because that's how we've always done it!” Write this out as a scene. (Think: Who said it, what were the circumstances, how did you respond, etc.) 20. What do you think about when you can't sleep? Turn it into a piece of writing. 21. What traditions does your family have? List all of them or just pick one and write about it. 22. Think about your strongest emotion right now (irritation, boredom, happiness, contentment, etc.) and find five quotes about this emotion. 23. What do you struggle with the most? Write about it. 24. Write a self-portrait. 25. What can we learn from contrast? Write a description of something very dark (like a crow) in a very light place (like a field of snow). Make the dark thing seem innocent and the light thing seem ominous. 26. Write about someone who has no enemies. Is it even possible? 27. Think of a person from your past who really deserved a good scolding but never got one. Write a fictional piece where you tell that person off intelligently. 28. Can honesty honestly be bad? Write about someone, fact or fiction, who gets in trouble for being too truthful. 29. The word “fat” carries a negative connotation. Write a story or observation where something fat is celebrated. 30. What animal lives beneath your human skin? A mouse? A cougar? Or what? Explain with writing. 31. Write about the best piece of advice you ever received. 32. Remember a favorite book from your childhood. Write a scene that includes you and an old copy of that book you find somewhere. --> 33. “I was so mortified, I wanted to crawl in a hole!” Write a short narrative (fiction or nonfiction) where this is your first sentence. Illustrate it if you want. 34. Should books ever be banned? Discuss. If no, explain why. You might want to look at a least of commonly banned books. If yes, explain under what circumstances. 35. Ernest Hemingway said to “write hard and clear about what hurts.” Write about something that hurts, whether it’s an emotional, physical, or phantom pain. 36. What if everyone had to wear a shirt with his or her Myers-Briggs personality type on it? What would this change? How would this affect the way people interact with each other? Would you like this or hate it? (If you don’t know your “type,” try this site. 37. William Shakespeare wrote that: “Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.” Write your thoughts about conversation, or make up dialogue between two characters who are meeting each other for the first time in an unexpected place. 38. Tell this story: “There it was, finally. Our island. Our very own island. It looked beautiful above the waves of fog, but there was still one question to be answered: why had they sold it to us for only five dollars?” 39. Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way s/he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” Tell a story in which a character has to deal with one, two, or all three of these scenarios. How does your character respond? 40. You have a chance to go back and completely re-do an event in your life. What is it, and how to you change it? What is the outcome? This can be a real or fictional event. 41. Pick two characters from different books you’ve read this year and have them get in an argument about something (e.g., who has suffered more, who has had a happier life, etc.). 42. The one shoe in the road: why is it there? Write a story about the circumstances that led to one shoe in the middle of the road. 43. You get to guest star on a TV show. What show is it? What happens in this particular episode? 44. What would you pack in your suitcase if you could not go home again? 45. You can only use 20 words for the rest of your life. You can repeat them as often as you wish, but you can only use these words. What are they? 46. What current fashion in clothing do you particularly like or dislike? Why? 47. Choose five symbols or objects that represent you. Why did you choose these things? 48. "When I stepped outside, the whole world smelled like…" Write a scene that starts with that line. 49. Write a poem entitled "Hitchhiking on a Saturday Afternoon." 50. Use these two lines of dialogue in a story: "What's in your hand?" "It's mine. I found it." 51. Write a scene that happens in a parking lot between a teenager and a man in a convertible. 52. If you only had one window to look out of for the next six months, what would you want to see on the other side? Describe the view. How would it change? 53. Write a story for children. Start with “Once upon a time” or “Long ago in a land far away.” Include a dragon, a deadly flower, and a mask. 54. "Did she actually just say that?" Write a scene that includes this line. 55. “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” — Jane Howard. Write what comes to mind when you read this quote. 56. List five things you want in a relationship. 57. List ten favorite lines from movies. 58. Write about the biggest mistake you made this week. Now write about the best thing you did this week. 59. What is the very first memory that you have? Write about it. 60. What if your pet could only talk to you at midnight for an hour? 61. Write an acrostic poem using your full name and three words that describe you—good and bad— for each letter. For example, S: sensitive, stubborn, smiling. A: artistic, argumentative, agoraphobic M: melodramatic, moody, magical 62. What if you could create your own TV show with all your friends and loved ones as the cast? What kind of show would it be and who would play which parts? 63. Take a photo or draw a picture of every place you go in a day. Put the pictures or drawings in your journal. 