Looking for any and all advice

HELP

Hi everyone. I’m going to be doing a long term sub job that involves teaching a 6th grade reading intervention class. The teacher has set me up with a novel and some corresponding work to go with it, but I’d also like to work on some more specific reading strategies with them. I’m not really sure where to start as the only other long term sub I’ve done was for art, which frankly is a lot easier to come up with work for lol. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

i’m a first year teacher so that doesn’t help but it seems that kids at every grade level struggle with story elements at my school. We are doing our mid test right now and a lot of kids are just not hitting the mark.

For the test, they’re supposed to identify the most important event that produces the strongest response/change from the main character.

They are struggling to do this accurately by picking . They’re also struggling with correctly identifying the story elements in the plot map.

Does anyone have advice on teaching this standard? Or resources? Thank you.

I posted this on the literature sub but thought that a sub of English teachers (who are, after all, in close contact with the next generation of readers) might have some thoughts to share.

From James Marriott in The Times today:

"Back then [the 18th century], long before public libraries & the paperback revolution, books were still rare and prestigious artefacts. And readers demanded not merely 'delight' from their reading matter but also 'instruction' and 'improvement'. It was the great age of sermons, edifying novels and moralising children's literature. And so is ours. The front tables of Waterstones groan with secular sermons (in the form of 'manifestos' on climate and race), and novels with improving messages about diversity and tolerance... As books are outcompeted as entertainment devices, their future will be worthier, showier and more self-conscious".

Interested to hear if others have noticed the proliferation of books as edifying and moral forces, and if you regard this as a good thing.

If you teach AP Lang, do you use books in your curriculum (as opposed to essays/speeches/excerpts)? If so, which ones?

I taught AP Lang many years ago and we read The Crucible and Fast Food Nation. My colleagues use Frederick Douglass’ autobiography or The Things They Carried, but mostly use essays / speeches/ excerpts.

Curious what grades 3–8 teachers are noticing right now. Is it getting started? Organizing ideas? Kids who can talk all about a topic but freeze the second they have to write it down? Or something else entirely?

Would love to hear what you’re seeing, and what (if anything) is helping.

Any thoughts and experience with this? I'm trying to find a choice for a humor / satire unit and my mentor teacher suggested Pride and Prejudice which, to me, is a massive slog to get through. In thinking through books that make me audibly laugh out loud which, IMO, is a prerequisite for humor, HHGTTG is the obvious choice.

Notes:

• this is my first year teaching literature (moved here from ELL/ESL) which is another reason I'm hesitant to teach P&P (seems like a very intense and involved novel that will require lots of scaffolding)
• I'm teaching a 10th grade honors class
• For a final writing assignment, I'm thinking of having them write a "guide entry" as opposed to a typical literary analysis essay. Spend the unit learning how Adams uses humor and satire, and as a final project, have them apply those skills in a guide entry to something mundane in their daily life.
• I teach at a private Jewish day school which has a mix of modern orthodox (1/3) and non-religious (2/3) students, and think the whole concept of "we have the answer to life but no one ever thought to ask the right question" is in many ways a concept which can be taught through a Jewish lens

So I had to introduce a new elective this year and I’m struggling on how I can possibly set it up. I don’t want to it to seem like another English class. There will be reading, but I’m trying to figure out some other types of activities, creative ideas, and projects.

The class will be focusing on folklore, urban legends, and cryptids. I tentatively plan on focusing on each continent (and I’m open to suggestions of which ones to teach). Most of the roster are seniors who have me for English and wanted to take another class with me (In a class of 24, 16 of them will have me twice and the other 8 are currently spending this semester with me in my anime elective, so they all are familiar with how I run my classes).

So any help on how I can make this class expand beyond just the usual English class is greatly appreciated!

Anyone successfully use ThinkCERCA for their ELA classroom? I've never been a fan of canned curriculum, but this one in particular is bad.... Writing rubrics are convoluted, the "direct instruction" is all over the place, writing prompts are confusing, unit topics are honestly strange...On top of this, my current "curriculum instructor" was never an ELA teacher... When you go to ask him questions on how to adapt this curriculum for actual classroom use, he just tells you to assign one of the modules and just stay on track of the "guided lessons"

Secondary teachers, are Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales required readings for 12th grade English in your school? Do they HAVE to be taught or can you supplement those texts with other stories?

