The Sparkly Notebook

Mastering the ELA Standards in Middle School

Teacher Tools and Resources

New Teacher Series: Curriculum Planning After Student Teaching in Middle School ELA

You’re new to having a classroom all to yourself, and now it is time to start curriculum planning after student teaching in middle school ELA!

You did it!!

Student teaching is officially in the rearview mirror, and now you’re gearing up for your very first middle school ELA classroom of your own. 

It’s exciting. 

It’s nerve-wracking. 

And, let’s be honest, it’s a lot!!

One of the biggest shifts from student teaching to full-time teaching is curriculum planning. You’re no longer just delivering someone else’s lessons—you’re responsible for the big picture: what you’re teaching, when, and how you’re going to make sure your students actually learn it all by the end of the year.

But don’t panic. 

We specialize in teaching middle school ELA, and we are here to help!!

We’re here to help you go from “Where do I even start?” to “I’ve got a solid plan,” and we’ll even give you the resources you need to get started!

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Steps to Start Curriculum Planning After Student Teaching

Start with the Standards

The very first place to start when planning your curriculum is the standards.

Trust us, we know it’s not the most glamorous part of teaching. But your standards are basically your GPS for the school year. They tell you what your students need to know by the end of the year, and they give you structure for building your lessons and units.

Take time to read through your grade-level ELA standards carefully. All of them. The writing, reading literature, reading nonfiction, speaking and listening and language standards. 

It might feel overwhelming at first, but take it from us, it will all start to make more sense once you break them down into manageable chunks. 

Grab the Free ELA Standards Breakdown

To help you organize your thoughts and begin the planning process, we’ve created a free ELA Standards Breakdown you can grab and use right away. 

This breakdown takes each standard and simplifies it. For each standard we’ve broken down the learning targets as well as what students are expected to know and do. We’ve also provided sentence stems and vocabulary for each standard.

This freebie…

  • Is a perfect planning companion
  • Great for identifying what to teach—and when
  • Ideal for pacing out your year
  • Makes writing assessments and objectives a whole lot easier

Click here to download your free ELA Standards Breakdown!

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Map It Out 

Once you have your standards broken down, you can begin thinking about how to organize them into units. 

Remember, every standards doesn’t necessarily need its own unit. There are ways to blend writing, reading, speaking and listening together. For example, are there projects that can encompass several standards at once?

Having it mapped out doesn’t mean you need to have every single day planned before the year starts—but having a general idea of how the year will flow is essential.

Start with questions like:

  • Which standards naturally go together?
  • What order makes the most sense for student learning?
  • Are there big projects or anchor texts I want to build around?
  • When are major breaks or testing windows?

Using a simple calendar or pacing guide template, start plotting out your ideas. You can always adjust as the year goes on, but having a loose plan helps reduce stress when the school year gets busy.

Check out this blog post on how to Use Standards to Drive Your Curriculum. In this post, we go into more depth on how to work through this process.

Here are some additional blog posts that you might find helpful!

How to plan curriculum like a boss!
Blog Post (How to plan curriculum like a boss!)
Standards-based planning for middle school ELA teachers
Blog Post (Standards-based planning for middle school ELA teachers)
Checklists for Planning Your Middle School ELA Curriculum This School Year
Blog Post (Checklists for Planning Your Middle School ELA Curriculum This School Year)

Teach With Confidence

One of the most common first-year teacher mistakes is underestimating how important curriculum alignment is. You don’t want to get to April and realize you haven’t touched three major standards. (Yep, we’ve all been there.)

Being intentional from the beginning by organizing your standards, using checklists, and reviewing your pacing gives you confidence and ensures your students are learning exactly what they need to move forward.

And you don’t have to do it alone.

If you’re looking for more support, The Sparkly Notebook offers Standards-Based Units for EVERY Middle School ELA Standard complete with lesson plans, activities, assessments, and visuals. They’re a great resource to lean on as you build your curriculum from the ground up.

I’ll link the bundles for each grade level below, but you can also get a unit for just a single standard!

6th Grade ELA Bundle
7th Grade Standards-Based Learning Bundle (Every ELA Standard)
7th Grade Bundle
8th Grade Standards-Based Learning Bundle (Every ELA Standard)
8th Grade Bundle

Final Thoughts for New Teachers

You don’t have to know everything right now. Curriculum planning takes time and practice, but starting with your standards, getting organized, and using tools like our free breakdown will help you start your first year strong.

You’ve got this—and we’re cheering you on every step of the way!

2025 Teacher Self-Care Checklist for Summer Break

There are 25 suggestions on this 2025 teacher self-care checklist for summer break that will help you diversify your days and find lots of ways to relax this summer.

