4 Ways to Use Our Standards Product Line

Save a whole lot of planning time with these 4 ways to use our standards product line in your middle school classroom.

Planning and preparing for middle school ELA is not easy. It takes a lot of time, resources,  and creativity to put together a plan that will not only teach students everything they need to know to master the middle school ELA standards but also to do it in a way in which they will be engaged and on task.

 As a group of middle school teachers, we know how difficult it is to put all the pieces together to create a cohesive plan for the school year. 

That is why we have spent a good amount of time creating a full unit of study for each of the middle school ELA standards. Today, we’re talking about 4 ways to use our standards product line in your middle school classroom.

4 Ways to Use Our Standards Product Line 

#1 | Weekly Units of Study

First, you can use the standard-based product line to create weekly units of study. 

To begin, pick out the standard that you want to work on during a given week of school, and then dig into the unit designed for that standard and pull out the resources that you would like to use as you review with your students. 

Each of the standards-based resources has the standard broken down into different learning targets, and these learning targets will be the focus of your instruction for that particular week.

Going with this weekly unit of study plan will help you to ensure that each standard is covered fully and that students are given time to learn, review, and be assessed on each standard throughout the school year.

Note:  Some of the units are not as long as others and can be combined.

#2 | Activities to Supplement Class Novels

If your school already has certain novels or certain units that they intend for you to teach in a given class, these resources can also be used as supplemental materials. 

If you notice that a certain student is having trouble figuring out a specific topic, you can pull the resources or activities that you need from that standard to use with them for practice. 

You can also pull out the activities that you enjoy the most and apply them directly to the novels or other units that you’re already planning to teach in the class.

Although these resources are designed as full units, each has several activities and handouts that can be used or implemented within other units of study.

#3 | Pull Activities to Spiral Standards Review

Another topic we like to talk about a lot is spiraling standards. 

Spiraling standards means that you are incorporating different standards into the curriculum throughout the year so that students get ongoing practice even when a particular standard is not the focus of instruction.

By spiraling instruction, teachers are able to give students an opportunity to review content so that it does not become stale or forgotten.

Teachers can use the standards-based resources as supplemental materials that they can spiral in throughout the year. This could look like bringing in activity from one of the units each week as an exit ticket or bell ringer.

#4 | To Create Student Resource Notes/Posters

Lastly, the standards-based resources can be used as reference materials. 

In addition to providing learning targets, standard breakdowns, activities, and assessments, these resources also include posters and handouts that can be combined to provide students with reference materials they can keep with them as they continue to learn about different topics.

Teachers can use these reference materials to create posters, design bulletin boards, or create packets that their students can use for notes or review.

As you decide how you can use these standard space resources throughout the year, know that they were built with the intent to save teachers time and bring some additional creativity to their lessons while still focusing on the standards that need to be taught at the middle school level. 

As you consider these four ways to use our standards product line, we hope that you will feel empowered and confident that you will be able to teach, review, and assess the standards in a way that your students will be able to master them by the end of the year! 

We have written blog posts about EVERY middle school ELA standard. Each blog post includes learning targets, project ideas, resource suggestions, and more! Below we have linked each post so that you may easily choose the standard that you want to focus on first!