The Sparkly Notebook

Mastering the ELA Standards in Middle School

Digital Escape Room

Fun ELA Springtime Test Prep Activities

Five fun ELA springtime test prep activities for middle school students!

Spring is in the air, and so is testing season!

As we inch closer to standardized testing, it’s important to keep students engaged while reviewing key skills. But let’s be real—test prep doesn’t have to be boring!

With a little creativity, you can make reviewing grammar, reading comprehension, and writing skills a lot more fun and interactive for your students.

Let’s explore some fun springtime test prep activities you can try with your middle school ELA students!

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1. Digital Escape Rooms – Test Prep with a Twist

Escape rooms are a fantastic way to get students thinking critically while reviewing key ELA skills. Luckily, we have several Digital Escape Rooms that fit right into the spring season:

Easter Digital Escape Room
ELA Test Prep Digital Escape Room
Spring Digital Escape Room
St. Patricks Day Figurative Language Digital Escape Room
St. Patricks Day Reading Comprehension Digital Escape Room

Our digital escape rooms reinforce figurative language, reading comprehension, and grammar concepts—all while making students feel like they’re solving a mystery or completing a challenge!

Each escape room includes puzzles, reading passages, and interactive challenges that keep students engaged while practicing essential middle school ELA test-taking strategies.

Bonus: Since they’re digital, they require NO prep for you!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 


 

2. ELA Task Card Scavenger Hunt

Turn your classroom into a scavenger hunt zone!

Create task cards covering key ELA skills (main idea, text structure, vocabulary, etc.) and hide them around the room. Students work in pairs or small groups to find and complete each task card.

To add an extra layer of fun, include “bonus” cards with small prizes or funny challenges to keep them engaged.

Need task cards? We have middle school ELA-themed task cards that are ready to print and use!

Writing Genre Task Cards
Parts of an Essay Task Cards 2

3. Jeopardy-Style Review Game

Game-show-style test prep always gets students excited! Use an interactive Jeopardy game with categories like Grammar Rules, Reading Comprehension, Figurative Language, and Writing Strategies to keep things competitive.

💡 Pro Tip: Divide students into teams and let them “buzz in” by raising their hands or using small whiteboards. Offer small prizes for the winning team to add an extra incentive!

There are plenty of fun buzzing options, like classroom buzzers with different sounds to add extra excitement!

4. Classroom “Around the World” Grammar Challenge

It’s like a spelling bee… but for grammar!

Put a fun spin on grammar review with an Around the World game. This fast-paced activity has students competing to answer grammar questions correctly as they move from desk to desk.

  • If they get the answer right, they move forward.
  • If they don’t, they stay put and wait for the next round.

It’s a great way to reinforce grammar rules while keeping energy levels high!

5. Digital Sorting Activity Relay Race

Another quick and effective test prep activity is a digital sorting relay race!

This no-prep activity works great as a station in a class challenge. Here’s how it works:

  1. Set up five computers with a digital sorting activity on one side of the room.
  2. Divide students into five teams and line them up on the other side of the room.
  3. One student at a time runs over, moves one tile, and returns to tag the next teammate.
  4. The first team to correctly complete the sort wins!

With the weather getting nicer in the Northern Hemisphere, this is also a fun activity to do outside!

Click here to learn more ways to use our DIGITAL Sorting activities!

Quick review with these 3 digital sort activities
Blog Post (Quick review with these 3 digital sort activities)

Figurative Language DIGITAL Sort Activity

DIGITAL Nonfiction Text Structure Sort (Common Core Aligned)

Types of Sentence DIGITAL Sort Activity – Zero Prep

Figurative Language Sorting Activity
Text Structure Sorting Activity
Types of Sentences Sorting

Make Test Prep Fun and Engaging!

Test prep doesn’t have to be dry or stressful! Incorporating interactive activities like escape rooms, scavenger hunts, and games keeps students engaged while ensuring they’re ready for those end-of-year assessments.

Want ready-to-go test prep resources? Check out our Digital Escape Rooms and ELA task cards to make your review sessions stress-free and fun!

Here’s to a successful (and fun) test prep season! 🚀

– The Sparkly Notebook

Gifted Learner Series: Create-Your-Own Digital Escape Room Project

Create-Your-Own Digital Escape Room projects are a fantastic way to engage advanced learners in a middle school ELA classroom.

If you’re already using our digital escape rooms in your classroom, then you have a great opportunity for gifted learning right at your fingertips. Our digital escape rooms are often based on specific topics or holidays. You can see some of our digital escape rooms by clicking on the links below.