You made it!

Another year down and another year wiser.

It doesn’t matter if this was the greatest year of your teaching career or one of the hardest. All that matters is that it has wrapped up, and it is time for you to rest and rejuvenate over the summer break!

It is summer 2025, and this break is yours!

And while it’s tempting to just melt into your couch with an iced coffee and 14 hours of reality TV (honestly, valid), don’t forget: self-care is more than just bubble baths and sleep-ins.

It’s about doing what your body, mind, and heart actually need after a whole year of showing up for everyone else. 

So, in honor of 2025, here are 25 simple, restorative, and totally doable ways to show yourself some love this summer.

Pin Image of a teacher traveling. Text reads, "2025 Teacher Self Care: Checklist for Summer Break"

Teacher Self-Care Checklist for Summer 2025

  1. Sleep in without an alarm (not on a weekend!).
  2. Drink water like it’s your job
  3. Do a dance in the kitchen just because
  4. Unplug for a full day. We’re talking no emails, no school group chats, no guilt.
  5. Schedule that appointment you’ve been putting off.
  6. Get outside daily. Find a park you like, sit on your porch, or just go for a walk.
  7. Try a new hobby just because it sounds fun, not because it’s productive.
  8. Book a massage or spa day. We know it can be a little pricy, so even if it’s just a short massage, do it for you.
  9. Read a book for fun. Just something fun. Not for learning, but for entertainment.
  10. Watch something just for laughs. Watch or rewatch something that totally makes you laugh out loud.
  11. Do nothing for an hour and don’t feel guilty about it.
  12. Say no to anything that doesn’t feel like a “heck yes.”
  13. Reflect on the year just a few notes or voice memos for future you. 
  14. Start a “Next Year” list, but only after a full week of not thinking about school.
  15. Revisit a favorite childhood activity. Maybe its puzzles, coloring, jumping in the pool. Whatever you used to love, try it again.
  16. Spend time alone without an agenda.
  17. Meditate, journal, or pray. Ditch the noise and spend some quiet time by yourself.
  18. Listen to your favorite music it doesn’t even have to be school-appropriate.
  19. Create a morning or evening ritual that feels calm and cozy.
  20. Get lost in nature. Go hiking, swim in a lake, or just cloud-watch in your backyard.
  21. Go on a day trip to somewhere new.
  22. Take yourself on a solo date (ice cream and bookstore combo? Yes, please.)
  23. Buy something small that brings you joy—a new mug, plant, or pair of cozy socks.
  24. Try a “yes day” where you say yes to what you want in the moment (no lesson plans allowed).
  25. Meet up with Teacher Friends (during the school day) Spend time with each other without students or plans or expectations. Just hang out as friends and do something that doesn’t normally fit into your school day. Like lunch at that cute little coffee shop!

Here’s the Thing…

You don’t have to do all 25 on this teacher self-care checklist. You don’t even have to do 10. But choose a few and make them non-negotiable.

Because the best way to show up for your students in August… is to take care of you in July.

If you enjoy this topic and want to learn more, check out this blog post about teacher self care.

Teachers, take care of. your mental health with these 7 tips
Blog Post (Teachers, take care of your mental health with these 7 tips)

Enjoy your summer!

Curriculum planning can be a lot easier when you truly understand the standards you are intending to teach. Grab these FREE standard breakdowns for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade ELA below to help you!

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Parent-Teacher Conference Tips for New Teachers

Ten parent-teacher conference tips for new teachers as they prepare for their first round of conferences.

Parent-teacher conferences are definitely one of those things that you get better at the more you do them.

Having a plan for your parent-teacher conferences is the best way to feel prepared and in control, as you begin inviting a hundred students’ parents into your classroom for a little catch-up and chat.

Today, we are sharing 10 parent-teacher conference tips for new teachers. We are assuming that you have not experienced a parent-teacher conference before, or that you have not had very successful parent-teacher conferences in the past.

Our goal with this post is to empower you to take charge of your parent-teacher conferences.  We hope this list will provide you with some ideas you may not have considered otherwise.

We previously wrote a blog post about our 4 Tips to Prepare Yourself for Tough Conferences. In that post, we specifically discussed being prepared for conferences you know will be some of the hardest ones on your schedule. 

Prepare yourself for that tough conference with these 4 tips
Blog Post (Prepare yourself for that tough conference with these 4 tips)

In this post, we provide 10 general tips for preparing for and administering conferences, with the goal of helping newer teachers who are preparing for their first-ever round of conferences.

10 Parent-Teacher Conference Tips for New Teachers

#1 | Don’t plan too much.

