Ela teacher

First-year teacher advice: How to prepare for your first year of teaching, how to decorate your classroom, what to do on the first day of school, and more!

I began elementary school in the era of phonics. Looking back, I can honestly say that it seemed to work okay. Matching pictures with their word families in plaid workbooks... I learned to read, but

The good, the bad, and the ugly of what daily silent reading really looks like in my middle school ELA classroom.

In the first month of school, teachers are usually focused on classroom setup, establishing procedures, launching routines, and digging into the first unit. Although we DO want students to be organized and to feel safe as individuals, we also need them to open up and collaborate as part of a bigger classroom community. Read on for 9 ideas about how to create bonding, shared experiences, and interactions that foster community-building. (By the way, you can check out a similar blog post of…

What my daily ELA class period schedule looks like in middle school ELA and how it works alongside my scope and sequences.

A lineup of fun books, products, websites, and social media accounts for English teachers I've discovered and loved recently in the course of my various projects. #teacherpodcast #iteachela #englishteacher

As teachers begin planning for back to school, I see an abundance of creative classrooms filling my Instagram and Pinterest feeds. I love seeing how other

As students head back to school, ELA teachers everywhere are considering how they are going to begin the school year, so I wanted to walk you through one of my favorite lesson plans entitled, "Why do we read?" As an educator, there are few things as exciting and rewarding as introducing a young person to

This single classroom procedure has made a HUGE difference in my experience teaching middle school. My first year teaching I didn't do this and I knew that something needed to change. I decided to put into a place a daily bellringer for every one of my classes. I am a Family Consumer Sciences teacher so I teacher 4 different classes!You can call it whatever you want to call it but I call it a bell ringer because my students are expected to be doing it as soon as the bell rings to start…