Using Pixar films in the English Language Arts classroom is an engaging way to review literary terms. Read this post to learn how you can use this!
Try this free, fun, and interactive middle school ELA games in your classroom to teach grammar and literacy ELA skills!
Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.
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In an earlier post, I went over a list of memory review games that I am planning on using this year with my Foundations class. (CLICK HERE if you would like to read that post.) In this post, I am s…
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Teaching middle school is like no other teaching assignment - like no other task on Earth for that matter. As a teacher, you need to be just the right mix of cool and strict - but most important, calm. You need to have a good relationship with your students overall based on mutual respect. But that's much easier said than done. Here's the thing about middle schoolers in particular: They want to look good in front of their peers. What their peers think of them is of utmost importance to them (whether they are in touch with that reality or not). Therefore, they will "save face" if they think you, the teacher, are criticizing them or making them look bad in any way. (Meanwhile, you meant no harm; you were simply calling them out on a behavior they clearly exhibited). The thing is you can't call them out in front of their peers. I mean you can, but you shouldn't. Whenever possible, call out their less-than-stellar behavior one-on-one, without their peers hearing it. This could mean going to their desk and whispering, or waiting for a good time to call them to your desk ever so calmly. It's easier to call them out from wherever you are, but if you want your class under control and to maintain respect, somehow arrange a private convo instead. The Goal is this, which is my #1 Rule for Teaching Middle School: No Power Struggles Have you ever noticed how some kids act so differently when their peers aren't around? Let's say a kid in your class before lunch was really pushing your buttons and disrupting class, but then he forgets his lunch in your room. He comes back to get it. You two talk. He's really nice and respectful! You have a pleasant conversation. You're wondering if this is the same person or perhaps a twin brother you weren't aware of. What is going on? IT'S BECAUSE HIS PEERS AREN'T THERE! I'm using a boy as an example, but the same thing applies to girls. Do NOT try to address a student's behavior in full view of his or her peers (a.k.a. the audience). You could get yourself into a full-blown power struggle before you know it. At first, by drawing attention to his or her behavior in front of his or her peers, you may inadvertently say something or suggest something that makes the student, from his or her perspective, look bad or uncool or different in some way. If you're not careful, you might find that the child you're disciplining escalates the situation, essentially trying to look good at any cost, even if that means receiving a negative consequence. For some kids, receiving a negative consequence is just more attention (and even negative attention is attention) and the whole situation will most likely make most of the students in the class think you're the bad guy and he or she is the good guy. You don't want that. There should not be a bad guy or a good guy, just you the teacher calmly in control. What you want to do is simply find a way to calmly speak to the student one-on-one. Keep your voice calm, logically explain everything, follow through on a fitting consequence OUT OF VIEW OF THEIR PEERS and most likely you'll avoid the full-blown power struggle. And, whenever possible, DO POINT OUT POSITIVE BEHAVIORS IN FRONT OF THEIR PEERS. Give them the good attention they want deep down inside. Say something like "Hey everyone, I really like how Alex is using his notes to write his essay. Wow, he's almost done." I heard you are supposed to give five praises for every one disciplinary comment. I say I heard that, because I need to work on that lol. GOOD LUCK! Here's another trick I learned. When you provide your students with high-interest learning resources they feel are relevant to them and interesting in some way, they will actually behave better. They will get sucked into whatever you are trying to get them read, write, or do and forget about misbehaving. So, that's why I created these high-interest informational texts and tasks. I went out of my way to make the articles super interesting to middle schoolers by writing about things that interest them. And, guess what? It worked. I keep hearing from teachers how kids get so into these passages. They actually want to answer the questions. They even want to discuss the articles as a group. And teachers keep reporting how much time and hassle I have saved them. I did that by aligning every text and task to a specific Reading Informational Text Standard and did that 10 times to cover all 10 of them individually. Now teachers don't have to go searching for the right articles that bring out the right skills. Try both volumes and use them all year long! Your students are actually going to behave better because they won't be bored! I even made them in both PDF and interactive Google Slides in case you want the easy distance learning option! And don't forget to pin this so you can read it again or share it with a friend. Best wishes to you this year! You got this!
Unlock the secrets of vowel teams! Explore why syllable-based instruction is crucial and how to teach vowel teams systematically. Learn key phrases and visuals to help students master diverse vowel team sounds. Vowel teams can be kind of tricky so click through to read more and grab our Anchor Chart
A multiple choice quiz after reading is a quick and easy way to check student comprehension, but it doesn't allow you to assess deeper understanding and it certainly isn't fun or creative. If you are looking for more meaningful and engaging activities to use with students during literature circles or a novel unit, here's twelve ideas that are favorites in my classroom and the Common Core standards they align with.