One of the most common issues we typically see with new teachers is over-planning how much you will share during your conference time.

Due to the number of students most middle school teachers work with on a given day, parent-teacher conference time is often very limited. 

There have been times when working with middle schoolers that I have had just 4 minutes to talk to each parent, and there are other times that I have had as much as 10 minutes to speak with each parent. Make sure you know how much time you will have with each group, and then adapt the amount of information that you prepare for that amount of time. 

It is not appropriate or professional to keep parents with you longer than planned, as they will most likely have several other teachers with whom they need to meet. Helping everyone stay on schedule is important and considerate.

#2 | Contact Parents Ahead of Time with Issues

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten about parent-teacher conferences came from an administrator. He said that we should not bring up any new issues about students with parents at conferences. If an issue is important enough to bring up during conferences, it is important to contact the parent in advance or when the issue starts showing up in class.

If there is a new issue that has been occurring that you want to address with parents, contact them through an email or phone call in advance and let them know that this issue is something that you would want to talk about during conferences so that they can plan a little more time to meet with you. You may even decide you will not have enough time during conferences to deal with the issue, so you need to set up a separate time to meet with them instead. 

Remember that parent-teacher conferences are a time to check in with the parents, ensure that they have no questions, and give them an update on their student’s educational progress. It is not a time to voice all your grievances or list a bunch of issues that the parents should have been made aware of before now.

#3 | Have at least 1 good thing to say about every child

Next, you’ll want to have one good thing to say about every child. In fact, you may even want to have these written down in advance so that you are not caught unaware when a parent shows up.

For some parents, parent-teacher conferences are very stressful. It turns out that the students who are a pain in the booty in your class are probably also a pain in the booty in other classes. Therefore, parent-teacher conferences for that child’s parents may become a very long night. 

A kind word from you about their child could completely change the tone of the night for the parent and help to give you and the parents some common ground as you move further into your conversation. 

#4 | Have your seating charts available to help remember names/faces

This is what I wish somebody would have told me before I went through my first round of parent-teacher conferences.

Depending on how your district calendar is set up, parent-teacher conferences can actually fall very early in the school year. Since middle school students typically move from class to class, middle school teachers can have a hundred students or more on their roster.

In my experience, it’s not uncommon to have a hard time recalling who a student is based on first and last name alone. 

On more than one occasion, I have been in a situation where a parent has introduced themselves to me, and I can’t immediately recall who their child is. 

Why is this?

This may be because the child uses a different nickname in school. 

It may be because they have the same name as somebody else, for example, Ashley A or Ashley B, who are both in the same class. 

It may also be simply because you have so many students that when you don’t have them or see them in context, it’s tough for you to recall exactly who that person is.

Sometimes, the stress and anxiety associated with parent-teacher conferences causes you to draw a complete blank in the moment.

Sometimes, you have a pregnancy brain, and you’re just not as sharp as normal. 

There are many reasons that could cause this to happen. This is why having a seating chart with pictures in front of you is important. It will give you a reference point in case this ever happens to you.

#5 | Have Key Goals for Your Students

There are a lot of different things you can discuss at conferences, but the most important one is making sure that parents know your top goals for each student. 

As we said before, you might be limited in the amount of time that you have to talk to each parent, and having some key goals for each student ready to go is a great way to feel more prepared and stay on topic while the parent is meeting with you.

You can even take this one step further by talking to the student in advance about your goals for them and having a handout prepared to give to the parent for reference. 

You can use these reading growth charts and conference forms as a guide as you prepare to meet with parents.

#6 | Don’t Assume Parents Know Their Student’s Grades or How to Access Them

In an age of technology and readily available information, we often assume that parents know how to access their student’s grades and stay on top of them. Although this is true for some parents, it is not true for all. 

Although some parents check their student’s grades every day or every week, many, in fact, might never do so. 

Make sure you take the time at the beginning of the conference to show them the child’s current grade so that you are all starting from the same place. 

#7 | Avoid Teacher Lingo

Teachers use a lot of lingo with each other, and we also use a lot of acronyms on a regular basis. During parent-teacher conferences, try to avoid using teacher lingo and acronyms as much as possible. Instead, speak as if you are talking to somebody who does not understand the teacher’s language at all.

The goal of parent-teacher conferences is to make sure that the parents leave with a general understanding of how the student is doing in your class. If the parents don’t understand what you’re talking about, then your parent-teacher conference has not been successful.

#8 | Explain Standardized Test Results/Goals

Standardized test results can also be very confusing for parents. During parent-teacher conferences, take the time to explain how the test results are calculated, how to read them, and how the student measures up compared to other students at the same grade level in their school and across the nation.

