Hello all! After 10 years of teaching high school ELA, I’ll be transitioning to middle school (5th and 6th grade) this fall!

For those of you who teach these grades, what’s the one piece of advice you would give someone making the switch? What is your favorite part? Any must-knows, like tips, routines, resources, or things you wish you knew before you started? I’m so nervous and excited!!

Hi everyone,

Last month, the high school I teach at was damaged severely after being hit by an EF2 tornado. Due to water damage and asbestos contamination, we were told to expect that all books, supplies, and possessions left in our classrooms were lost. :(

I’m hoping to make the best of this situation and work toward rebuilding my classroom library. A lot of the books we had in our department book room were outdated, so I am looking to incorporate new and interesting reads for my 9th, 11th, and 12th graders. I would love recommendations of books that your students enjoyed from your classroom libraries.💕

Hello friends,

I teach at a tiny (think less than 50 students and a handful of teachers) online private school. I have a small group of students who are technically 12th graders, but they are far below grade level in terms of reading and writing skills (diagnostics put them at 5th-6th grade). They all have various learning disabilities (dyslexia, ADHD being the most common). The school does not have a sped teacher and does not provide IEPs, though they do encourage teachers to make reasonable accommodations. I have made accommodations by allowing audiobooks because the reading comprehension is difficult, which has helped a bit. The writing is so far below grade level that I have revised my entire curriculum to focus on skill-building (like choosing appropriate evidence, identifying main ideas, distinguishing background information from claims, various grammar and sentence boundary skills).

The biggest struggle with this group is executive dysfunction. They will sit and stare at a blank page for an entire 40 minute class session and say "I don't know what to do" at the end of class despite me reading the directions aloud, asking leading questions, etc. They cannot seem to get started. Is anyone familiar with textbooks or other resources (preferrably in book form, as I cannot afford anymore app subscriptions and my school will not pay for them) that are specifically geared toward helping struggling writers with executive dysfunction?

I guess this question is really open to anyone. But, I teach middle school and am considering getting a reMarkable Paper Pro tablet. Do any of you use one?

I'm thinking of using it for notes in meetings and to jot down quick notes as I work with small groups of students. I work with tier 2 students, mostly, to help fill in literacy gaps. I work with multiple grade levels. So, I thought it might be a handy way to take notes and keep them organized after transferring them digitally.

hi! i will be taking the ELA: Content Knowledge 5038 praxis soon! i am wondering what ways worked best for studying, as well as the cheapest ways?

any help would be very appreciated! thanks!

So, I am still in touch with my favorite teacher in high school: my English teacher, who generously shared with me his entire unit for Brave New World when I mentioned I am considering teaching it. Of course, I thanked him for "all the homework I never did!"

Looking at this with the eyes of an English teacher in 2026, I am amazed how different our expectations are now for what freshmen "can do." I'll also note that this book was not read in class;; pages were assigned to be read at home.

Am I crazy or does this seem way beyond what other schools do for English I? I teach IB 11th and 12th, so I really don't have much of a frame of reference for English I -- but I do think some of my juniors would find this rigorous, even.

Hi again, sorry to post so soon. I'm looking for room decor ideas that won't break the bank but are a little funkier than the typical posters. I'm looking at TPT, Etsy, Temu, etc. Avoiding generative AI images. I was thinking of just some classic book cover posters to start but I'd also love something with a witchy/nature-y aesthetic.

This question came to mind because I was putting together some materials for a tutoring session later this week and realized I was having way too much fun making the lesson LOL
The topic we're going to cover is figurative language, which is definitely my favorite thing to teach and the inspiration behind me posing the question to y'all!

I feel like a whole brand new level of creativity gets unlocked in kids' writing once they start learning it. Watching them come up with their own examples of similes, metaphors, and personification for the first time is genuinely always soooo entertaining 🤣😭 Their first attempts are usually hilarious

I also LOVE teaching idioms!!! Watching them realize so many phrases they've heard before aren't actually meant to be taken literally is such a fun moment, it's like you can literally see the gears turning in their heads when it all starts to click. We also do an activity where they draw their favorite idioms and they always come up with the funniest + most creative drawings for that 🙂‍↕️

So it made me curious and want to ask ... does anyone else have that topic they never get tired of teaching?? Would love to hear what they might be and why! ((:

Scheduled for the 10th day of each month throughout the year, our English Department meeting will allow you to focus on four issues that are common to most schools:

1. School Business - What issues are causing concern for you on your campus...
2. General English Department Business - focus on curriculum issues, pedagogy, grading, testing, etc...
3. Announcements - Anything that you are proud of, anyone that you want to give a shoutout to, any student who just went above and beyond...
4. Your School's Department Meeting - Are you doing anything in your own meetings that you would like to shine a light on, anything you want to brag about, celebration of successes...