64. A to Z: Make an alphabetical list of advice for someone who is about to become a teenager. For example: A: ask forgiveness, not permission. B.: bake cookies. C.: cook something delicious once a month. D: don't compare yourself to others. 65. Find 10 quotes about happiness. 66. Write about 5 things you'd rather be doing right now. 67. Write out the lyrics to your favorite song. Find some pictures to illustrate the song. 68. Who do you spend the most time talking to? Siblings, parents, friends? Make a list of who you actually talk to during the day and estimate the amount of time invested in each individual. Does the list reveal your priorities? Is it proportional to what is important to you? Make notes of what you talk about in your daily conversations. 69. Find a quote for each month of the year. 70. Animals can sometimes seem remarkably human. Describe an experience with an animal that acted in a very human way. 71. Imagine you opted to have yourself frozen for 50 years. Describe your first days unfrozen, 50 years in the future. 72. Imagine that you are an astronaut who has been doing research on the moon for three years. You are do to go back to earth in a week when nuclear war breaks out on earth. You watch the earth explode. Then what? 73. Create a menu from a fictitious restaurant. Make sure the restaurant has a theme, such as Classic Books, and the food should all be given appropriate names (e.g., “Mockingbird Pie”). 74. Preconceived notions are often false. Describe a time when you discovered that a preconceived notion of yours (about a person, place, or thing) turned out to be wrong. 75. Create a story using words of one-syllable only, beginning with a phrase such as: “The last time I saw her, she...” “From the back of the truck...” “On the night of the full moon...” “The one thing I know for sure…” 76. Describe a significant person (teacher, neighbor, mentor, coach, parent, sibling, sweetheart) with as many physical details as possible and as many similes as possible. (E.g., “Her hair was as golden as straw.”) 77. Write about your first name—why you were given it, what associations or stories are attached to it, what you think or know it means. Do the same for your last name. What name would you give yourself other than the one you actually have? 78. Parents are our first and most important teachers. Describe a valuable lesson you learned from one of your parents. 79. Imagine a moral dilemma (for example, you see someone shoplift or a friend tells a blatant lie to her parents about where she was last night) and explain what you would do and why you would do it. 80. Review an obituary, birth, or a section from the police record or classified ads section of a local newspaper. Choose one and tell the story behind it. 81. List the most attractive things about your current hometown. Now list the most unattractive things. 82. Come up with a list of nouns and a second list of verbs, all of one syllable each. Describe a scene or situation, using a minimum of ten words from each list. 83. Where is your happy place? Write about it and include a picture or drawing. 84. Create a how-to manual for something you can do well (make a craft, bake cookies, restring a guitar, apply make up, etc.). Describe the process so that someone else could complete the task based on your directions. Use present tense verbs. 85. Free write on this quote by Samuel Johnson: “Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal.” 86. Find a favorite quote and work it into an illustration. (Inspiration here.) 87. Make a soundtrack for your life so far. List songs that describe you or different times of your life. (Make the actual soundtrack on Spotify, etc. too!) 88. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that force us to face our deepest fears. Tell about a time when you had to face one of your greatest fears—or make up the story. 89. You’re a talk show host. Pick two guests. Why did you choose them? Are they people who get along, or people with vastly different viewpoints? Write about the episode. 90. What three books do you think should be required reading for everyone? Why? 91. “What you don’t know what hurt you.” Write a story that begins with this statement. 92. Free write on this quote by Woodrow Wilson: “Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.” 93. According to a Czechoslovakian proverb, “Better a lie that soothes than a truth that hurts.” Agree or disagree? Explain. 94. Rewrite “The Tale of the Three Little Pigs” by using people that you know as the pigs and the wolf. 95. There is a saying that you should be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Describe a time when you wished for something and got it—and then wished you hadn’t—or make up a story in which this happens to the character. 96. As the saying goes, “rules are meant to be broken.” Tell about a time when you broke the rules and what happened as a result. 97. "That's not what I meant!" Write a story that has this line in it somewhere. 98. A blue trash can, a red picture frame, a teddy bear with the stuffing falling out, and a padlock. Put these four items somewhere in a story, scene, or poem. 99. Write your name in outline letters on a whole sheet of paper. Now fill in each letter with words you like that begin with that letter. For example: 100. Make a word collage of who YOU are. Use pictures too, if desired. **HURRAH! You can now purchase this as a digital PDF ($2) at Teachers Pay Teachers. For more creative writing ideas, check out my free WordSmithery creative writing lessons and my popular Ultimate Guide to Creative Writing Resources! Check out 100 other 100 Things posts from the bloggers at iHomeschool Network! Do you have it yet? The Big Book of Homeschooling Ideas—a collaboration of over 50 authors with 103 chapters— is now available! Don't miss this amazing resource!

