With a new school year upon us, here is a look at 10 must-use secondary ELA teaching units, lessons, and activities for your classroom. These units are guaranteed to help your students succeed in reading, writing, speaking, and listening!
10 Secondary ELA Teaching Units to Teach This School Year
Teaching Secondary ELA: Essential ELA Review
The first several weeks of a new school year is the perfect time to review essential ELA content with students. The best way to review is to spend a little bit of time each day to briefly reteach and practice essential ELA concepts that will help get students ready for their grade-level curriculum. These Essential ELA Review teaching units are five weeks long, include a variety of ELA standards, and are available for grade 8, grades 9-10, and grades 11-12.
Teaching Secondary ELA: Academic Vocabulary 
One of the best ways to help students succeed academically in class is to help them gain a firm understanding of important ELA academic vocabulary words. This Academic Vocabulary teaching unit includes both the print and digital units, and it includes more than enough words for the entire school year. From words specific for research writing to words tailors to informational text, this Academic Vocabulary unit will cover all of your vocabulary needs!
Teaching Secondary ELA: Sentence Structure
Once students have a firm understanding of sentence structure, their writing improves exponentially. This sentence structure teaching unit includes instruction for teaching simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences.
Teaching Secondary ELA: Sticky Note Analysis 
Whether you are teaching literary analysis, rhetorical analysis, or poetry analysis, this Sticky Note Analysis Teaching Bundle is a great way to engage students and incorporate some hands-on learning in your classroom.
With built-in differentiation and the added fun of sticky notes, your students will gain a deeper understanding of analysis with these fun analysis activities.
I use this resource every single year with my students. From my short story unit to full class novels, I always find myself going back to this unit.
Teaching Secondary ELA: Writing Spotlight Focus Units
When I first started teaching, teaching writing stressed me out. I mean, there is just so much to teach and to grade. However, once I stopped focusing on everything and started spotlighting one main element at a time, my writing instruction improved and my students’ writing improved as well. This Writing Spotlight Teaching Unit includes both the digital and print versions of four spotlight units: writing about quotes, writing in the third person, writing in the present tense, and focusing on the quote.
Teaching Secondary ELA: MLA Format Mini Flip Book 
Teaching students all about MLA Format is cumbersome. I mean, it isn’t exactly a fun and exciting topic. However, this MLA Format Mini Flip Book is the ideal reference resource for the secondary ELA classroom.
I typically spend one day with my students assembling and reviewing the resource, and then they keep it in their binders for the rest of the school year!
Teaching Secondary ELA: Sentence Combining Bell Ringers
Want a simple and easy way to help your students grow as writers? Have them practice the simple act of sentence combining as a class warm-up each day! This Sentence Combining Bell Ringer Bundle includes an entire year’s worth of sentence combining practice. To make things even more interactive and fun, I like to have my students share their sentences aloud and even compete in sentence combining challenges (most succinct sentence, most ways to combine the sentences, etc.)
Teaching Secondary ELA: Parts of Speech Teaching Unit
Even though our secondary ELA students begin learning about the parts of speech in second grade, they don’t retain this information. This Parts of Speech Teaching Unit is the ideal way to reteach and refresh students about the parts of speech. Each unit includes an instructional presentation, student practice, and assessments.
Teaching Secondary ELA: The Graphic Essay 
Usually, toward the middle of the year, the thought of grading 180 essays (yes, that is my full contract student load) is a bit overwhelming.
The graphic essay is a great way to assign all of the argument essay elements without assigning them as a full-blown essay. Essentially, it is a visual essay, and students love it because it doesn’t seem like an essay, but it really is.
I like to have students log into Canva to create their graphic essays. However, before they begin designing their graphic essays, I have them type everything up in a regular document so that I can check it there as well.
Teaching Secondary ELA: Responding to Literature Digital Collaboration Activities 
I love activities that I can use again and again with any text, and that is just what these digital Responding to Literature Collaboration Activities are! Students collaborate and respond to a prompt that works with any text! Once you use one of these resources in your class, they make a great emergency sub plan because students already know how to work them!