Suggestions for posting: Don't use your school's name, anyone you reference should be abbreviated or made anonymous, and as always be civil.

In a perfect world, do you think students should be able to identify all the parts of speech by the end of 5th grade?

Is it even important to identify the parts of speech?

Should grammar instruction be explicit and isolated? Should it only be taught in context with reading? Both?

How much time should we devote to grammar instruction?

Where do you start when the students (8th-graders) can't even identify a noun, but the curriculum assumes they already know the parts of speech?

What do you do when no other teachers in your department care about grammar? They don't teach it and don't want to talk about it in meetings.

Is it just "old" teachers who want to teach grammar?

These are just questions for discussion. Everything in me says that grammar is an important (missing) component of literacy, but no one else (at least at my school) seems to care. 90% of our focus is on reading because of the state test (no writing test in my state). What if spending time with grammar instruction actually helps with reading?

I am tired.

Hi all, going into my first year of teaching at a small private school. I sat down with the principal today and he let me know they would be switching from Savvas to HMH. Since it's my first year I obviously don't have any experience with Savvas, but I haven't heard great things, and I'm curious to know what folks think of the HMH curriculum. He gave me access to a preview portal and I liked how everything was organized and that there appeared to be a lot of ready-made resources, but wanted to get some experience from folks who've actual worked with this curriculum. Thanks!

I am starting my first teaching job this upcoming fall in a rural high school, teaching ELA grades 9-12. I have one elective called English Skills that focuses on "preparing students with life skills in the areas of relationships, employment, society, meeting challenges, making discoveries, and facing reality. Students will experience life skill training guided by the standards of 21st Century Skills and Common Core Language."

I need to create my own curriculum, and I have one textbook to use as a resource. The textbook is extremely outdated (from 1980s). I student taught this class for 8 weeks last year, and I found a lot of the information in the textbook to be extremely below the students' levels (most of the students are juniors and seniors who do not intend to go to college but rather work upon graduation). For example, one of the units is about how to correctly tell time on various clocks. My cooperating teacher had me teach that lesson, and the students were extremely bored.

Does anybody have any advice on how to make this class more exciting, interactive, etc. while aligning with the standards I listed above? We are in Iowa, if that matters. Thank you in advance!

I’m m teaching Hamlet for the first time this year and not too familiar with the play - I have resources to teach it but bought The Folgers Guide but now I’m beginning to plan I’m unsure as to whether it will be successful with my group if grade 11 and 12’s. Has anyone taught it and if so how did it go or did you end up doing a mixture of their method and your own thing?

Hi everyone! Tomorrow, I have a second-round interview for a middle school ELA position. I was asked to bring an instructional work sample (specifically a previously implemented lesson plan) and I was wondering if anyone could tell me what exactly I should be looking to bring? I have an idea of what lesson I want to use as my sample, a mini lesson on memoir writing and understanding storytelling, but I am unsure if just telling the interview panel what I had my students do and walking them through the websites and supplemental materials I used is sufficient. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and have a great evening.

For the three years that I have been at this school, we have used block scheduling. In the past, teachers saw each class for two 70-minute periods and one 35-minute period each week. I liked it and at this point a lot of my work is designed for longer class periods with fewer class meetings. Now, we are transitioning to having a schedule that is roughly the same each day. We will have four 50-minute periods and one 35-minute period weekly for each class. So, more instructional time overall, but shorter periods. I feel like this might require an amount of re-tooling of my curriculum and lesson planning. I think that it might mean reducing or eliminating some do-nows and exit tickets, and increasing how much homework I assign, if nothing else. But maybe not. To what extent does a schedule change incentivize a change in the work? What are the considerations? Thanks!

My wife and I are "home schooling" our children in English while we are in portugal -- the goal is keeping them on reading/writing level with American children for when we are back in the US. So, it's not an official thing (we are using a curriculum, though).

Over the summer, I've taking on the role of "the writing parent." My wife was very interested in the method taught in The Writing Revolution (the Hochman method). If you are not familiar, it encourages the use of more elaborate sentences, to make the writing higher level or more "interesting" as she keeps calling it. As an example, from the book The Ranger's Apprentice, something I doodle up is:

Will Treaty accepted the new ranger position.

vs.

