Paragraph writing is a big challenge for many students. This post includes a step-by-step method to help your students write great paragraphs in no time.
Filler Activities for ELA (blog post) What can you do with five extra minutes in secondary ELA? Here are a few ideas to engage students until the bell.
Get an outline for teaching all the reading and writing standards in your Middle School ELA class.
There's a lot of ground to cover when you teach creative narrative writing. Here are 5 creative narrative mini-lessons you should be sure to use!
Get organized with a daily and weekly ELA plan so that you feel confident and prepared. Planning the structure of a class period varies by unit. Start here!
At the end of each novel I teach, I like to have my students participate in some sort of culminating literary analysis project that allows me to assess their
Writing instruction often fits into a small corner of the day. This makes it so challenging to find time to teach grammar, spelling, punctuation, and all the other foundational skills students need to be more effective writers. While working through the writing process is an important piece of writing instruction, many
Teaching argument writing to middle school students involves teaching them how to develop and support a claim and how to structure an essay.
When I think about student writing, one of the most difficult concepts to teach is sentence fluency. Much of excelling at fluent writing revolves around students’ background with literacy. Certainly,...
Do you teach your first and second-grade students to learn how to write a paragraph? In this post, I share ideas, lessons, and activities for students to learn how to write their own paragraphs in a structured way. Before I dive in, I wanted to let you know you can watch or listen to all […]
Hey Friends!! It's been a minute!Let me just start by saying that I've had such a great summer. I had intended to do a lot of work, but I just couldn't. I needed a little
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
How to facilitate successful Socratic Seminars in the secondary ELA
Procedural writing or "How-to" is one of my favorite units! Read this post to discover some fantastic mentor texts to use in your classroom!
The beginning of the school year is an important time to assess the writing skill levels of new students in our English classes. One way to do this is to assign a diagnostic essay in order to "diagnose" each student's writing level. This creative approach to essay writing helps students t
Are your students disinterested and tired of the traditional ways of learning characterization? Have you been searching for a really fun, student-centered, interactive way to eliminate their boredom? Well, look no further! I present to you a wonderful student-collaboration activity that will get your students involved and excited for a character analysis for any novel, […]
Ready to rock teaching beginning of year writing in first grade? These early days of writing instruction must be targeted and on point. Click to learn more.
Help your students expand their writing skills with these teaching ideas on writing a paragraph before they need to know how to write a multi-paragraph.
For this interactive lesson, students will use the board in order to interact with each other. It also provides a means for assessment during a class period. Students can collaborate and use the board to brainstorm new ideas, share information, or reflect upon the lesson/ activity/ project from th
Learn why one-pagers are one of my go-to activities for breaking down complex topics and texts. Understand what they are, why you and your students will love them, and how to implement them in your ELA classroom. I even have the advice to help you tackle the biggest obstacle you’ll encounter with this activity.
If you are looking for some high-interest activities, try using animated shorts to teach inference. Free handouts focus on student learning.
Analyzing writing curriculums, planning writing workshop and teaching writing lessons can be overwhelming. You might think, how am I going to fit everything in and produce successful writers? Where d
Create a classroom of writers with these fun writing activities for middle school students! There's something for everyone!
If you have been following our blog, you might have seen our post about our favorite teacher hack, earlier finisher packets! If you missed it, don’t worry, I will sum it up real quick for you. Essentially, despite teaching different grade, Emmy and I realized we were both having the same Issue. Kid
Top 10 Pixar Short Films for teaching middles school literary elements: theme, plot, inference, setting, dialogue, conflict, and more.
This graphic organizer can be used to teach and reinforce the RACES strategy. It gives an explanation of each step as well as sentence starter to support students in their extended response. This really helps my students organize their thoughts before writing their final response. I give this to a...
So you’ve taught your students to write sentences. Now what? In the beginning of my career, we worked HARD on writing sentences. When it came time to take the next step into writing paragraphs, I found this was even harder for my students. We were able to write 2-3 sentences about a topic or picture, ... Read More about How to Scaffold Paragraph Writing for Special Education
Teaching writing to fifth graders doesn't have to be intimidating. This post details exactly how I teach writing in 5th grade.
What are Scrambled Paragraphs? Scrambled paragraphs are sentences taken from a complete paragraph for your students to rearrange. They are like puzzles your students will put back together using what they know about text structure. Teachers
Creative lesson plans are important in secondary ELA because they challenge students to go beyond the obvious and think outside the box. Creative lessons plans are also highly engaging for struggling and gifted students. This list of activities encourages creative thinking and growth mindset all
I receive a lot of questions about how I run my literacy block. At my school, our schedule is blocked out, but I have freedom to arrange my own blocks (if that makes sense). So my literacy block is 9:40 – 11:15, and this is what I’ve decided to do with it: We start right ... Read More about My Literacy Block
Take a deep dive into the common 5 structure options for your ELA literacy block with benefits of each outlined in an informative & actionable manner.
Teaching writing to fifth graders doesn't have to be intimidating. This post details exactly how I teach writing in 5th grade.
What does a successful writing workshop look like? Here are strategies that will ensure successful writing workshops all year.