If a parent seems particularly confused or particularly interested, also take the time to explain what the test looks like, how much time the students get to take it, and what, if any, issues their child may have had while taking the test that could better explain their results. 

#9 | Read the room

This is another one that I see a lot of teachers get wrong. 

Make sure that you are reading the room during your parent-teacher conferences. 

What we mean by this is that you’re gauging the parents’ interest in what you’re talking about against how much they need that information or don’t need that information. 

If you are providing a monologue about how you teach writing and you can see that the parent is starting to phase out, then it’s time to wrap up your info-sesh and get them out the door. The same goes for a parent who looks particularly exhausted. You may be the sixth conference that they’ve had tonight, and they are starting to run low on energy. 

Again, stick with your positives, tell them your goals for the student, and then read the room from there to decide how much more you need to share. 

#10 | Provide Solutions – Don’t assume parents know how to help their child

Remember, parents aren’t teachers. If a student needs additional help on a particular topic, take the time to offer solutions to the parent. 

You may even have opportunities available at the school that they don’t know about. For example, your school might offer tutoring sessions or teacher-led reviews that the parents are not even aware exist. 

Take the time to tell them about what opportunities are available, and always come to the parent with solutions if you bring up an area where a student might need more help or guidance to succeed.

Hopefully, these parent-teacher conference tips for new teachers will help you feel more in control. Just keep in mind that with a little empathy, the right resources, and a good plan, you can make your first round of parent-teacher conferences much more successful. 

We’re rooting for you!

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Set Middle School Students Up for Success with Classroom Procedures

You take steps toward creating a positive learning environment when you set middle school students up for success with classroom procedures.

Starting the school year off right with students is all about setting high expectations and instilling good classroom procedures to help everything run more smoothly.

Many teachers dive right into content at the beginning of the year without any regard for setting up the classroom procedures that will be the backbone of the expectations and environment we build within our classroom for the rest of the year.

Setting expectations for what students do when they come into the room, how they ask to use the restroom, or even how to approach the teacher about missing work will make working with the students much easier as the year moves on.

Classroom Procedures to Focus on in Middle School ELA

Here are some of the main classroom procedures we believe are most important to setting up a strong learning environment in middle school. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and for some of these things, the school may have a policy in place, but you should always address it explicitly in your class as well.

  • What are students expected to bring to class?
  • What happens if students do not bring all of their supplies to class?
  • Where are classroom supplies?
  • When are the supplies allowed to be used?
  • How are groups decided?
  • How are seating charts created?
  • How do students ask to use the restroom?
  • What happens when phones are seen? Heard? Used?
  • How and when is technology used in the classroom?
  • What will happen if students come to the room unprepared?
  • How should the student approach the teacher when they know they will be absent or tardy?
  • How should students approach the teacher if they have an emergency or unexpected absence?
  • How should students approach the teacher if they did not complete an assignment by the due date?
  • How and when will a teacher allow students to leave the classroom during instruction?
  • How should a student report to the teacher if a group member is not fulfilling their role in the group?
  • How should students approach the teacher if they have concerns about the content they are learning in the class?

One of the things that separates good classroom management from bad classroom management is having good classroom procedures in place and practicing them regularly. Being willing to go over classroom procedures, practice them, test on them, and expect them to be followed EVERY DAY creates a consistency that students learn to expect from you as a teacher and in your classroom environment.

Using Common Resources

In addition to setting up specific classroom procedures, having consistent practices such as expected bell ringer activities or exit slips also help with classroom management because students know exactly what they are expected to do as they come into the classroom or leave the classroom each day.

In this post, we talk about using Paired Passages as bell ringers or exit tickets, and we have enough paired passages available to use this strategy for the entire semester!

Benefits of playing sports paired passages
Paired Passages – Sports
High-Interest Paired Passages: Cell Phones
Paired Passages – Cell Phones
Easy Middle School ELA Activities for the Weeks Surrounding Spring Break (Video Game Paired Passages)
Paired Passages – Video Games

What additional classroom procedures do you go over with students? Do you have any special tips or tricks? We’d love to hear them!

Have a great day!

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Emergency Sub Planning Made Easy for Middle School ELA Teachers

Emergency sub planning made easy for middle school ELA teachers who want to start the year off ahead of the game.

One of the hardest parts about being a teacher is being gone for a day…let alone two. 

It’s not like other jobs where you can just put in your PTO and then trust that everything will be taken care of.

Instead, you have to worry about whether or not you’ll even get a sub, whether that sub is competent, and what you can realistically leave the sub that will keep you on track in your planning.

Personally, we like to have a plan for both emergencies and planned scenarios. Let’s talk about the planned sub situations first.

