Whether you are teaching middle school ELA or high school English in a virtual or hybrid setting, there are many uncertainties this school year.
One thing for sure is that having teaching resources readily available in Google digital and PDF print versions have saved me some sanity. Here is a look at my top money-saving print and digital secondary ELA teaching resources. These middle school ELA and high school English teaching bundles include both the Google digital and traditional print formats for seamless teaching.
Essay Writing Teaching Unit
I created this essay writing teaching resource for high school students who are still working on mastering how to write an essay. Even though I created it for high school students, it also works well for middle school ELA students who are beginning to learn how to write essays.
In this unit, students learn how to write essays with a step-by-step and paragraph-by-paragraph approach. This teaching unit consists of three mini-lessons: how to write thesis statements and introductory paragraphs, how to write topic sentences and body paragraphs, and how to write conclusions. Additionally, there is also a guided essay outline to help students organize their thoughts and complete the prewriting process needed to write a well-crafted essay.
Each essay writing mini-lesson includes a direct instruction presentation and student practice materials. Whenever I introduce my first essay of the school year to my students, I use all of these essay writing mini-lessons to teach my students how to write an essay. Then, throughout the year, I continue to use the supplementary teaching materials to help my students through the writing process.
Parts of Speech Teaching Unit
When I first started teaching high school English, it was shocking to learn how many of my students did not know the parts of speech and how they work together to form complete and coherent sentences. When I searched for parts of speech teaching materials for older students, I could not find anything suitable for middle school or high school students, so I created this Parts of Speech Teaching Unit.
In this unit, students learn about each of the eight parts of speech one-by-one. With a direct-instruction parts of speech presentations and multiple parts of speech activities, quizzes, and practice worksheets for each of the eight parts of speech, this unit includes everything teachers need to help middle school and high school students review and learn the parts of speech to become stronger writers.
Academic Vocabulary Teaching Unit
When students expand their academic vocabulary knowledge, everything about school and learning becomes that much more attainable. I created these academic vocabulary teaching units to help students learn more ELA-specific vocabulary as we worked through the year.
I use these units alongside my teaching units. For example, when I am teaching informational text and argument writing, I make sure that I include Academic Vocabulary Volume 1: Words about Informational Text and Argument Writing in my instruction. I created these themed, ELA-specific academic vocabulary units to help students succeed in other class areas.
Each unit includes 25 academic vocabulary words, and students focus on just five words a week. Through this daily vocabulary practice style of teaching academic vocabulary, students authentically learn the words as they work their way through the unit.
Short Story Close Reading Unit
Teaching short stories is one of my favorite aspects of teaching ELA. (Okay, I have many favorites, but that is probably why I love my job so much). Anyway, I love teaching short stories and teaching students how to read and analyze short stories closely. And these short story close reading units are so much fun to teach!
I created these story-specific short story close reading units to help students and teachers take the guesswork out of literary analysis. Each short story takes about a week to work through, and at first, students read the short story in its entirety. From there, students go back to carefully-selected close reading passages to identify and analyze literary devices. Each short story close reading unit ends with a literary analysis paragraph writing assignment.
This short story close reading teaching unit includes activities and assignments for seven short stories: The Most Dangerous Game, The Interlopers, The Cask of Amontillado, Thank You, Ma’am, The Necklace, The Monkey’s Paw, and The Gift of the Magi.
Secondary ELA Curriculum (Digital and Print)
My digital and print secondary ELA curriculum bundle is the biggest bundle I offer. It includes all of my best-selling, teacher-created ELA teaching resources in both a traditional and digital format.
This curriculum comes with a pacing guide to help you plan your year, and it includes materials for teaching essay writing, academic vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and more!