Get an outline for teaching all the reading and writing standards in your Middle School ELA class.
Scrambled paragraphs are a fun literacy activity your kids will love. This activity contains 5 interesting passages to scramble and re-arrange correctly. Students will use logic and transition words like "for example", "however", and "finally" to determine the correct order. Great activity to reinforce text structures!Each passage contains six sentences. The passages increase in difficulty, making this activity easy to differentiate. This works great as a station activity for helping teach students organization in writing. It can be useful scaffolding for students who are struggling with constructing paragraphs of their own.Answer key is included.No prep, ready to print and use! Teachers are saying: "We loved this resource. I set these up as stations. The kids went around in their groups and tried to put the paragraphs together in the correct order. It was interesting to see how the sequential one was the easiest one for him to complete. This was the perfect activity for our class needs." Format: PDF
Click to see how one teacher uses 1 book to launch writing workshop with a detailed breakdown of each day and a free download.
This post contains the animated short film "Glued." Download the accompanying handout leveled for upper elementary students to teach theme.
Your new favorite teaching strategy: This pared-down version of learning stations keeps the movement, interactivity and variety while minimizing the prep work.
Mentor Sentence STATIONS with 120 Mentor Sentences provide your students with motivating activities that improve writing skills! Now includes a DIGITAL version. EIGHT stations focus in on specific skills and techniques where students gain practice using sentences from young adult novels as models. With 120 mentor sentences, grouped by three levels of challenge, you’ll have lots of variety and easy differentiation. You’ll be able to use these stations over and over again throughout the year with different mentor sentences! A PowerPoint Mini-lesson is included as a perfect way to introduce students to mentor sentences and the station work. Detailed task cards and inviting student handouts make the activities both challenging and fun. Students enjoy movement and group work! Clear and specific teacher guidelines are provided to make set up and grading super quick and easy. Each station will engage students for approximately 20-25 minutes, so with 8 stations, you’ll have several days of planning covered, with students actively discussing, learning, and stretching their writing skills to imitate mentor sentences. The DIGITAL version offers colorful, nicely-designed slides that allow students to type their responses into text boxes. With both print-and-go AND digital versions, you'll be equipped for all teaching situations! Plus, you'll be able to differentiate according to your students' needs. To access the DIGITAL version of this resource, you will find: ---a PDF containing digital links to access the mentor sentences, task cards, station handout-slides, and rubric ---directions for uploading the resources and using them with students --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The EIGHT MENTOR SENTENCE STATION TOPICS are 1. Parts of Speech 2. Word Choice 3. Types of Sentences 4. Figurative Language 5. Description 6. Punctuation 7. Author’s Style 8. Synonyms Contents of the Resource: 1. A POWERPOINT MINI-LESSON – A colorful and engaging 8-slide presentation introduces students to the use of mentor sentences. Specific written directions for teaching the mini-lesson are included. 2. 120 MENTOR SENTENCES – Excerpted from popular young adult novels, each mentor sentence is attractively displayed with title and author listed below–-and color-coded by three levels of challenge. Students work with one mentor sentence at each station. 3. SKILLS CHART- A 6-page chart illustrates the specific skills and literary characteristics contained in each of the 120 mentor sentences. The chart will help you in deciding which mentor sentences to choose for the station work, especially if you’d like to reinforce certain skills. 4. TASK CARDS – Eight colorful task cards, each with a section entitled “Here’s What You’ll Do.” Completion steps are outlined in a checklist. Students read the task card together when they assemble at the station. 5. STUDENT HANDOUTS (16 pages) – The 2-sided handouts are creatively designed and align with the station task cards so students can get right into their activity and begin discussing and delving into the topics. 6. SIGNS FOR EACH STATION – Eight colorful folding stand-up signs that match the task cards - can be set on the table or group of desks for each station to guide students to their areas. 7. GRADING RUBRIC – A 4-point optional Grading Rubric is included for your convenience. The rubric describes qualities of student work on four levels with space for you to assign you own grade or number of points. 8. AMENDED TASK CARDS – A set of task cards is included without mention of a group grading system, a quick and easy grading system that is explained in the Teacher Guidelines. These cards can be used in place of the original task cards by teachers who prefer to grade each student’s work individually. 9. TEACHER GUIDELINES – Specific guidelines for implementing and grading the station work offer suggestions and tips for getting the most out of this resource and using it with ease. Common Core standards that align with this resource are noted. If you are looking for engaging writing activities that provide rigor and motivate your students, look no further! These stations offer meaningful practice for improved writing skills. As you circulate the classroom, your students will be discussing, analyzing, and creating higher level sentences together. NOTE: If you plan to use the print version, one station (Synonyms) would benefit from student devices for access to online thesaurus. Please open the PREVIEW for a closer look! Thanks --Joy You might also enjoy teaching with these resources: Non-Fiction STATIONS for ANY Informational Text - w/ Digital Distance Learning Informational Writing: 5 Informative Essays with Guided Writing Templates Vocabulary Activities – Word Study Bundle with Word Wall Posters and Quizzes Yes! Join my list to receive Teaching Tips, New Product Updates, and FREEBIES from Joy
