Teaching an ELA elective? Boost student skills by knowing where to start! | Mentoring in the Middle

Teaching an ELA elective? Boost student skills by knowing where to start!

 One year, I remember being told that we would have a daily WIN period (What I Need) in our schedule.  Until I knew what students I would have, I had no idea what made sense to teach.

As it turned out, every year was different.  One year I taught math for a few months, another year, we worked on writing with a focus on mysteries, and still another, we did Genius Hour projects.

I've got many ideas for you if you find yourself in this boat!

👉 👉Do your students need help with test prep skills?  When I've had students who struggled to understand what questions were asking them to do, I found it easier to keep it really simple to start.  Sometimes we figured out what each question was asking.  Or how to respond to a prompt that was presented as a statement.  From there, we moved to writing a good first-paragraph response.

In high school, my Algebra II teacher noticed that the same 4-5 students always had their hands up first.  He decided to differentiate - long before that was even a term - and suddenly, I was loving his class.  It wasn't that I didn't know how to do the math.  It just took me (and apparently most of my classmates) a few seconds longer to get there.

If you have students who get overwhelmed with too many words on a page, or too many instructions, you might find that my Bell Ringer activities are a good starting point.  They're meant as 5-10 minute daily warmups, but some students might take longer.  If you have many of those students, let them work until they have finished.  They deserve to feel a sense of accomplishment!

You can get two weeks of lessons FREE when you join my email list.

👉👉 Do your students need to strengthen their writing?  Sometimes our students aren't good writers because they don't get much practice.  This guided writing historical fiction activity was one my students really enjoyed!

You ask students to close their eyes and visualize a scene, which you read to them from the lesson plans.  Then you show them a slide with questions to address as they start writing.  

After they've written for a while, you provide another visualization that moves the plot along, and again, there are more questions for them to answer.  You'll be stunned by how much they write!  And the best part is that EVERYTHING you need is provided for you.  So just drop this one into your lesson plans and catch your breath.

  • Looking for more writing activities?  Read this blog post where I discuss some mystery and mythology writing that my students loved!

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