best books for middle school readers

50 Best Books for Middle School

Every summer, I get a few emails or texts from parents and students asking for book recommendations. I typically know these readers well, so I can fire off 5-10 book recommendations that I think their middle school readers will love. In hindsight though, I should …

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Differentiating Reading Instruction with Novel Units

Differentiated Instruction with Novel Units

As a middle school ELA teacher, I am always in search of resources that best meet the needs of my readers. Having a good selection of novels and a diverse set of reading comprehension activities are two ways I incorporate differentiated instruction into my language …

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teaching reading fluency

5 Reading Fluency Tricks for BIG KIDS

“Why do I have to read aloud? I hate reading aloud!” -a struggling 6th grade reader A number of years ago, when my school district began our work with Response to Intervention, or RTI, it became even more abundantly clear that many of our upper elementary …

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task cards for language arts

5 Ways to Use ELA Task Cards

I am obsessed with ways to make learning as fun as possible for students. “If you are bored as the teacher in your classroom, your students probably are too!” This quote from Kayla Delzer from Top Dog Teaching makes me consider my planning for each school week. …

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word wall ideas and activities for middle school

ELA Word Wall Ideas and Activities

Student: “Wait…I know I should know this, but what does that word mean again?” As teachers, we are constantly referring to various terms in our content areas that we want/NEED students to know. To cement understanding, I designed a word wall to display academic terminology …

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