Review Games for the ELA Classroom We all know students love review games, and while there are plenty of online game platforms, like Gimkit, Kahoot, and Blooket, sometimes, it’s nice to unplug and play exciting games without those Chromebooks. Often, these are more engaging review games for the ELA classroom, not only for the students, […]
Suspense is one of those literary elements we all want to know how to use, especially when we are telling or writing a good story and want others to pay attention. This SHORT narrative writing exercise will teach students how to create suspense, and it is guaranteed to be one of your favorite lessons of […]
If you are looking for a fun Middle School ELA Halloween lesson, we are here to share our best and most memorable ones from over the years. We’ve been teaching for quite some time, to say the least, so we have collected several fun and engaging middle school ELA Halloween lessons. In fact, we have […]
Sometimes, we need short writing assignments, rather than long ones to fit everything into our ELA class time. Writing strong verb paragraphs is an effective narrative writing exercise for middle school ELA because it is quick and fun. As ELA teachers, we have so much to cover each nine weeks. It seems impossible to have […]
We want to share with you three reasons you should use bell ringers in the middle school ELA classroom! First of all, what are bell ringers? Some people call these “warm-ups” or “Do-Now,” but essentially, a bell ringer is a short assignment that students complete as soon as they enter the classroom each day. After […]
Four Tips to Make Grading Easy in the ELA Classroom There’s so much to do in ELA, as you know, and that means a lot to grade! In order to make our lives simpler and to stay sane in the process, we have to find ways to make grading easy in the ELA classroom. This […]
Classroom climate is really important, and especially in the middle school. We want our classes and our classrooms to feel safe, to feel engaging, respectful, welcoming, and supportive. In order to highlight what it takes to create this type of environment, we want to discuss five ways to ruin your middle school classroom climate. 1. […]
Ahhhh, the first day of school. No matter how long you teach, it seems that there can still be anxiety of what to do on that day. We want to share four first day activities for middle school ELA that you will love! We’ll cover what students should do when they enter your room, the […]
Tip Number One for a Middle School Back to School Open House : Use Stations! We have found a really successful way to navigate your middle school back to school open house night. Setting up stations in your classroom that the parents and students can work through during that back to school night, adding some unique […]
This year, I tried something different with my After Twenty Years lesson plans. I began with the following essential question: What makes someone a good friend? After asking this question, the discussion in the class took off, as you can imagine with all of the drama surrounding middle school friendships. Next, I asked the students […]
ELA Core Plans provides teacher-written lesson plans, bellringers, and novel units designed to coordinate with Common Core State Standards.