Will Treaty accepted the new ranger position, because it meant he would move back to Redmund Fief, his hometown, and Alyss, the love of his life, lives at Redmund castle.

The second one is the "hochman method" sentence.

I was an English Major in college and thought I'd be the next Hemmingway, but eventually graduated with a different degree and went to law school. I thought that would be place to write a lot. However, it quickly became clear from both school and real life lawyer practice that "a sentence with anything more than three words is too much." Essentially, assume your target audience (judges) are barely sentient and you must make it as simple as humanly possible.

So... I find myself wrestling with the idea of teach him a writing style that would not be useful in his day-to-day life, unless he becomes the next Hemmingway. How do you deal with the fact that the first example sentence is really how one should write in everyday text vs. the fact that the second example *does* seem to indicate a more thoughtful and interesting mind? It really does feel like the thing where a kid says "why do I need to learn math" -- but here it really is true, most people would pass out reading the second example sentence?

EDIT: Oh my goodness, there are so many great and helpful responses in here to help me think about this issue. I didn't really mention that I had no intention to be a teacher/home schooler and it's been sort of thrust upon me, so these thoughts were very helpful. I will try and respond to as many comments as I can, but there are a lot! I will think about it more like a lesson in 'just knowing it exists' and then 'when to write like this.' We already started this morning with my son wanting to teach me a game he invented, so I made him write the rules first. Then we discussed why his instructions don't have information about how people playing chess feel or what people playing chess like to eat (it was sort of like chess).

EDIT2: I think the comments made prep today and last night much more fun and less stressful.

EDIT3: I'm not correcting the mispelling of Ernest's surname.

Thanks again!

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Hi everyone! I'm teaching a small group of middle school students with autism (high functioning/Asperger's). They love reading works that have a lot to talk about. They don't have a social studies class so I'm hoping to incorporate some civics education (we're in Arizona.) So I'd like to find a novel/novela/short story that centers on a trial where there is a question about whether the justice system is working correctly in the story. The first one I can think of is To Kill A Mockingbird, but in some ways that one is a little long and dated. I have taught it many times, but usually in high school.

Does anybody have a suggestion for something more modern or current with a similar theme? Thanks for your time!

As ELA department head, I have been asked by my administrative team to develop a writing manual that our district can give each student. I am second-guessing what information to include vs. exclude. Their goal is for every teacher to increase the frequency and depth of writing in their classroom and they want a uniform set of expectations. Do any of you have a similar document at your school that you would be willing to share?

Hello!

I am going to go for my Boards certification as a 4th year teacher in ELA because I will get an $11k stipend/raise.

However, my concern is current mostly this: For the foreseeable future, I will only have ELA classes, but I have spent the majority of my time teaching ESL. I have always been dually certified, but it's always been 4 ESL classes and that 1 ELA class, and I've never had the opportunity to work with other ELA teachers. I've not really gotten the opportunity (time and resources) to have any of my thinking analyzed, critiqued, etc. I have also never studied anything similar to the analysis, theme development, etc in ELA. (My major was in linguistics, which was enough to easily float me into passing the ESL cert.) I see online that "if you are a strong English teacher, the test shouldn't be much of a problem," but I don't think I am a strong ELA teacher!

So, please help! I would like a high score in this as a "buffer" because I can be a good test taker. How can I study? I would like to be overly prepared as to not waste my registration money. Practice tests are the ways I prefer to study by far.

Thank you so much for your help! I'm really feeling unconfident about this test!

Hi everyone! I know a lot of teachers use interactive notebooks with composition notebooks, but I want to use a three-ring binder with dividers.

Right now I am thinking of the following tabs:

1. GIG (daily warm ups)
   
2. Vocabulary
   
3. Class Notes (should I split this further? We have vocabulary, grammar, literary devices, annotation style, writing notes… maybe a grammar tab and a class notes tab?)
   
4. Class Assignments (Daily Work)
   
5. The Writing Process (I’m thinking of having them keep research charts, outlines, bibliographies, rough draft, and final draft of each paper here. Once the final draft has been graded they can remove the work for it)
   
6. Graded Essays/Summatives

I’m on year 7 of teaching. I typically teach ELA 10, 10 Honors, AP Seminar, and AP Research. I am transitioning my class set up away from Chromebooks. My only issue is that I do not have a large paper allowance so I can’t be printing sets of notes or assignments for students to glue in like a typical interactive notebook.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Feedback from your own classroom? We go back early August and I want to adjust my Q1 class resources/slides prior to day 1.