Halloween Digital Escape Room - Reading Comprehension
Halloween Escape Room: Reading Comprehension
Halloween Digital Escape Room - Figurative Language
Halloween Escape Room: Figurative Langugage
Valentine's Day Digital Escape Room: Reading Comprehension
Valentine’s Day Reading Comprehension Escape Room
Christmas Figurative Language Digital Escape Room
Christmas Math Digital Escape Room
Thanksgiving Figurative Language Digital Escape Room

In addition to being fun activities to incorporate into your holiday lesson plans or to practice specific skills like reading comprehension or figurative language, you can also use our digital escape rooms as templates for your gifted learners to create something new.

Create Your Own Digital Escape Room Project

In our blog post “Three Tips for Teaching Gifted Students in Middle School ELA,” we discussed various ways to engage advanced learners using resources and activities you already have planned for the classroom. This included using resources from the next grade level, asking students to use the same content to deliver a different product, and having students create the same product through a different lens.

When students create their own resource using your material or one of ours as a template, they are tasked with thinking through the project from a different perspective. This approach combines the first two strategies mentioned above.

We are asking students to work through the digital escape room just as we ask all other students to do. The difference is that they need to approach it as creators who will recreate the escape room using a different topic.

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Step One: Choose Two Escape Rooms

Students should pick out two escape rooms that they want to work through as a means of observing how escape rooms function and how they are structured.

During their first escape room, students will take notes on the types of questions they encounter and the tasks they are asked to complete.

In the second escape room, students will observe how the questions and activities differ or remain consistent based on the topic of the escape room.

Step Two: Select a Topic of Interest

Students will choose a topic that interests them for their digital escape room.

Encourage them to select a subject they enjoy discussing, but remind them that the audience for the escape room is their peers. They need to be sure that the questions and tasks they create are appropriate for their classmates’ knowledge base.

Step Three: Outline Each Level of the Escape Room

In this step, students will outline each level of their escape room.

  • What types of questions will they ask?
  • What tasks will they require participants to complete?
  • What skills do they want the participants to practice?

Step Four: Use Google Slides and a Design Platform

Students can use Google Slides and a design platform like Canva to create their escape rooms.

Encourage them to be creative in their design. While they can model their levels after ours, they may also want to incorporate their own ideas.

It’s important for students to feel challenged, and working through obstacles can be a valuable learning experience. Remember, these are advanced learners who already understand the content and have observed how escape rooms function. They are well-prepared for these challenges.

Step Five: Peer Review

This step focuses on giving and receiving feedback appropriately. Have a few students navigate the peer-created digital escape rooms. After completing the escape room or each level, they should provide feedback to the creator with the goal of enhancing the escape room.

Take the time to discuss with both the peer reviewer and the creator the best practices for giving and receiving feedback.

Talk about the difference between critical feedback and constructive feedback aimed at helping someone improve. Additionally, discuss with the creator how to accept feedback without taking it too personally.

Learning to give and receive feedback gracefully is an important skill for students to develop.

Having students create their own digital escape room is a way for them to think through an activity from a different perspective. This project will challenge advanced learners to think like teachers while also allowing them to engage with a topic that excites them.

By incorporating tools like Google Slides and Canva, as well as requiring them to give and receive feedback on their projects and those of their peers, students will develop a variety of skills while also demonstrating mastery of concepts like reading comprehension and figurative language.

Check out some of our additional blog posts about teaching gifted learners in your middle school ELA classroom.

Advice for working with gifted learners in middle school ELA
Advice for Working with Gifted Learners in Middle School ELA
3 tips for teaching gifted students in middle school ELA
Blog Post: 3 Tips for Teaching Gifted Students in Middle School ELA
Resources to use with gifted students in middle school
Blog Post (Resources to use with gifted students in middle school)

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15+ Educational Digital Escape Rooms for Middle School ELA

It is always nice to know that some of your most fun resources are standards-aligned, and these 15+ educational digital escape rooms for middle school ELA are precisely that!

The older I get, the more certain I am of 2 things related to teaching middle school students.

First, middle school students need to move around and talk to their friends. They honestly can’t help it. They are physically and socially developing at a rate that requires constant movement and talking.

And second, in order to overcome those inherent middle school needs, I have to find resources that allow students to collaborate and move around a bit. 

Unfortunately, activities and resources created by our traditional textbooks rarely pick up on these middle school needs. In those textbooks, students are often stuck reading independently and answering questions or participating in canned discussions that are less ‘discussion’ and more interview-style question-and-answer sessions.

That is why I focus on finding and creating resources that are standard-aligned AND allow for collaboration and movement.

One of my favorite types of resources that do this is digital escape rooms.

What is an educational digital escape room?

An educational digital escape room is a series of tasks that students complete in an effort to figure out the codes needed to ‘unlock’ the next clue, eventually allowing them to ‘escape’ their digital room.