Planning for a Sub in Middle School ELA

When you’re going to be gone for a planned absence, you have the ability to actually make a plan that will allow your students to continue to move forward with their learning. This may look like giving them additional work time on a paper they are writing, the time to work with groups on a project or even the time to read their books and take notes. When you happen to be in one of these scenarios when a planned absence comes about, you are lucky. 

However, that is not the case for many middle school ELA teachers.

Sometimes, you have to plan a whole new lesson for a sub. In these instances, it is nice to pick a lesson that is on topic with what you’ve already been studying.

To make this process easier for middle school ELA teachers, we’ve created standards-based units that they can use in their classrooms. As an additional benefit, these resources can also be pulled apart into individual lessons that work really well for planned absences and emergency absences alike.

7th Grade Standards-Based Learning Bundle (Every ELA Standard)
7th Grade Bundle
8th Grade Standards-Based Learning Bundle (Every ELA Standard)
8th Grade Bundle

Click for the 7th Grade Bundle

Click for the 8th Grade Bundle

Each of the bigger units is based on just one standard, so the lessons within the standard are focused on moving students forward in their understanding of that skill. Use these lessons as the base for your planned absence, and you will have a lot less planning to do. 

We don’t call it sub planning made easy for nothing!

Emergency Sub Planning Made Easy

Emergency sub plans are a whole other beast. These are the sub plans you need to have in your sub bucket at the beginning of the year in case you just can’t be at work. 

You may have a little time to prepare, but it’s not much time if you have that. Or in some cases, like if your water breaks, or if you have to run to the hospital to visit a dying relative, you don’t have the luxury of time to figure out a lesson.

Emergency sub plans should be in a binder, folder, or bucket where you can literally pull them out, set them on your desk, and leave. Or, even better, call someone else to do them for you.

For these emergency situations, the lessons in the standards-based units also work really well. Just go through the units at the beginning of the year and pull out some of the stand-alone activities to have on the back burner, just in case.

If you make it to the end of the year without using them, then you can bring them out for those last couple days of school when you are wrapping everything up and reviewing.

Paired Passages and Digital Escape Rooms

In addition to the standards-based units, we also have 32 Paired Passages that you could have ready to go (learn more about them in this post), and we have digital escape rooms that can be shared with students through Google Classroom or your learning management system. Both of these resources are stand-alone resources that can be used on the fly. They are also high-interest and perfect for these emergency situations!

32 Paired Passages to use in middle school ELA
32 Paired Passages to Use in Middle School ELA
15+ educational escape rooms for middle school ela
15+ Educational ELA Escape Rooms for Middle School ELA

When we think about emergency sub planning made easy for middle school ELA teachers, we are looking for stand-alone lessons or activities that still give students a chance to focus on the content and skills they need but can also be given to a sub along with very little instruction. The many resources we’ve outlined in this post do exactly that.

Hopefully, we’ve been able to give you the tools you need to sub-plan with ease!

Happy Planning!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

3 Products Middle School ELA Teachers Should Have Ready to Go for Back-to-School

Today we’re presenting a toolbox of products middle school ELA teachers should have ready to go for back-to-school to make planning and prep so much easier!

Although I’ve taught for a long time, it seems that every year is a brand new year where things change, and I have to figure out how everything on my middle school ELA teacher mental checklist is going to get done.

Now, we totally get it. You’re a professional, you already know the standards, and you have some ideas for lessons, but sometimes it’s nice to have something sitting in your back pocket, ready to go, just in case. 

  • In case you end up with a super-short class period.
  • Just in case you get sick in the middle of the night and you don’t want to have to come up with a new lesson plan.
  • Just in case you’re feeling brain dead, and the ideas are not flowing around one standard or another.
  • Just in case you suddenly realize there is a standard you haven’t addressed…like at all!

That is why having the right resources ready to go is important to both your organization and your mental strength. So today, we’re going to get really specific about the 3 products middle school ELA teachers should have ready to go for back-to-school. These products were all made by middle school ELA teachers, based on middle school ELA standards, and designed to fit into a middle school schedule.

#1 | Standards-Based Checklists

You have to ensure you’re hitting the standards, and if you are missing something, you need to know sooner rather than later.

Using these standards-based checklists at the beginning and throughout the year as you fine-tune lessons and plans will help you be certain that everything that needs to be covered is being taken care of.

Preparing Middle School Students for standardized tests: 6th grade standards checklist
6th Grade Checklist
Preparing Middle School Students for Standardized Tests: (7th Grade Standards Checklist)
7th Grade Checklist
8th Grade Standards Checklist
8th Grade Checklist

#2 | Get the Standards-Based Resource Line

We have developed a full resource line that includes a full unit on EVERY ELA standard for 6th, 7th and 8th grade.

