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3 Fun Middle School Sub Plans for ELA

Need a digital lesson for a snow day? Fun emergency middle school sub plans? Or an enrichment session to review basic skills? This independent writing activity bundle has got you (and your students) covered!  It’s THAT time of year again when us teachers are facing the perfect storm:  If you’re anything like me, these teaching days feel like survival mode. The best part is these ELA middle school sub plans require ZERO planning needed on the teacher’s end. What Each Activity Includes I want to ensure my students are using classroom time efficiently, even if I am buried in too many tissues to create middle school sub plans myself. Provide them with engaging activities they want to do to ensure this. With each of the activities in this resource, students have the opportunity to tap

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A stack of newspapers. There is a white border at the top of the image with pink and blue text that says "Short and Sweet Media Literacy Activities"

3 Quick Media Literacy Activities for Secondary ELA

These quick and low-prep media literacy activities will help you improve your student’s critical thinking skills, teach rhetorical analysis and persuasive techniques, and even practice public speaking! To me, teaching media literacy goes hand in hand with teaching Secondary ELA. After all, understanding and interpreting a novel, or analyzing an author’s purpose isn’t so different from critically reading a news article or blog post. Media literacy is especially critical if you’re teaching about current events or exploring topics like immigration or social justice in ELA. What is media literacy?  Teaching media literacy is all about helping students develop their critical thinking skills and become responsible consumers and creators of media. Students with strong media literacy skills can:  -definition from medialiteracynow.org Why is media literacy important? Media Literacy moves beyond just teaching students to identify persuasive

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Teaching Photo Analysis cover

Teaching Photo Analysis to Build Text Connections

If your students struggle making deep connections to a text, look no further than Photo Analysis. Students analyze each photo as a text. You’ll provide students with necessary domain vocabulary and principles, but they’ll learn to trust their intuition and develop confidence as analysts.     Why Photo Analysis?   Photo Analysis is a great introduction to analyzing a wider range of texts. Its visual nature pulls your visual learners into the game. Just as students analyze literature for conscientious choices made by authors, they approach each photograph with an eye for conscientious choices made by the photographer.   And honestly, I advocate for integrating even more types of text into your curriculum! While we’re here, here are 15 Songs and 15 TV Episodes to Use in ELA.   Three Steps to Teach Photo Analysis

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