As these are digital escape rooms, they are all created to be completely digital, and the escape rooms that I make can either be printed off or accessed on a computer.

Where’s the movement?

Now, you may think that a digital escape room doesn’t allow for as much movement as an actual escape room, and you’d be right.

Although it would be great for students to do the type of escape rooms that allow them to race around the room or even the school, it is overwhelming to try to get all those pieces set up and replaced each class period. I like to opt instead for digital escape rooms, but I let students find different spaces in the room to work. They can stand, lay on the ground, even lie on couches or sit on desks…whatever they need to be comfortable.

Digital Escape Rooms can be Individual or Group Activities.

I like that digital escape rooms can be completed individually or in groups. 

The digital escape rooms are self-checking, so students can work through the escape rooms at their own pace, and they don’t need me to be available immediately to check their codes before they can move on.

Often, I like to make printable versions of the escape rooms available so that everyone in the group can see the pieces to each puzzle or problem, or the group can work through the puzzle by manipulating the pieces on the floor or a table. Once they find their answer, they can put their answers into the digital version to see if they’re right! If they aren’t, they can review their work to figure out where they went wrong, but if they’re right, they can move on to the next puzzle.

Educational digital escape rooms are great for use in the week before or after a holiday break. They allow the students to celebrate the holiday while also working on skills they need to master. In this post we discuss how you can use our digital escape rooms all year long, so if you are loving this concept, be sure to check it out!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

15+ Digital Escape Rooms to Choose From

Since these educational digital escape rooms are so popular with my students, I use them frequently throughout the year. In fact, we have several digital escape rooms in the store that are focused on various holidays.

Valentines Day Digital Escape Room
ELA Christmas Activities for Middle School: ELA Digital Escape Room
Thanksgiving Educational ELA Escape Room

I like to pull out new escape rooms the week before a holiday or the week after a more extended break. These digital escape rooms give my students a little more freedom to move around and talk with others in a productive way.

You can learn more by exploring the 15+ educational digital escape rooms in The Sparkly Notebook store right now!

I truly felt like I had hit the lottery when I discovered the power of escape rooms and digital escape rooms. Now that I have all these educational digital escape rooms built out, they are standards-based, and I have multiple topics to choose from. I feel like I’ve got a whole treasure trove of resources that allow my students to move around and collaborate the way they need to. They also allow me to give them that opportunity while knowing that they are being challenged and working toward our class goals all at the same time.

Hopefully, you’ll love them as much as I do!

Middle School ELA Digital Escape Rooms to Use Throughout the Year

Grab all the middle school ELA digital escape rooms that you’ll need for the year right here!

Digital escape rooms can be a middle school ELA teacher’s best friend throughout the year.

They are at once the perfect sub plan, a quick test-prep addition, and engaging activity for those days before and after breaks when students are not at their most focused.

Quick, No-Prep Activities

One of the many benefits of digital escape rooms is that they are no-prep. 

Since these digital escape rooms are housed on Google Forms™ and are completely connected and delivered through links that students can quickly open up as they work their way through the problems.

As long as students have computer access and are generally familiar with the skills, these escape rooms can be used throughout the year with very little instruction.

Perfect for Sub Plans

Due to the easy set-up and all-in-one nature of the digital escape rooms, you can have them ready to go as emergency-sub plans. 

Simply share the link with students via email or through an online platform like Canvas or Google Classroom, and they can get going on the activity as soon as they get into the room and receive instructions.

For an emergency sub-plan situation, we strongly recommend either the Summer Reading escape room or the ELA Test Prep escape room, as these are not holiday specific, and the content will work well enough at any time of the year.

Ready for Summer Middle School ELA Digital Escape Rooms

Individual or Small Group

These digital escape rooms work well for either individuals or small groups. When students are first getting comfortable with the escape rooms at the beginning of the year, challenge them to complete the assignment as a small group. Having others to lean on as they work through the problems will give them some extra confidence and scaffolding.

Once they have done a few of the escape rooms, assign one to be done in pairs. 

Having just one other person to lean on while working through the activity will still provide them with a sounding board and someone to discuss possible answers with, but it is less support (and less distraction) than working with a whole group.

After working in pairs, assign an escape room for students to complete individually. This will allow you to formatively assess the students individually on the skills the escape room is testing.

After working through the escape rooms in all three ways, you can mix and match these different groupings as you do the other escape rooms throughout the year, depending on what you feel each day.

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Many Topics to Choose From

When you’re looking for some middle school ELA digital escape rooms to use throughout the year, start with this Digital Escape Room Bundle. The Holiday Bundle includes many of the digital escape rooms found below, and by purchasing the full bundle, you’ll get a discount. 

