This classroom management strategy for your middle school classroom is incredibly simple. The goal is to reach 15:00 by the end of each marking period (you could even utilize this strategy weekly and have students try to reach 1:00 or…
The way we begin our mornings really sets a tone for the rest of the day. During my first few years of teaching, I didn’t realize how truly important those first 5 minutes of class were. I was always taught to…
Teaching literary analysis in elementary school can be challenging, but it’s incredibly important. Because, as Middle School ELA teachers, we’re often asked, “What are the main areas teachers should focus on in elementary school to prepare their kids for middle…
We love playing games in our ELA classrooms! Frankly, it’s a great way to review concepts and keep students engaged. Recently, we created a grammar bingo game and a figurative language bingo game that our students LOVE! We thought we’d…
It’s no secret that we think consistent quality writing practice is essential for students’ success. That’s why we created a paragraph of the week resource for our students. It holds us accountable to include writing each week in our curriculum…
Teaching Literary Analysis to Middle School students can be challenging. But we truly believe we’ve come up with an incredibly effective and streamlined framework that is going to wipe out a large majority of those challenges. While we strongly believe…
We like to follow the Boy Scouts’ motto “Be prepared” when it comes to absent students. This means that during the first week of school somewhere between going over our bathroom policy and playing some back to school activities, we address…
Between the two of us, we have switched grade levels and schools seven times in our teaching careers! With each transition there is obviously a new curriculum to learn and new expectations for ourselves and our students. We’ve learned that…
Something that’s proven invaluable for us in our ELA classrooms time and time again has been the emergency sub binder we have sitting on our desks. Even though emergencies are highly unlikely, and we’re generally able to get some sort…
We all have those days when an assembly ends earlier than expected and we have twenty minutes to kill before lunch, or the copier breaks down for the hundredth time. Or today’s lesson has to be postponed, or it’s the…
Hi there! We're two middle school ELA teachers with a mission to share ideas, tips, and tricks for effectively teaching reading and writing in the secondary classroom. We're so happy you stopped by!
Caitlin + Jessica