These units are completely built out with learning targets, standard breakdowns, posters, projects, handouts, answer keys, and assessments for EVERY middle school ELA standard. 

If you want to learn more, we have also written blog posts on these standards-based units, simply click on the standard you want to learn more about from the list below and you’ll go directly to a blog post all about that resource.

Writing Standards (for Middle School)

Reading Literature

Reading Informative Texts

Language Standards

Speaking and Listening Standards

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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#3 | Paired Passages

Paired passages are a middle school ELA teacher’s secret weapon.

The paired passages themselves are awesome lessons if you need a quick sub plan, or if you need a passage for students to practice a skill on. Still, they are also awesome for citing sources, practicing using context clues, seeking out parts of speech or sentence patterns, and so much more. With two passages written on every topic and the topics focusing on high-interest topics for middle school students, you will have a bunch of content that you can use as is or mix and match into other units throughout the year.

4th-5th Grade Paired Passage Bundle

6th-7th Grade Paired Passage Bundle

8th-9th Grade Paired Passage Bundle

BONUS Resource | Digital Escape Rooms

Although these are not one of the 3 products middle school ELA teachers SHOULD have ready to go for back to school, they are definitely a product that makes life a whole lot easier and quite a bit more fun.

Digital Escape Rooms, like those in The Sparkly Notebook store, are all about practicing ELA skills in an engaging and thought-provoking way.

Many of our Digital Escape Rooms are based on holiday or seasonal themes and are a great way to add in some seasonal fun without getting too far away from standards-based review.

Digital Escape Room Bundle

When you invest in these 3 products, middle school teachers should be ready to go for back-to-school. You get back a lot of time spent organizing and creating new resources. By picking up just these 3 resources, you’ll have enough content to last the whole year, and you’ll know students are covering, reviewing, and being assessed on all the standards as well!

Resources to use with gifted students in middle school ELA

Differentiation made easy. Use some of these resources with your gifted students in middle school ELA to keep everyone in the class learning!

One of the hardest parts of teaching students is finding ways to make sure that everyone is learning.

This gets especially hard in middle school when you’re no longer seeing only 25-30 students each day. Now, with numbers up into the hundreds, you still have to make sure that all of your students are moving forward and not staying stagnant. 

That means that having processes for differentiation, or resources at different levels of difficulty, are incredibly important.

Today, we’re going to discuss 3 ways you can be prepared to differentiate for gifted students in middle school ELA.

#1 | Using Resources from the Next Grade Level

If you’ve spent any time around middle school standards, then you know that there are very slight differences between the standards at different grade levels. The main difference is often the focus of the activity.

For this reason, using resources for 8th grade with your 7th-graders or 7th-grade resources with your 6th-graders who are more advanced is a very good way to do some quick differentiation.

If you want to examine the standards for each grade level more closely, download our standard-aligned checklists by clicking on the images and links below.

Preparing Middle School Students for standardized tests: 6th grade standards checklist
6th Grade Checklist
Preparing Middle School Students for Standardized Tests: (7th Grade Standards Checklist)
7th Grade Checklist
8th Grade Standards Checklist
8th Grade Checklist

What you’ll see is just how the standards are different and that the resources for the next grade level up could be beneficial. 

In The Sparkly Notebook store, we have a bunch of standard-aligned resources for almost all 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade standards, so if there is a specific standard you’re working on with your 7th graders, you can also grab the 8th-grade resource for the same standard and have slightly more difficult resources to use with your advanced students.

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Which grade level are you most interested in?

#2 | Using Different Reading Passages on the Same Topic

Another way to differentiate for gifted students in middle school ELA is to use passages that are on the same topic as the other students’ passages, but are not the same reading level.

For example, in the store, we have paired passages on the same topic written for different grade levels. Here are the ones we have for Writing Fiction…

#3 | Same Passage, Different Lens

Sometimes, differentiating for gifted students in middle school ELA is about getting them to look at the same piece of writing as everyone else through a different lens.

Since the analysis of writing can change so much depending on the questions being asked or the lens you’re asking students to view the writing through, then simply changing the lens for advanced or gifted students can be enough to challenge them into thinking about a passage in a different way.

For example, your general ed students may look at a passage and try to answer reading comprehension questions about it (as found in the paired passages above). But, your gifted learners may be asked to read the passage with the goal of creating questions that could be asked about it, or they may be reading it with a specific writing prompt in mind.

For example, if the passage is about the positive uses of cell phones in the classroom, then maybe you give your gifted learners the goal of looking at the prompt as if it was written by a cell phone company and how that might change how the passage should be interpreted. How do the sentiments change if the author changes?