However, if you just need a middle school ELA digital escape room for a specific holiday, you can also just click on that holiday below, and get just that single escape room.

Spring 

Valentine’s Day (Reading Comprehension)

Valentine’s Day (Figurative Language)

Easter 

St. Patrick’s Day 

Halloween (We also have a blog post on how you can create your own Halloween escape room here!)

Christmas (Figurative Language)

Christmas (Reading Comprehension) 

Summer (Figurative Language)

Summer (Reading Comprehension)

New Year’s 

Thanksgiving (Figurative Language)

Thanksgiving (Reading Comprehension)

Back to School (Professional Learning for Teachers)

Back to School (Figurative Language)

ELA Test Prep (Reading Literature)

Using these middle school ELA digital escape rooms throughout the year will allow students to practice and review skills in a fun way that is also easy for the teacher to implement and assign!

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What Makes for a Great, Educational ELA Escape Room?

Educational ELA escape rooms are the ones that focus on content and skills as much as they do locks and keys.

Escape rooms have built up a lot of hype over the course of the last decade or so, and their educational use has exploded.

We see people designing escape rooms left and right and claiming that they are intended for educational use.

This begs the question…How are escape rooms educational?

There will, of course, always be that group of people who say that games and problem-solving opportunities of all types are educational in their own right, and that may be true. However, there is a time and place for escape rooms, and not all ELA escape rooms help students actually learn content.

So what makes for a good educational ELA escape room?

The Non-Example

Members of The Sparkly Notebook were once a part of an in-person escape room where we were given a packet of materials and a lockbox and were instructed to try to escape by getting to the information inside the box.

This escape room was fun and frustrating and required our group to work together, but in the grand scheme of the escape room, we could not actually provide any information about the content we had looked at or any of the data we shifted through as we searched for the codes.

What went wrong?

The fact of the matter is that the information itself was not tied to the codes. The code was found within the content, but it was not dependent on knowing it. Once we figured out the code, the content didn’t matter.

In one particular scenario, the code was created by the first letters of the capitalized words in the document. Once we noticed the capitalized letters, we didn’t read any of the content. We noticed that the words were capitalized right away, and we quickly guessed the code by skimming through the document and highlighting just the capitalized words.

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Content-Driven, Educational ELA Escape Rooms

ELA escape rooms (or any escape room for that matter) that separate the content from the code do not serve students in the same way that educational ELA escape rooms depend on the content to figure out the code.

For example, in this ELA Test Prep Escape Room, students have to be able to read a passage (very similar to the type of passage that they encounter in ELA standardized tests) and answer questions. Their answers to those questions create the code.

Educational ELA Escape Room Example: ELA Test Prep Escape Room

In this situation, the code is directly tied to the content. Students HAVE to do the task to escape the room. 

To find the answer to the second ‘lock,’ students have to make predictions about a character’s choices based on their actions within the reading and then use the symbols next to those predictions to change the symbols into letters which in turn are the key to unlock the next ‘door.’

Each of these specific task examples requires students to not only think critically, problem-solve, and possibly work with a group but also require the students to read the information closely enough to answer questions about it, analyze it, and make predictions.

When you are looking for educational escape rooms, really look through what you want students to work on, and make sure the escape room is challenging them both with content and with the ‘locks’ themselves. 

A good educational escape room is focused on classroom content, and learning that presents students with a mental challenge and focuses on the skills that your students specifically need to practice.

As you begin to “Plan Your Curriculum Like a Boss,” consider how the activities you’re adding support the learning and standards within your classroom, and find some great, educational ELA escape rooms that align with your goals.

If you’re interested and you want to see a full list of our Educational ELA Escape Rooms, click here!

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Standards-Aligned Escape Rooms for Easter

Have a little fun this spring with standards-aligned escape rooms!

Easter is one of the last holidays we’ll celebrate in the classroom this year. 

Since it falls on Sunday, Easter is a holiday that often gets overlooked in the classroom, even though there are so many fun ways to incorporate it into our learning.

Personally, we love the Easter season here at The Sparkly Notebook. The colors are bright and vibrant (which we LOVE), the candy is unique and delicious, and the whole tone of Easter is bright and cheery… a direct contrast to the winter season we just trudged through.

It is no surprise then that we would try to bring some of that cheer and those bright colors into the classroom to kick off the spring season.

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Two Standards-Aligned Escape Rooms for the Spring Season

One of our favorite ways to celebrate this spring holiday is with standards-aligned escape rooms.

We love using this Easter Digital Escape Room or this Spring Digital Escape Room because they are self-checking, Easter/Spring-themed, and standards-aligned (This part is an absolute must in our book!!!)

