Posts in ELA Ideas
How to Write a Constructed Response Using Text Evidence

After all of our relationship building activities, one of the first things I teach is how to write a constructed response using text evidence. There are a lot of strategies you can use like RACE or ACES, but my favorite way to teach this is the RTQT method. In my experience, students are able to remember and expand on the different components with quality responses.

Now you might be sitting there wondering, What exactly is RTQT? Click through to read about this fun strategy!

Read More
4 Different Types of Bell Ringers

Over the years, my bell ringers have developed and grown to include meaningful and engaging tasks. I have found that if I do the same type of bell ringer every single day, students get bored. I don’t blame them. It would be like eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich everyday for lunch. I’m the type of person who likes to throw in a square retro pizza and some tater tots into the lunch rotation, so my bell ringers need some variety too.

I have four core bell ringer activities that I rotate through throughout the year. Each set takes a week to complete, so we do two of each type in one quarter. Click to read all about them!


Read More
Collaboration Strategies for Your Classroom.

Collaboration is great, isn’t it?! It brings students together and not only enhances their learning, it builds those critical social skills students are in desperate need of. Here are my 5 favorite strategies I use in my middle school classroom to encourage collaboration. They are step by step, easy to implement, and low prep (because that’s how this teacher rolls!) Click to learn about the strategies and start using them today. Yay!

Read More
Building Relationships: Activities for the First Week of Middle School

You are a great teacher (that's why you're checking out products related to building relationships) and you know how important it is to spend time getting to know WHO your students are before you jump head first into content. 

This post will give you some ideas you can use to start building relationships the very first week. Click to read more and start planning!

Read More
6 Tips for Effective Socratic Seminar Management

After years and years of holding seminars in my middle school ELA classroom, I have come up 6 tips you can implement to help you and your students get the most out of a seminar session! I believe these tips help my seminars run effectively in ALL of my classes (yes, even that class that can’t handle hardly anything) Click to see if there are any tips you can add to what you’re already doing!

Read More
Chasing Lincoln's Killer: Teacher Outline and Lesson Plan Ideas

This is your one stop spot for how to teach Chasing Lincoln’s Killer to your students! I have complied everything I have learned from the years of teaching with this novel, so you can save time and have access what works! This post details exactly how I approach each chapter and specifically outlines the strategies I use to engage students and encourage analytical thinking.

Read More
Adding Movement to your Reading Time

Wow. Some days are just a struggle in the middle school ELA classroom. Trying to get 12-14 year olds to focus on reading for an extended amount of time takes some work and energy. After watching my students float off into la la land after 15 minutes of reading, I knew I had to come up with a way to keep them engaged during extended readings…

Read More
Making Gallery Walks Meaningful

I don’t know why today was they day, but it was. I mean, I’ve done it this way for years. But, for some reason, today was the day that where it became glaringly obvious: the way I was doing gallery walks to showcase student work was not meaningful or engaging. This is how I fixed the problem between class periods and instantly increased student engagement.

Read More
Intentional Thinking & Collaboration

Do you have students in your class that seem to get overshadowed? That struggle to get their thoughts out as fast as some of your other students. I saw this happening when I was asking questions, and knew something had to change. This is how I got my quieter students and those who need a little bit longer processing time involved…

Read More