Having some go-to strategies for differentiating and even finding good product lines that you can pull from to make differentiation easier will make it easier to plan for gifted students in middle school ELA.

Happy Planning!

Review the ELA Middle School Standards…have your students learned all of them?

With the end of the year, we know it is time to review the ELA middle school standards, and really think about what you need to teach, reteach, or review as we head into the fourth quarter.

We all know that teaching is like juggling a million things at once, and every once in a while, we drop one of the things we’re trying to keep in the air.

Sometimes, those things we drop are the standards.

If we don’t have a good system in place, despite our best efforts, we may lose track of whether our students are truly hitting the mark when it comes to the ELA middle school standards.

However, if we have a good plan to review the ELA middle school standards (in an organized and purposeful fashion, of course!), we can be sure that we are on the right track!

Getting to Know the Middle School ELA Standards

The middle school ELA standards are like the GPS for our teaching journey. They map out what our students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade level.

But like a GPS, there are usually many different routes you can take to get students to know the skills outlined in the standards. This is where we, as middle school ELA teachers, get to add in our own flair and fun. 

Grab FREE Middle School ELA Standard Breakdowns Below!

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Which grade level are you most interested in?

How to Review the Middle School ELA Standards in a Purposeful Way

The best way that I know to review the middle school ELA standards in a purposeful way is through a checklist.

I break down every standard into a list in an Excel document and then make a plan for when I will introduce, review, and assess each standard.

In the middle of the year, during review, I make sure that I’ve followed my plan or take note of anything I’ve missed.

This checklist can take a long time to set up, but once I have it set up, I can revisit it over and over. 

Our Standards-Based Checklists

To make it easier for our teachers to review the ELA middle school standards, we’ve created standard checklists for teachers in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. 

These checklists have all of the standards for each grade level and a comparison chart so that you can see how the standard compares to the previous grade. 

I love the comparison charts because I can see how the standard is just a little different at each level…or not.

Click on the images below to see each checklist in more detail.

Preparing Middle School Students for standardized tests: 6th grade standards checklist
6th Grade Checklist
Preparing Middle School Students for Standardized Tests: (7th Grade Standards Checklist)
7th Grade Checklist
8th Grade Standards Checklist
8th Grade Checklist

Spotting the Gaps

As you work through the checklists, look for places where you may be introducing the standard, but you aren’t reviewing it. Or maybe you’re introducing it and reviewing it, but you are not formally assessing it.

Maybe there is a part of the standard that you’re hitting but a part that you’re not.

In this blog post, we go over how to break the standards down into learning targets and then make a plan for the year. These learning targets give us a checklist of manageable tasks that we can focus on to ensure the standard is being fully taught.

In each of our blog posts on the middle school ELA standards, we’ve broken the standard we’re discussing into learning targets. Click on the posts below to read more about the standards you feel you need to cover in more detail.

Resources and Blog Posts for Each Standard

Note: We also have a resource for each standard. In the resource, we’ve broken the standard down into learning targets and then developed lessons for each! We’ve written a blog post about each of these standards and our resources for them. Click on the links below to take a closer look at the standard your students need more work on!

Writing Standards (for Middle School)

Reading Literature

Reading Informative Texts

Language Standards

Speaking and Listening Standards

When you review the ELA Middle School Standards, it doesn’t have to be a stress-inducing ordeal. 

You just need a plan or checklist that you can follow along with and refer back to as you move through the school year. Hopefully, this blog post has provided you with plenty of both to make this process one you can ease into!

Fun and Easy Back-to-School Ideas for Middle School

Let’s start planning for the new year with these fun and easy back-to-school ideas for middle school ELA.

Middle school is an interesting beast when it comes to back-to-school time. First of all, you have a lot of new students. Unlike elementary teachers with the same 20 or 30 students for the whole year, a middle school teacher may have 100-200 new students.

As we plan for all of these students, we want to have activities ready to go that are easy to set up and don’t require students to transition too much between activities.

I love digital escape rooms for precisely this reason. 

Digital Escape Rooms

Digital escape rooms require no prep; students can work on it alone or with assigned groups or partners making them some of the perfect back-to-school ideas for middle school ela.

Even better, these digital escape rooms are focused on reading skills and, therefore, also work as a formative assessment!

Digital escape rooms are fun and cooperative, and they are also a challenge. Still, if you’re looking for a good individual activity for students to do at the beginning of the school year, you may want to consider spending some time with paired passages.

Make sure you have just the escape room you need by reading this blog post to learn how to pick the best educational escape rooms for middle school ELA!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Paired Passages

The many ways you can use paired passages are why I like these for back-to-school time.