To ensure your students meet the standards, you must have a plan. This plan includes breaking down the standards, making a plan for how you will teach, spiral, and review the skills covered in each standard, and then finding good resources and lessons that help achieve that goal.

We talk more about ensuring your students are mastering the standards in this blog post.

These digital escape rooms are some of our go-to activities for spiraling standards throughout the year, and these spring-themed escape rooms give us two different opportunities to do just that!

More Than a Riddle

Often escape rooms are designed to be puzzles, riddles, and challenges. But the puzzles can’t be the only focus of the room!

In many of the escape rooms we’ve found, students may learn a little piece of information from reading and decoding clues from an informational passage, but outside of general problem-solving and decoding, they aren’t actually practicing any ELA skills. 

That is why we’ve created our Easter Digital Escape Room and Spring Digital Escape Room … to require students to use their skills to conquer the escape room. 

An ELA Easter Escape Room

This Easter Escape Room is all about figurative language.

Easter Figurative Language (Standard-Aligned Escape Rooms)

In order to successfully escape, students will need to think critically about the 7 figurative language types that we typically focus on in middle school ELA.

  • Alliteration
  • Simile
  • Metaphor
  • Idiom
  • Hyperbole
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Personification

Over the course of 5 challenges, students will interact with different examples of figurative language several times.

Option: Doing One Task Per Day

If you aren’t interested in giving the escape room a whole class day to complete, you can also introduce it one challenge at a time using the printable version of the room.

This will allow your students to do different tasks each day!

Another Escape Room

If you are looking for another standards-aligned escape room to use during the Easter season or even later into the spring, you can also explore this Spring-Themed Escape Room that focuses on reading comprehension skills. In this standards-aligned escape room, students will work on order and sequence, answer reading comprehension questions, and complete a task requiring them to organize events on a plotline.

Spring Break (Standards-aligned escape rooms)

The Easter season can be fun, but as with every holiday, there are ways to celebrate while staying focused on our educational goals. 

That is why these standards-aligned escape rooms are always part of our curricular plans for the Spring!

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Easy Middle School ELA Activities for the Weeks Surrounding Spring Break

Sometimes leading into Spring Break or coming out of Spring Break puts some strain on the flow of your middle school classroom. In this post, we’re introducing a few easy middle school ELA activities for the weeks surrounding Spring Break.

It’s coming!

Spring Break, and boy do you all deserve a great break this year.

But as we all know, Spring Break time in the middle school classroom is not all flowers and rainbows. It is often a time of chaos, crazy, and a little bit of confusion.

The week leading into Spring Break, and the one coming out of Spring Break can be very difficult weeks for middle school ELA teachers.

So this year, we want to help.

We are rounding up some of our best low/no prep activities that you can do in those weeks surrounding Spring Break to keep your students moving forward with the standards, while also providing teachers with a little extra time to get everyone and everything organized and ready to push through to the end of the school year.

4 Easy Middle School ELA Activities for the Weeks Surrounding Spring Break

Spring Digital Escape Room [ELA Reading Comprehension]

Easy Middle School ELA Activities for the Weeks Surrounding Spring Break (Digital Escape Room)

Students can practice several ELA reading comprehension skills while enjoying a bright spring-themed escape room.

This escape room is standards-aligned and great for digital learning or as an in-class individual or small group activity.

Just because it is Common Core-aligned doesn’t mean it’s boring. Students love solving the riddles and reading spring-themed passages that will lead them to ‘escape’ the room they’re in so they can go out and enjoy the sunshine and flowers.

This Spring Digital Escape Room includes 5 ready-to-go tasks that your students can dive into within minutes of receiving their link. 

Note: This escape room is digital, so no locks or boxes are necessary!

Sign Up for a FREE plot structure digital escape room!

 


 
 
 
 
 
 


 

Easter Digital Escape Room [Figurative Language]

Easter Figurative Language Escape Room Resource

Figurative language always seems to squeeze its way into those standardized tests at the end of the year, which makes this Easter-themed escape room even more valuable as you look for easy middle school ELA activities for the weeks surrounding Spring Break.

This escape room is digital, so you can share it with a link, and it is a completely stand-alone activity, which helps when you’re trying to get students resituated after Spring Break.

Social Media Inspired Paired Text (Passages)

Paired Passages Resource
Social Media Paired Passages

High-interest reading on topics your students love to talk about is also great add-on activity for the weeks around Spring Break.

Since social media is such a hot topic, doing some reading about things like social media platforms or Live Social Media may be just the thing you need to keep them engaged when Spring Break is on the horizon.

We’ve got paired reading texts available to discuss both of these social media topics as well as several other high-interest topics that middle schoolers are always talking about.

