I teach in South Carolina, and this is our first year having a text dependent analysis prompt for our writing test. There are so many steps in teaching twelve and thirteen year old students to successfully accomplish this type of writing. Scroll down to see our “GAME PLAN” for the test day! One of the main steps in preparing […]
We just finished playing our simple, compound, complex sentences review game in my seventh grade ELA class, and my students had a blast! Have you ever noticed that you can teach a concept over and over, but some students just refuse to pay attention? When this happens, playing a review game can really help. We have been working […]
If you are looking for a way to make money for your school, you should definitely try a Valentine’s Day candy gram fundraiser! We make a great profit each year at our school with our cute and simple candy grams. Each one has a poem, and students can choose to send them to their friends, teachers, […]
Over the years, I’ve tried so many different ways to teach students how to write topic sentences. And, I’ve definitely learned that if I assume students know how to write one, I end up kicking myself for not starting with the basics! This year, something popped in my head that seemed to help my students, so I […]
We have a lengthy list of middle school novel units to share! As seventh grade teachers, we use the following middle school novel units for book clubs, as class reads, and for independent novel studies. Our favorite whole class novel that we begin each year reading is The Man Who Loved Clowns. Our students fall […]
Every February, we read The Devil’s Arithmetic as a whole class novel in my seventh grade classroom. The first year that I read this novel, my The Devil’s Arithmetic lesson plans only consisted of reading, learning new vocabulary words, and answering comprehension questions for each chapter. My, have my plans come a long way! Now […]
This post contains a FREE sample from our The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Lesson Plans unit! When my colleague Tammy and I first began developing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas lesson plans, we had our students in mind. We did not want to bore them with generic vocabulary work and comprehension questions. We wanted […]
If you had asked me ten years ago if I would ever use literacy centers in middle school ELA, I would have replied, “I teach middle school, not kindergarten.” Today, however, literacy centers in middle school ELA are all the craze, so I wanted to figure out if there was a way I could use […]
I wanted to share my favorite middle school ELA Christmas writing activity that I do each year a couple of days before our Christmas break. We play a gift exchange game, but students do not have to spend any money. The best part is that students have a ton of fun, and I tie in […]
Have you heard of the reading signposts? If not, you need to purchase the book Notice and Note Strategies for Close reading by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst. More information is provided about the signposts later in this post. Mainly, however, this post will explain how we hold literature circles using reading signposts in middle school […]
ELA Core Plans provides teacher-written lesson plans, bellringers, and novel units designed to coordinate with Common Core State Standards.