Check out this post for 5 NEW ways to use paired passages!

Paired passages can be used to start discussions, as the basis of a writing prompt or opinion-based writing assignment, or they can be used as an activity for students to work on while you take attendance and work in small groups with other students.

Suppose you are learning the names of 100+ students. In that case, you may like the extra time to speak one-on-one or in small groups, and these paired passage sets and their corresponding questions will keep your other students focused and working on their reading skills so that you can have some of these one-on-one or small group conversations.

Paired passages are also some of those all-powerful assessment-based activities that you can use to measure where your students are at on specific skills!

Click here to see all the high-interest paired passages in The Sparkly Notebook store!

Book Read Aloud

I love love love a good book read aloud at the beginning of the year. Pick one of your classroom texts and get started reading a little bit of it aloud each day for the first couple weeks of school. If you choose the right book, your students will enjoy hearing the story.

I like to read the text and narration and assign students (or ask for volunteers)  to read the character dialogue.

This book read-aloud gives us a solid start to the year. For some of your students, this may be the first chapter book that they’ve ever actually read all the way through. Setting expectations for reading and showing students that reading can be fun is important!

Doing a book read-aloud also gives every person in the class a story or book they can refer back to when giving examples or talking about other reading or writing skills. By simply reading one book out loud at the beginning of the year, you are creating a common base on which you can build the rest of the year.

As you plan for the fall, hopefully, you’ll find some fun and easy, standards-based activities to engage your students and get everyone started on the right foot! 

Here’s to learning all those names as soon as possible!

32 Paired Passages to Use in Middle School ELA

Much of teaching and learning in ELA is based on reading, analyzing, and pulling information from passages, and these 32 paired passages to use in middle school ELA were made specifically for this grade range and their interests.

We’ve got a passage for that.

When we talk with new middle school ELA teachers about the different ways to connect with students, we often bring up a variety of topics that students are interested in. We spend a lot of time listing topics like video games, cell phones, social media, and sports, and then we try to come up with examples to use in the classroom or projects or assignments we can do that will align with these topics.

Well, we’ve made it a lot easier to give students a chance to work with these types of high-interest topics with our Paired Passage product line.

In the Paired Passage product line, we have 30+ paired passages to use in middle school ELA that hit on topics middle school students actually care about and enjoy learning about.

What are Paired Passages?

Paired passages are sets of nonfiction passages that have a shared topic. Each passage looks at the topic from a different angle or purpose.

In our paired passages to use in middle school, we have also included reading comprehension questions for each passage so that teachers can easily use the passages for bell-ringers or as stand-alone assignments.

Ways to Use Paired Passages

Since each of our paired passages includes reading comprehension questions, they are great for test prep and practicing test-taking strategies. Teachers can gather a variety of passages and create practice tests for students to use as they prepare for standardized tests.

Paired passages can also be given to students as they practice making arguments and pulling information from sources.

We also like using paired passages as an introduction to a discussion session. Since the passages provide different points of view on the same topic, the discussion that can stem from the reading often results in a very heated give-and-take session with students that can be a fun and interesting way to work on listening and speaking standards.

New Ways to Use Paired Passages

Although you can always use paired passages to practice test taking or to read and discuss as a class, there are also many other ways to use paired passages.

In this blog post, we discuss several new (and unexpected) ways to use paired passages with your middle school ELA students.

30+ Paired Passages to Use in Middle School ELA

Here is the current list of the paired passage bundles available in The Sparkly Notebook Store. When you click on the bundle of the grade level you teach, you’ll have the option to select a specific topic or grab the whole grade level at a discount! 

Remember: Passages from other grade levels can also provide opportunities for differentiation!

Grade Level Bundles:

4th-5th Grade

6th-7th Grade

8th-9th Grade 

Topics Include:

  • Instagram vs. TikTok
  • iPhone vs. Android
  • Graffiti
  • Should We Ban Zoos?
  • Cell Phones
  • Video Games
  • Pizza
  • Running
  • Social Media Effects
  • Technology
  • Superheroes
  • Making the Team
  • Kids as Influencers
  • Advertisements
  • PlayStation vs. Xbox
  • School Uniforms
  • Live Life or Capture It
  • Benefits and Risks of Playing on Sports Teams
  • Football Safety
  • Participation Trophies
  • Fidget Toys
  • Is TV Worth the Risk?
  • Importance of Sleep
  • YouTube Fame
  • Reality TV
  • Fact or Fiction Online
  • Owning a Pet
  • In-Person or Virtual
  • Healthy Eating
  • Mac vs. PC
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