If you want even more ways to use these paired passages in your classroom, make sure to read this blog post called New Ways to Use Paired Passages! It has some great little nuggets you’ll want to explore!

Video Games Inspired Paired Text (Passages)

Last, but certainly not least, let’s talk video games. 

Since many of your students will be playing games over break, this paired passage set may be the perfect complement to your students’ Spring Break plans.

This differentiated bundle is also helpful as you approach testing time and the way the passages are set up supplement test prep really well!

It’s OKAY to Review!!

In those weeks surrounding Spring Break, it is okay to focus on topic and skill review using games and reading passages. As testing time is quickly approaching, good skill practice is great for students, and the digital activities on this list allow students to review in a way that doesn’t feel redundant.

For a few more easy middle school ELA activities for the weeks surrounding Spring Break, take a look at this post about three quick digital sorting activities students can use to practice ELA skills in the classroom!

We hope you all get a chance to have a relaxing Spring Break and take a little time to disconnect and enjoy the spring season!

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Valentine’s Day Figurative Language Activities to Try in February

Keep Valentine’s Day low-prep and stress-free with these Valentine’s Day figurative language activities!

Don’t know about you, but Valentine’s Day tends to be a mixture of feelings of joy and dread for many of us here at The Sparkly Notebook.

In the years that you have a special someone or a group of friends to celebrate with, it can be one of the most fun days of the year. 

But then there are the years when you don’t have a special someone.

Those years are no fun!

Your middle school students may ALSO have mixed thoughts about Valentine’s Day, and as teachers, we want to make sure Valentine’s Day is fun for all students!

You have many options for celebrating Valentine’s Day in middle school ELA.

You could read about St. Valentine. You could use candy hearts as Bingo chips as you play a game, or you could try one of these unexpected Valentine’s Day games.

Personally, we love love love teaching and playing around with figurative language during Valentine’s Day because it is a lively, engaging subject matter to work with.

We can compare candy hearts to love letters using a combination of similes and metaphors. We can personify our love or hyperbolize our feelings about the holiday in general.

So many possibilities!

Pin Image - Valentine's Day Color By Number Activity - Text states "Valentine's Day Middle Grades Figurative Language Color By Number"

Valentine’s Day Figurative Language Activities

Since Valentine’s Day, like many holidays, can come with some unknowns at school as classes are interrupted with candy deliveries, flower fundraisers, or maybe even an assembly, we don’t like to plan activities that have too much prep time or can’t be completed on another day.

Digital Sorting Activity

This Figurative Language DIGITAL Sort Activity Set is an excellent, grab-n-go figurative language activity that you can pull out for Valentine’s Day. 

Valentine's Day Figurative Language Activities: Digital Figurative Language Sort

Although it is not specifically themed for Valentine’s Day, you can do some Valentine’s Day add-ons to align it with the day’s theme.

Add-On: Valentine’s Day Figurative Language Sorting Activity

  • As students finish the digital sort and have had a little figurative language practice, ask them to pair up. 
  • Pass out two index cards to each pair. 
  • Assign each group two types of figurative language. 
  • They will create two Valentine’s Day-themed examples. One for each figurative language type they are given. 
  • The next day, list the figurative language types on the board, mix up the cards, and give each pair 1 minute to sort out the cards the best they can. 
  • The pair with the most cards sorted in a minute will win the Valentine’s Day Figurative Language prize. 

Check out this blog post for prize ideas that will motivate your students to play this game.

Figurative Language Term List Challenge

This is not an activity that has to be Valentine’s Day specific, but it is a fun figurative language activity no matter what the holiday.

  • Start by breaking students into small groups of 3-4 students.
  • Give each group a list of Valentine’s Day words. 
  • Next, provide them with a list of the figurative language types you’ve been studying in class.
  • The goal: each group needs to create at least one figurative language example for each item on the list, and they must cover all of the types of figurative language your class has been studying.
  • At the end of the period, collect all the examples and share some of your favorites with the class as they attempt to guess what type of figurative language is being used.

Here is a list of words you can use to get started with this activity:

  • Valentine
  • Hearts
  • Flowers
  • Candy
  • Candy-Hearts
  • Be Mine
  • Valentine’s Box
  • Letter
  • St. Valentine
  • Admirer
  • Greeting Card
  • Love
  • Holiday
  • Gift
  • Chocolates

The Importance of Figurative Language

Valentine’s Day is a fun holiday for practicing figurative language, but all fun aside, understanding and identifying different types of figurative language is a staple of middle school ELA standards, so they do need to be practiced and taught regularly. 

If you want some additional ideas for practicing figurative language with your students in a way that helps them master the standards, you’ll love the resources below!

