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Looking Ahead: Focus for MS English 2025–2026

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Looking Ahead: Focus for MS English 2025–2026

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Hi everyone! As we begin thinking about next year, please share your thoughts on what our collective focus should be in Middle School English. Share your thoughts here.

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I have a ton of fun activites to start lessons.

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Please add posts to the appropriate columns:

Teaching Strengths (What I Do Well): Share instructional strategies or areas where you feel confident and could mentor others.

Areas to Strengthen Our Practice (What I'm Working On): Share topics or strategies where you would like new ideas and would like to observe colleagues.

Observable Lessons : Share upcoming lessons that colleagues could observe. Include:

Subject/Topic

Date and Time

Room Number

Brief description (i.e., unit/ lesson/ something else)

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Unit - WWII

Date - End of April (after ELA) (I will send an email with a specific date as I get closer to the lesson)

Room #228

Book talk based on graphic novel book clubs

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I am a rock star at grammar. My ambition would be to have non-ELA teachers take a vested interest in teaching their students to write with proper capitalization, punctuation, and word choice.

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I am embracing the idea of notebooks more and more, but I often find the use of Google Classroom (and the ability to provide direct comments on students' work in a more immediate manner) to be at times more convenient. Trying to strike the balance here!

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I really like having the students engage in the TEXAS paragraph structure (Topic sentence, Elaboration, eXample, Analysis, Summary) throughout seventh grade. The structure is very clear and delineated for students to follow before they immerse themselves in more advanced writing structures. All responses to literature should be in the present tense and written in the third person.

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A good resource that I created for initiation activities to jumpstart a class.

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I am very organized and systematic in my approach to teaching students how to write. Students like a recipe for success: sentence variety, word choice, text support, etc. My multi-prong approach helps students access the tools to produce a strong piece of writing.

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Encouraging Creativity in Reader's Notebooks

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Encouraging Creativity in Reader's Notebooks

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So much of what we do in terms of student output has very clearly delineated requirements. Although I provide students with parameters for notebook tasks, I am encouraging students to try different methods of presentation without teacher input for notebook assignments.

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At this point in the school year, I am encouraging synthesis of ideas and establishing thematic connections between texts. This week in Room 138: paired text analysis with short stories.

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Working on ways to inforce study skills.

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Working on ways to inforce study skills.

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I am working on using the say anything protocol to help promote student-led conversations and deeper comprehension of a given text. Students pick one option and think of one example. Everyone will have a chance to share and students can say/add anything as long as it is related to the story

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Helping students brainstorm ideas/organizing their writing

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Helping students brainstorm ideas/organizing their writing

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I think I'm halfway decent :) at helping students to unearth the stories and experiences and put them to paper/print in an engaging way. I model a systematic approach to personal narrative writing assignments and share with students my own obstacles and road-blocks that I encounter when I write, share my solution-finding process, and ask for their suggestions as well. In this regard, we communicate as fellow writers.

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Characters with Grit! This could be our enduring issue.

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Focusing on characters that exhibit grit, and maybe going back to some of that "text-to-self" so that we can take away the formulaic writing and get students to actually think deeply about what they are reading and connecting to

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Poetry is key for students to develop analysis skills. Poems force kids to think deeply about what they are reading, and the strategies used in poetry analysis translate well to helping with the more sophisticated readings students encounter in the "older" grades. I believe I have developed some good strategies to help students be better thinkers.

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Team M is currently working on argumentative writing, formulating a claim to defend, recognizing the counter argument, etc.

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I did my visitation w/ Scott. We use Wordly Wise books for supplemental vocab work in grade 6. Scott has a slide deck that helps kids work with the words outside the book and bring the words "to life" with creative ways to think about vocab.

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During Periods 4,5,8,9 on Tuesday, 4/29, Team 7R students will interact verbally (and in writing) in response to Ch. 1-10 in The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore.

I like to get out of the students' way and listen to their often insightful and sometimes complex interpretations of class novels. I have a set of guiding questions to present to them, and I think I'm pretty good at helping the students to shift gears if a topic/question runs out of steam and students are ready to move on.

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I visited Noreen's class today as they wrapped up their discussion/study of the ending of To Kill a Mockingbird and discussed their ideas as they chose from three writing prompts to present text-to-self and text-to-world connections regarding issues presented in the novel. It's so great to see students engaged in this type of activity--especially when the teacher so clearly loves the text(s) presented in the unit. :)

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Because so many of my students struggle to read fluently and to picture what they are reading- these are two areas I feel super passionate about. I can find ways to get even the most reluctant student to read with expression. I also get a little too excited when I try to help students with visualization-- but hey, whatever works!

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Helping students determine which strategy to use

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Helping students determine which strategy to use

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By this point in the year I've taught so many different strategies- at this point I'm asking students to look back and see which one works best, when!

Something I'm trying to work on is encouraging student responses that are less formal. Mary mentioned in our March meeting that it's ok to use first person, something I cringed over! But I'm trying to embrace the use of first person literary responses in hopes that it will encourage better connections to the texts. Why are we always so formal anyway?

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I visited Scott's class when he was encouraging creative writing (poetry). It made me want to read more poetry with my students, because the students really responded to it.

I also worked closely with Leslie/Carin's "big project" in which they had students conduct research about an enduring issue, but this year they had students create an infographic instead of first writing an essay. Wouldn't you know- students' knee jerk reaction was to put a paragraph on their infographic! Just shows how much writing they did this year!

