The month of April offers several opportunities to integrate themes into your language arts lesson plan. Poetry month is a popular theme for ELA teachers, but April also features Easter, Earth Day, April Fool’s Day, and MLB Opening Day! Each of these events offer a unique backdrop for your daily lessons.
I have created many season-themed language arts resources to help engage my students while adding some seasonal fun! The lessons and resources featured below are my favorite April ELA activities to use with middle school students.
As an upper elementary to middle school teacher in an urban setting I find that my students don’t tend to travel anywhere for spring break, but they always have a bazillion stories to share about how they spent their days off from school.
Instead of asking them all to share about their break, which I want to hear about, but can’t take such an exorbitant amount of time when we need to get back into a routine, I created this Spring Break Tales: A Personal Journal. You can make this as elaborate or as minimal as you see fit. This can be utilized as a full-blow narrative writing resource to get students sharing and writing. See full description on TPT.
Grab your students attention while working on both fluency and comprehension with this Earth Day Reader’s Theater.
Summary: The students at Lakeland Intermediate have been given the annual Earth Day Challenge. With only recycled materials, they must landscape the front of their school building. They are competing against another school in the district who bends the rules. Who will come out the victor of the challenge? Your readers will only find out at the very end. See full description on TPT.
As an upper elementary to middle school teacher I have a variety of learners; enthusiastic and engaged, easily inspired, indifferent, and those that require a bit more encouragement to enhance their joy of learning. Can you relate?
While I touch on poetry throughout the school year, I really wanted an age-appropriate resource that would enhance student understanding and enthusiasm for poetry, and so I created this resource. Share the poetic devices, how to analyze poems, and make it as engaging as possible helping students develop their poetry notebooks. You can use the poetry lesson plans, go page by page from beginning to end, or hop around. See full description on TPT.
This April ELA Bundle is the perfect Common Core and Daily 5-inspired resource to engage your students in all things April. Engage your students with the ideal tools for read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work, and writing with this ALL-IN-ONE bundle. It is truly engaging ELA FUN! See full description on TPT.