Figurative Language Nuance & Word Relationships 8th Grade CCSS 8.L.5

Figurative Language, Word Relationships, Nuances 7th Grade 7L5

Valentine’s Day Reading Comprehension Escape Room

Although not specific to figurative language, this Valentine’s Day Escape Room covers some additional ELA topics using topics and themes appropriate for Valentine’s Day.

It is also no-prep, and you can easily pull out just one or two activities from the escape room to add to one of the activities above or to use instead if time is running low.

BONUS: Want a few more standards-based Valentine’s activities for middle school students, this post outlines 4 activities you may want to try!

Valentine's Day Digital Escape Room: Reading Comprehension

We can’t think of a better way to spend Valentine’s Day than with a couple of fun Valentine’s Day figurative language activities. These activities will help your students have a little fun with a holiday that, in middle school, can be a little tricky to navigate.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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St. Patricks Day Activities for Middle School ELA: Escape Rooms

Looking for a St. Patrick’s Day Activity for Middle School ELA? Check out these escape rooms!

Sometimes a teacher just wants to wear green while sitting back, drink green coffee or tea, and watch their students engage in a fantastically festive St. Patrick’s Day activity. 

If that is your St. Patrick’s Day wish for this year, then have we got a few fun resources that you’ll want to take a closer look at.

Pin Image - St. Patrick's Day Activities for Middle School - Escape Rooms and More!

St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Middle School ELA

Although we have a few different St. Patrick’s Day activities for middle school ELA in the store, today we’re focusing on the escape rooms.

Figurative Language

This St. Patrick’s Day Figurative Language Digital Escape Room is full of fun adventures and figurative language examples that will have you giggling like a leprechaun who’s truly up to no good.

St. Patrick's Day Activity for Middle School ELA: Figurative Language Escape Room

The greatest thing about this activity is that it is fully digital and needs no prep. We like having fun, no-prep activities like this one on hand just in case we need a sub plan in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick’s Day or the week after. 

These escape rooms can also be printed and used without computers. No matter your situation, we’ve got you covered!

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Other Uses for the St. Patrick’s Day Figurative Language Escape Room

You can also use the escape room resource for its examples. If you don’t have the time to do the escape room, pull some of the examples or even just one of the activities to use with students in your advisory or as a transitional activity in the classroom. 

In the Figurative Language Digital Escape Room, you’ll get 5 activities that cover 

  • Figurative Language Definitions
  • Example Sorts
  • A Riddle to Decode
  • A Matching Task
  • A Puzzle

You could pull any one of these activities out as an individual challenge in your class during the week leading up to the holiday. In fact, they could be your bell-ringers for the whole week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day!!

It is an awesome resource with so many uses!

Want another figurative language activity for this holiday, click on the image below to take a closer look at our Figurative Language St. Patrick’s Day Color By Number! 

St. Patrick's Day Activity for Middle School ELA: Figurative Language Color By Number

Reading Comprehension Practice

This second St. Patrick’s Day Escape Room has all the same features as the figurative language version, except this one is common core aligned and goes over several reading comprehension tasks.

St. Patrick's Day Activity for Middle School ELA: Reading Comprehension Escape Room

The tasks included in this escape room include

  • A Chronological Order task
  • A Reading Comprehension Task (students will answer multiple choice questions covering a variety of reading comprehension skills)
  • A Decoding Task
  • A Plot Structure Sort
  • A Puzzle Task

Just as before, you can use this escape room as a digital no-prep activity, or the activity is printable and with just a little prep time can be ready for physical classroom use. 

Suggestions for Prepping the Physical Escape Rooms

Although you may be quick to pick a St. Patrick’s Day for middle school that requires absolutely no extra work from you (and who would blame you), there is something to be said for having students work through a physical task.

The physical escape rooms take a little more time to set up, but when done right this is an opportunity to work smarter (not harder). 

If you take the time to print the resources in color this year on cardstock, then laminate them, you’ll be able to use them year after year with no extra prep time. 

Since they’re laminated, students will be able to write on them with dry-erase markers. They will also hold up as they are used for multiple classes a day.

We suggest keeping the pieces for each activity in a gallon-size bag. Then keep all the smaller pieces for each activity sorted into smaller pint-sized or sandwich-sized baggies inside the bigger one. Then, as groups complete the tasks, they can easily find their next activity.

We hope you all have a fantastically fun St. Patrick’s Day, and we genuinely hope these St. Patrick’s Day activities for middle school students bring you lots of good luck and many many many engaged students!

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Valentine’s Day Activities for Middle School Language Arts

Spread the love with these Valentine’s Day activities for middle school language arts.

Sometimes I think that my middle school students love holidays even more than elementary-aged kids. 