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Please share your thoughts on this year’s focus: Critical Thinking and Writing through Book Clubs and Notebooking. Use the prompts below to guide your reflection:

What aspects of book clubs or notebooking worked well for you and your students?

What challenges did you face with implementation?

Would you want to continue, adjust, or try something different next year?

Feel free to respond in any format—bullet points, brief paragraph, or even a list of pros/cons.

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What I enjoyed about notebooking, both in my small groups and when I worked in other ELA classes, was seeing students explore a different avenue to respond to reading. Some students really take to a more "free write" or drawing approach- removing the more forumlaic aspect of a response. I really appreciate how it takes out the formality of a response to literature. It's much more artsy. I think keeping the notebooks in the classroom is critical. (for me and my colleagues in 6th grade at least!)

Challenges were that some students really felt that they were terrible at drawing, and it became an added stressor- however, most appreciated that the language (the response) was less indepth, not as lengthy as a paragraph or an essay. It still really allowed me to see the depth of what a student was/was not understanding.

I'm going to continue to use this next year- and I might start the year with this type of response to literature instead of incorporating a little later (October).

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I had the opportunity to visit Mike's class as he introduced the Alan Gratz project to his students. It was a great learning experience, and I was able to bring that same information back to my own classroom. I appreciated being able to clarify student questions and help them get excited about the project!

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I really enjoyed the in class book clubs. Students read voraciously! Next year I will work to have more supplemental reading for those that move at a quicker pace. T

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I have enjoyed the variety of writing assignments that we have worked on this year. I also enjoyed the creative writing assignments that we have worked on this year.

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What aspects of book clubs or notebooking worked well for you and your students?

During our book clubs, students took it upon themselves to keep one another accountable. They kept on top of each other and had some great conversations around the various discussion points.

What challenges did you face with implementation?

One area that was a challenge was deciphering students' writing when responding to certain prompts.

Would you want to continue, adjust, or try something different next year?

For certain tasks, I would adjust the space students had to use to respond, as opposed to limiting myself to a certain size box.

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Looking to continue to find ways to streamline my notebooking process since 7th graders are notorious for not bringing their materials to class, which leads to much frustration on my part as well as the students’ part. Very low-stakes opportunity to process text. For assignments in which the kids will be given detailed feedback, I will continue to have students write their responses online (GC) as that is easier and more manageable.

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Students enjoyed the variety in books and the ability to choose the books they wanted to read. They were able to choose books based on their own interests which motivated their learning and conversations about the books.

Too many students chose the same book for book challenge, so many had to resort to their second or third choice. Thoughtfully placing students in group was another challenge.

We will continue to with our book club system next year

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Reflection on Book Clubs, Notebooking, etc...

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Reflection on Book Clubs, Notebooking, etc...

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Overall, I had a better experience with this year's book club(s) than I did when I first tried the book club model a number of years ago. I found twenty minutes was a good limit for reading in class as I found that students wanted to get up and leave the room for one reason or another after that amount of time. I also found that having so much reading in class limited my options for doing other things; however, I will reflect on this and modify. I found the notebook activities to be satisfactory with a good deal of modification. I continue to observe that many students are overscheduled outside of school and also were sick for several days at a time, so they missed out on the reading pace of the group. Regarding the fantasy unit, one title may need to be replaced (Spineless); however, I will conference with my grade level colleagues regarding this. If a book club were to be eliminated, I would say the fantasy unit should be eliminated. This would free up time in the school year to get more in-depth with other topics.

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The students embraced the idea of choice. They particularly enjoyed the dystopian unit as many of the choices were appealing to them. The book clubs also pushed the students to read more as it put more of the responsibility upon the student rather than waiting for the teacher to read aloud to them. With regard to Notebooks, it is a work in progress for me as I am trying to balance using the Notebooks as well as the option of digital technology. I do like the idea of having the students handwrite more.

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I would love to continue our journey working on writing, and I love the idea of incorporating the SEL work with English and/or a writing unit/assignment.

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Incorporating group projects to promote and foster positive peer relationships and communication

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Discussing empathy, grit and identity in many of the characters and literature that we read.

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a) Slow and steady exploration into how AI can benefit students in terms of feedback and writing

b) SEL - discussion groups and writing prompts regarding GRIT, mindfulness, self-care, metacognition, text-to-self connections, etc..

c) Refining the book club unit (perhaps jettisoning the Fantasy unit) to accommodate all this.

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I have been a huge fan of notebooks since I started teaching ELA. I balance between interactive ELA notebooks and students taking more ownership to their notes and the reading tasks assigned in their notesbooks. Book clubs work well and I try to rotate them throughout the school year with choices to build students' agency.

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Through literature and even nonfiction we are teaching and presenting stories that address all aspects of social emotional learning. I am interested in which SEL frameworks the district is focusing on to what I cover with my students. Through my daily poetry warm ups I also address SEL.

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I had the opportunity to visit both JOD's 7th grade classroom and April's classroom and see what students are working on. Both were working on writing with their students. John was doing more creative writing whereas April was having students build TEXAS paragraphs based on their book club books. I love going into classroom and seeing the students and what they are working on in ELA so I am able to build on what I know they did in last year's ELA classrooms.

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The new book club unit was a success. I would like to now focus to fine tune the unit.

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We have developed many new units in the last two years. I think we now need to focus on developing those units and give efforts to fine tune what we have started. I feel we keep doing more and more, but we really need to make what we have better rather than add.