What my daily ELA class period schedule looks like in middle school ELA and how it works alongside my scope and sequences.

What must-teach novels do you have in your ELA classroom? These six novels will get your students thinking and start important discussions.

So many project options! I love giving students lots of choices to showcase their learning. Check out this graphic for lots of ideas on how to assess student understanding and comprehension of any novel. What would you add to this list? #bespokeela #2ndaryela #EdChat

One of the most effective ways to improve test scores, writing, and reading comprehension is to improve vocabulary! Why have students copy down definitions or make old-school flash cards when they can learn new words with some fun games? Here are 5 vocabulary games for middle school students you can try in your homeschool! Click the link below to read more!

Freedom Homeschooling lists free high-quality homeschool reading curriculum for all grades. Complete programs, not supplements.

This blog post will introduce you to six simple, fun, and enriching project-based learning ideas for your English Language Arts classroom.

Working on balancing reading and writing in your ELA classroom? Here are some specific approaches that will help you tie them together.

Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...

Are you looking for ways to make learning more meaningful in your Secondary ELA Classroom? Check out these twenty five creative project ideas that I have found to be meaningful and successful while also motivating for learners.

You can teach language arts without a curriculum. Get ideas for how you can use inexpensive resources to easily teach language arts in your homeschool!

Looking for free grammar games to make teaching fun? This list of games for teaching parts of speech, punctuation, and writing will provide fun all year!

A downloadable print to use in your classroom and/or for your child to use to practice the eight parts of speech. Type: PDF file Size: 8x11

Learning to read is such a fun and special time: it's a valuable skill, and sparking an early love of reading can make it become a lifelong passion. In order

Metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, alliteration, hyperbole, personification, and more!

The 10 sites I go back to again and again for fun, easy-to-use resources. Bookmark these for your own class, or send 'em to your favorite English teacher! Via Yuly Asencion, juandoming, Mila Solà Marqués, THE OFFICIAL ANDREASCY

Book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

These are awesome, incredible, wonderful, and fantastic!

The My State Report Worksheet is designed to help elementary school students learn about and showcase their knowledge of a specific state. This worksheet provides a structured format where students can research and gather information about the state's geography, history, notable landmarks, and more. By using this worksheet, students will be able to delve deeper into their chosen state and present their findings in an organized and engaging manner. Whether it's for a school project or simply to expand their knowledge, this worksheet acts as a valuable tool for young learners interested in discovering more about the United States.

In this six part series on How to Teach Spelling, this third post discusses and provides teaching resources for teaching the eight conventional spelling rules.

Today I wanted to stop by and share some strategies for teaching vowel teams and diphthongs in our classroom! It’s always challenging to teach spelling patterns that aren’t easily decodable! […]

I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!

Teaching students to use a variety of sentence structures or different ways to start sentences will improve their writing.

This Language Arts Interactive Notebook is filled with over 30 pages of hands-on grammar activities for grades 4-8. Activities including everything from diagramming to figurative language.

This is a culmination of my own anchor charts, plus the best anchor charts that I could find online. This is a great place to find effective charts that get to the heart of what you are teaching in workshop. If you have a favorite chart that you'd like to add, please contact me! Also, if I have not properly given credit for an anchor chart, let me know so that I can fix it.