You give them a chance to dress up or do a themed activity and many of these teenagers will jump at the chance to wear silly clothes, go on an egg hunt, or make pink and red Valentine’s Day chains to hang all over the classroom.

Personally, I’ll take any opportunity to dress up or decorate my classroom, so you better believe that this coming Valentine’s Day I’ll be wearing my heart socks and distributing candy hearts every chance I get!

I think my love of the big, loud, and proud is what makes holiday’s so much fun for my students and me. We are able to be a little silly while also working on some skills. 

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Let’s be honest, one of the greatest parts about being an ELA teacher (second only to getting to go to the library on a regular basis) is that ELA skills can be applied to any content.

That means that when I flip over the calendar and see a holiday coming up, I immediately start looking for some themed activities to make that season a little extra special. If they align with my standards or our classroom goals…even better!

Here are some of my favorites for Valentine’s Day!

Pin Image - Valentine's Day Activities for Middle School Language Arts

Valentine’s Day Escape Rooms for Middle School ELA

Sometimes I forget that my middle school students are just big kids in disguise. In addition to playing on their phones or dancing to the latest TikTok craze, they also really enjoy being challenged and competing even if it is just to see who can solve a pickle-themed Valentine’s Day message the fastest.

And that is exactly why they love these Valentine’s Day Escape Rooms. Each of the Valentine’s Escape Rooms requires students to practice their ELA skills in a unique Valentine’s Day way. They are also fully digital and require no prep, which never hurts!

Whether they are reading a funny story about a cupid getting lost or trying to figure out what one pickle wrote in her Valentine to another pickle, your students will get a lot of joy from these puzzles. I know I do!

We have two different Valentine’s Day Escape Rooms to choose from.

Valentines Day Digital Escape Room
Valentines Day Figurative Language Digital Escape Room

Valentine’s Day Fill-in-the-Blank Story for Middle School ELA

Another fun Valentine’s Day activity for middle school language arts classes is to have students create Valentine-themed fill-in-the-blank stories.

For this activity, pair students up, and have them create a story. Then tell them to take out some of the words, leaving blanks, so they can be replaced by another student.

This activity gets students thinking about parts of speech and the pieces of a good story.

In a Valentine’s twist, students will write a blank into their story for a MYSTERY candy heart message to appear.

Check out the example below.

When ______________ (Name #1) solved the clue, the code revealed a secret message “__________________” (Candy Heart). She knew at that moment that the villain meant business. 

________________ (Name #1) turned to _________________(Name #2) and gave them a _________________ (Adjective)  ___________________ (Facial Expression).

“I had no idea __________________ (Villain) was so evil!” she whispered.

“I did” _________________  (Name #2) whispered. “But I know we can stop them because we have the ________________ (Candy Heart) mobile, so we’ll be able to find them ____________(adverb).”

After taking one look at the ______________ (adjective) car, ________________ (Name #1) knew that _________________ (Name #2) was right.

Before working on our stories, I like to have students work through this Valentine’s Day Parts of Speech Word Sort activity. It is great for reviewing parts of speech and giving students ideas for their stories.

Valentine's Day Activities for Middle School Language Arts Parts of Speech

Figurative Language Valentine’s Day Challenge for Middle School

To create your own Figurative Language Valentine’s Day Challenge with your students, separate your students into groups of 2-3. 

Then give them a certain time limit to come up with as many figurative language examples as possible. The only rule, they have to be something you could see on a Valentine.

Before the time is up, students will transfer each message onto a heart-shaped piece of cardstock. The messages will then be displayed in the hallway.

You can add a little extra something something to this challenge by challenging your students to make a Valentine for each of their teachers.

Want a little more competition? Use the chart below to give out points.

  • Students earn one point for each type of figurative language they used in their valentines.
  • Students earn a half point for each valentine they create.
  • Students earn 5 points for creating a rhyming Valentine’s Day poem with at least two examples of figurative language in it. Plus one point for each additional figurative language example.
  • Students earn 2 points for each of their valentines that is chosen as a teacher’s favorite when they are voted on by the teachers.
  • Students lose a half point for each valentine that is the same as someone else’s in the same class.

Note: If you want to do a little brushing up before digging into this Figurative Language Valentine’s Day Challenge, this Valentine’s Day Figurative Language Color-by-Number is a quick way to review!

Valentine's Day Figurative Language Sort

There are so many awesome Valentine’s Day activities for middle school language arts, but these are some of my favorites. If you do each of these over the course of the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, your students will get some extra writing practice, some ELA skill review, and an extra special Figurative Language review that they will be sure to remember.

To read a little more about our Valentine’s Day resources, take a peek at this post!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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