On a normal, middle-of-the-year day, I want my students to come into my room in the morning knowing it is a calm place, a cooperative pla...
10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.
Look inside this tutoring binder to see what one elementary teacher brings to tutor struggling students in literacy and math. Lots of resource and freebies!
Use these Six Minutes podcast lessons and follow up activities to plan engaging and fun lesson plans for your middle school ELA students.
The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.
Looking for a fun vocabulary activity? This extension is perfect for middle and high school to help encourage critical thinking and associations.
Charming, fun, and yet just the right amount of salty, curse words from the 1950s have a certain extra somethin' that many modern day insults seem to lack. Our four letter words and other caustic phrases get the point across, and they certainly have…
Some days you just need a break from the monotony! Preparing for exams, transitioning to a new unit, days when half your students are gone for a basketball tour
Sitting on the benches is basically like sitting on a throne. From the brilliant Primary School Problems.
Read about eleven different ways to meaningfully incorporate art in ELA class. Keep the focus on students' learning, not their artistic abilities.
Inside you’ll find: How to help a child with dyslexia at home with a simple sight word reading exercise. Many parents want to know how to teach a dyslexic child to read. This post will begin a new series by my friend Jennifer who is a sensory parent, an adoptive parent, a homeschool parent AND [...]
Download this resource and share it with your child's teacher, so that she or he is prepared to handle both common (and not-so-obvious) ADHD behaviors inside and outside the classroom.
Diagramming sentences helps kids see English grammar at-a-glance. It's easier to practice analyzing English parts of speech on the diagram charts and worksheets.
Attention Getters will cut out your classroom chaos and work for all grade levels. Attention getters in the classroom are the perfect solution if you are...
Whether your students are lethargic or super-charged, adding movement to your lesson plans will help to solve both issues. Not only is it healthy to move throughout the day, but it can also help students focus and become more engaged with the content they are trying to master. Due to the nature of English classes, ELA ... Read More about 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom
So the other day, I was looking at bathing suits for my kids at Target online. I put a few in my virtual cart, but then decided on buying from Lands End instead. Well, since
Planning your guided literacy time is bout to get so much easier. I get asked a lot about how to tie reading and writing together, while focusing on fluency, comprehension, phonics, vocabulary, writing, etc. I create this resource to get kids excited about reading and writing, and to make planning
Want to know how to teach cvc words and short vowel words easily and effectively? Here’s the best activities and worksheets for cvc words...
These printable posters for classrooms and libraries, featuring illustrated inspirational quotes about reading, show students the magic of books.
Asking questions before, during, and after reading comes very naturally to skilled readers, but for struggling readers, this skill can be just the opposite. Asking questions of varying depths is arguably the most important reading
It is essential to read to students aloud. Not only is reading aloud to students building language and vocabulary, but it is also sparking children’s love for reading!
Build student confidence and reading endurance with these resources. Teaching short stories has never been more exciting or engaging! (blog post)
We are big readers at our house, but sometimes the kids need a little extra motivation to get their reading in for the day -- especially during the summer. Reading logs help our kids track their progress and get them excited to read. This summer our littles have the goal to read 100 books each
Middle school students are an interesting bunch of emerging identities, and a varied assortment of readiness, knowledge, and maturity.
reading-informational-text-worksheets. Great for special ed! Helpful in general ed! Tools for data collection and progress monitoring.
When we let students know that reading is worthwhile, it creates a chain reaction of learning. Here are 25 strategies for fostering a reading culture.
Perfect 25 Day Reading Challenge for Kids, kids reading activities, free printables reading challenge, Fun Book Ideas, Reading is important, Kids Books, reading challenges, reading groups, book clubs and more. Encourage and Motivate Kids to Read, Bookish Challenges
It is easy to teach a child to read if it is done in the right way. Parenting Expert Dr Debmita Dutta - explains the steps to teach a child to read at home
Use these beginner passages to make your students become familiar with using and revisiting the text that they read. It is important for students to be able to show evidence found in the text to support their comprehension. This set allows students to become comfortable doing just that! Each page includes a title, short passage, clip art, 2 multiple choice questions and 3 statements that instruct students to color a certain part of the text. There is also three small boxes in the corner of each page for students to color each time they read the passage (3). Check the preview for a closer look! CLICK HERE FOR TWO FREE PASSAGES Titles of passages include: Louie the Dog Sue the Snake Joey Pet Shop A Fat Cat A Birthday Cake Hoppy Back to School A Camping Trip Picnic Reading Rita A New School Baseball Brothers Beach Fun Flower Garden Bug Collector A Sweet Treat Keeping Warm Birthday Party Frog on a Log Thank you!