Analyzing poetry is a skill all our students need to develop. While students are required to investigate poems often, poetry analysis is still something that many students struggle with. That's why I'm a big fan of practice! I love to give students lots of opportunities to closely read and analyze poetry. (And I've put together a FREE one-pager that students can use with any poem!) POETRY ANALYSIS TIPS When putting together a poetry analysis lesson, here are some tips I follow: ✔ TIP 1: Select a poem that is long enough for students to adequately investigate, but not too long to make the process overwhelming. ✔ TIP 2: Provide students with background information about the author of the poem. This helps to build context and connections to the poem. ✔ TIP 3: Choose a poem with at least one form of figurative language for students to identify and describe. ✔ TIP 4: Have students read the poem multiple times. You might read the poem out loud first. Then, students might read the poem in a small group or with a partner. Finally, students can read the poem independently. ✔ TIP 5: Give students tasks that become more complex with each reading. POETRY ANALYSIS TASKS Then, when I'm actually teaching an analysis lesson, here are 4 analysis tasks that work with ANY poem (Don't worry, you can download the entire lesson for FREE here.): Task 1: Reflect After students read a poem, have them reflect on what the poem made them think about and how the poem made them feel. When students share what the poem make them think about they'll be able to pull main ideas from the text. Then, when they share how they felt, they'll need to think more deeply about the poem. Task 2: Visualize When students have completed a second reading of the poem, have them select a line or lines from the poem that helped them create a mental image in their minds. Students should write the lines down. Then, have students doodle an actual illustration to portray the words in the poem. Task 3: Figurative Language Share the definition for a type of figurative language found in the poem with students. Then, have students read the poem a third time. As they read, encourage them to be on the lookout for an example of the figurate language. Once students find an example have them write it down before explaining its meaning. Task 4: Theme Once students read the poem for a final time, have them respond to a short answer question that requires them to identify the theme of the poem. As students write their analyses, encourage them to include direct quotes from the poem. These analysis tasks build in difficulty and encourage students to naturally dive deeply into the text. If you're looking for poems for students to analyze, check out my favorite poems to teach here: ⭐ 5 Favorite Poems for Middle School ⭐ Funny Poems for Kids ⭐ Poems that Teach Growth Mindset ⭐ 20 Poems and 80 Analysis Tasks Download the FREE Doodle One-Pager HERE. Thanks for stopping by! Mary Beth P.S. Check out these 5 fun ways to teach poetry!

*A DIGITAL OPTION HAS BEEN INCLUDED FOR GOOGLE SLIDES AND FORMS/GOOGLE CLASSROOM* Be sure to re-download! There are directions and links inside the pdf.   Hello, ELA! This resource is a unique way to get your students warmed up at the beginning of your ELA block. Each month contains 4-5 weeks of ELA bell work, which will have a theme around the season, national holidays, or events associated with that particular month. The morning work is focused on ELA 6th Grade Common Core Standards. Each day has a thematic structure to cover language standards as well as enhance vocabulary and comprehension skills. Save money by purchasing the year long BUNDLE! ELA Daily Review 6th Grade {Growing Bundle} Each week follows a predictable and engaging structure: Meaningful Monday: Monday is focused on making meaning. Tasks will focus on synonyms, antonyms, vocabulary words, context clues, and making meaning in a short amount of text. Some tasks may require students to make meaning in the text (inference, message, adages, proverbs, etc.) or build vocabulary skills. Text Structure Tuesday: Tuesdays will have a paragraph that requires students to identify the text structure, signal words, main idea, author's perspective, or vocabulary, or any other question types related to the Craft and Structure standards. Wordy Wednesday: Wednesday is all about working with words. Tasks include working with shades of meaning, homophones, spelling, prefixes, suffixes, roots, and other word skills. Throwback Thursday: Thursday is all about grammar usage and conventions. Figurative Friday: Figurative Friday tasks include working with various types of figurative language including similes, metaphors, idioms, poems, alliteration, structures of poems and more!🛑 Are you a member of the TLL Membership? These materials are already included. If you are not a member, click here to learn more. The TLL Membership gives you an all-access pass to hundreds of ELA resources for teachers in Grades 3-5. This ELA + Math Morning Work is available for the following grade levels: ELA + Math Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade ELA Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade ELA Weekly Assessments 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade Math Bundles 1st Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade Let’s connect!  The Literacy Loft Blog The Literacy Loft on Instagram The Literacy Loft on Pinterest The Literacy Loft on Facebook I hope this resource works for you! Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or feedback.   - Jessica

Expanding Sentences Anchor Chart and Mini-Lesson

The activities below are available for free download, and are to be used in educational and/or private settings. They may not be used elsewhere or for other purposes (such as for profit) unless exp…

Introducing students to challenging words through Word of the Week can help increase their confidence in reading, writing, & speaking.

Fun and engaging grammar games for your secondary ELA classroom! These grammar games will get your students collaborating, moving, and discussing those critical sentence structure and grammar skills! Bring fun to grammar instruction!

We all have those times when we only have 5 minutes before going to lunch, specials, leaving for the day, etc. Here are some quick GRAMMAR activities you can use to fill that time and still be teaching!!