Welcome to Mrs. Beers' ELA Classroom!
MrsBeers.com is a collection of my experiences as a middle school language arts teacher. I share teaching strategies, classroom ideas, and my product creations to help you find inspiration for your ELA classroom!
Using Balanced Literacy in the ELA Classroom
What I Teach…I teach using the Balanced Literacy approach, which makes it easy to incorporate the Daily 5 into instruction. This model includes 5 components that I focus upon to strengthen my 6th grade readers. Balanced literacy is a framework for reading instruction. It involves
5 Tips for Teaching Close Reading
Close reading is a reading strategy that I utilize with my students ALL YEAR, but during test-prep time, it gets a bit more focused. By having students read a passage multiple times and markup the text as they are reading, they will become more focused
Interactive Reading Logs using Pictures
Reading logs are a tricky thing! I get it! Continuously charting pages and book titles and gathering signatures is just not a method that encourages and instills a love of reading. I understand that we want to keep students accountable for what they are reading, but
Fake Readers: The Struggle is REAL!
I HATED reading as a kid. I would sit at my desk during silent reading time, stare at a book as long as my teacher made me, and I would daydream. Yup! I said it. I am a reading teacher who DESPISED reading as a kid
5 Benefits to Reading Novels with Your Big Kids
Novel units are a HUGE part of my ELA classroom. I use them for whole class instruction, in small groups, and for independent reading. Novels provide a unique platform to encourage students to think more deeply about an author's message. Through the characters, setting, and
Daily 5 Tools for Middle School Language Arts
Are you using the Daily 5 framework for middle school ELA? The Daily 5 was a huge undertaking in my 6th grade classroom, so I want to share some tips and tools that might work with your middle school students. I have created several inexpensive