Hi all! I'm going to be doing "The Phantom Tollbooth" with my 6th graders. Any advice or materials that anyone who's taught it feel like they couldn't live without? TIA!

My new school is newly mandating all ElA teachers to teach each ell lesson in one single period. No one is willing to break down the timing for teachers much less demo this shit for us. What the actual fuck are we even doing anymore??? All advice needed. Admin & coaches alike rnt helping.

I’m starting Call Us What We Carry with 9th graders next quarter. Anyone have success stories to share about teaching her poetry?

Hello all. I'm a HS teacher and I've been told that most of my students were taught reading using the whole-language/balanced literacy approach. It would certainly explain some of the things I've seen. Does anyone know if there have been any longitudinal studies on the impact of this approach (vs phonics, etc) on high school and college success, reading success, etc? I would welcome links to scholarship on the topic.

I would love strategies for teaching students to understand the meaning of unknown words! Specifically ELA.5.V.1.3

Who is going to Philly? Idk if it's too late to go.

What are some of the required readings you have read or taught as students or english teachers in high school? Give your state and the list. I’m in Alabama and I went to school from 2021-2025 and here is what we read in a predominantly black school.

9th Grade English
- Where I fell in love with literature! To kill a mockingbird was my all time favorite. I am soon going to start re reading The Odyssey now as an english major, Emily Wilson’s translation so we will see how it goes!
• The Scarlet Ibis
• The Odyssey
• Fahrenheit 451
• The Bluest Eye
• To Kill A Mockingbird

10th Grade English (Honors)
- We NEVER read the books in class, so many of us didn’t read the books at home😂, and she never quizzed us on if we did or not, this class for some reason was a strict focus on A.C.T prep. Despite this, i did read one (warriors don’t cry) that felt more natural to read than the rest.
• Julius Caesar
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
•The Scarlet Letter
•Warriors don’t cry

11th Grade English
- According to her, we were also suppose to read The Crucible but she was REQUIRED to teach us A.C.T prep alongside her curriculum which took majority of our reading time. She taught us the English and Writing Sections. Although we only got to read one book, she was truly amazing at what she did and one of the best teachers I ever had. Truly an amazing woman. Shout out to Ms.Kashara Davis!
•The Story of An Hour
• Richard Cory
•Ain’t I A Woman
•The Great Gatsby

12th Grade English
-Very boring class, nothing stood out to me and it wasn’t the literature’s fault. 😉
•Beowulf
•Wife of Bath
•Hamlet
•Pride and Prejudice

CONCLUSION: It’s not the amount of books you read, it’s the teacher that helps you stimulate a love for literature.

Hi I really want these two books urgently,
Hmh team still did not provide us with resources(accounts not ready for teachers),
the principal is still calling them and it seems like they are super busy
I can provide you with the teacher's timetable as a proof

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.

Since it’s Self-Promotion Friday, sharing something I made that I think could work well as a quick ELA discussion or writing prompt.

Moralia is a free site built around short, fact-checked stories from history. Each one takes about 2 minutes to read and stops at the exact moment someone had to make a difficult choice.

Students choose before they know the outcome, then see what actually happened and how other players chose.

For ELA, I think the useful part is less the history itself and more what happens before the reveal: students have to read closely, decide what matters in the situation, take a position, and defend it using details from the text.

It could work as:

• a bell-ringer / warm-up

• a quickwrite or argumentative paragraph

• a small-group discussion

• a Socratic seminar starter

• practice with claim + evidence + reasoning

Middle school and up.

Free, no ads, no subscription, and no student accounts or email required.

______________________________________________________

Edit: a few people asked about using it in class:

There's a free printable pack of five stories here:
https://moralia.app/bell-ringers.pdf

and notes for teachers here:
https://moralia.app/teachers