Teaching Middle School ELA

This week, we're sharing a fun solution: a Short Story Escape Room using Walter Dean Myers' The Treasure of Lemon Brown! Pat joins me to walk through how to turn close reading into an exciting challenge using our Into, Through, Beyond framework. Students unlock each section of the story by solving puzzles, cracking codes, and showing what they understand along the way.

We'll break down six creative puzzle types you can use with almost any short story, from vocabulary and figurative language to grammar, conflict, and a final writing challenge. And the best part? You don't need fancy lock boxes or complicated technology. You become the lock!

If you're looking for a way to beat the pre-holiday slump while keeping learning purposeful, this episode is packed with ideas you can take straight into your classroom.

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Now if you’re feeling extra awesome today, we would be super grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find our podcast, and they’re also so much fun for us to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let us know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

This week's Monday Mindset is all about quiet quitting, teacher burnout, and reclaiming control over how we experience our teaching lives.

Teaching middle school ELA can be exhausting, but what happens when frustration and burnout start taking away the pride and joy we once felt in the classroom?

Caitlin introduces the CTFAR method (Circumstance, Thought, Feeling, Action, Result), a practical framework to help you recognize what you can't control and focus on what you can. Through a personal story about a 13-hour emergency room visit with her child, she shares how changing our thoughts can change our experience, even when our circumstances stay the same.

This isn't about ignoring the challenges of teaching. It's about setting boundaries, protecting your energy, and choosing how you want to show up for yourself and your students.

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe, share it with a teacher friend, and leave a review sharing the mindset shift you're working on right now!

Another great Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast episode! Veterans Day can feel tricky in middle school ELA: you want to honour service in a real way, but you also need a lesson plan that builds reading skills, not just a quick craft. We take on that challenge with a story many of us were never taught, the Indigenous Code Talkers who used Navajo and Cree to send messages enemies could not crack. The result is a classroom-ready approach that treats close reading as a form of respect.

We walk through a Code Talkers informational text unit built around text structures, so students practise the exact moves that strengthen comprehension across every subject. You’ll hear a clear breakdown of six key informational text structures, how to teach them without letting signal words become a crutch, and a simple “knockout” game that gets students thinking about what the author is doing. We also share a smart way to review multiple choice questions that keeps students engaged and pushes deeper learning.

How about you? What Veterans Day lesson do your students actually remember?

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Subscribe & Review in iTunes
Are you subscribed to our podcast? If you’re not, we want to encourage you to do that today. We don’t want you to miss a single episode. We add a brand-new episode every week, and if you’re not subscribed, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you’re feeling extra awesome today, we would be super grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find our podcast, and they’re also so much fun for us to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let us know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!

When we think of courage, we often picture grand, dramatic moments — standing up to someone, taking a huge leap, or making a bold change. But in today’s Monday Mindset episode, we’re exploring a different kind of courage — the quiet, everyday kind that often goes unseen.

Caitlin shares her own story of rebuilding confidence and identity after a long recovery, and how real courage sometimes looks like simply showing up — doing the small, hard things no one else notices.

This episode is a powerful reminder that courage isn’t always loud… sometimes, it’s just choosing to keep going.

The Friday before Halloween can feel like controlled chaos in a middle school ELA classroom! So why not lean into the excitement with a fun review activity that keeps students engaged while still checking their understanding?

In this week's Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast, we're sharing our Not-So-Spooky House Design Pronouns Review Activity—a creative drawing challenge that doubles as a meaningful ELA skills check. Students answer questions, follow the drawing direction connected to their chosen answer, and watch their pictures come to life. When they compare their finished houses with the answer key, the differences spark conversations that get students explaining their thinking, defending their answers, and reviewing grammar in a way that feels more like fun than another worksheet.

We'll walk you through exactly how to set up the activity, from creating a simple house outline to adding about ten question boxes, three answer choices per question, and a different drawing option for each choice. It's a simple structure you can use to turn a regular review into an engaging, interactive lesson—even on one of the most energetic days of the school year!

And the best part? You can use this strategy for so much more than pronouns! We'll show you how to adapt it for grammar, figurative language, literary devices, spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. We'll also share easy seasonal alternatives if your school doesn't celebrate Halloween, so you can keep the same engaging format going throughout the year.

If you're looking for a creative way to review important ELA skills without sacrificing engagement or academic purpose, this episode is for you!

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Join our priority list here: https://www.ebteacher.com/portal

If you try this activity, share it with an ELA teammate who could use a fresh review idea! Don't forget to subscribe to the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast and leave a review to help more middle school teachers discover practical, time-saving classroom strategies.

Negativity is loud right now, and teaching can sometimes feel like you're carrying more than anyone realizes. But what if one small act of kindness could change someone's entire day?

In this week's Monday Mindset, Caitlin shares a personal moment involving a small back-to-school gift for someone at her son's school and the emotional reaction she never expected. It was a powerful reminder of how much it means to feel seen, appreciated, and cared for—especially in school communities where so many people are running on empty.

Not through forced positivity or pretending teaching isn't hard, but by choosing to lead with good energy, show up with intention, and, as her dad says, “operate from peace.”

Your Monday Mindset challenge: What's one small act of generosity you can offer someone this week?

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If this episode resonates with you, subscribe so you don't miss a Monday Mindset, share it with a teacher friend who could use a reset, and leave a review to help more ELA teachers find the support they need.

Your writing block doesn’t need more moving parts. It needs fewer repeat questions and better routines!

In this week’s episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast, we’re sharing three hidden gems inside our EBW evidence-based writing approach that can help your students write stronger Response to Literature paragraphs with clearer claims, stronger text evidence, and more thoughtful justification—without you having to reteach the same skills all period.

Join us LIVE for our FREE EB Writing Live Workshop on October 24!

Want to strengthen your writing instruction and learn practical strategies to help your students become more confident writers? Come join us live! Register for free here:

https://www.ebteacher.com/eb-writing-live

Want to be the first to hear about what's coming next at EB Academics?

Join our priority list to stay in the loop on upcoming trainings, events, and opportunities!

Get on the list here: https://www.ebteacher.com/portal

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast for more practical classroom ideas, share it with an ELA teammate, and leave a quick review to help more middle school teachers find us!

Some days, teaching feels manageable. Other days, it feels impossible. And the frustrating part? Nothing on your schedule has changed.

In this week's Monday Mindset, we're exploring how the world within us shapes the way we experience our classrooms. If you've been dealing with Sunday anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, or constantly wondering how you're supposed to fit everything in, this episode is for you.

Plus, join us for a FREE live EB Writing Live workshop on October 24!

If you're ready to strengthen your writing instruction and discover practical strategies you can bring into your classroom, we'd love to have you join us live.

Register here: https://www.ebteacher.com/eb-writing-live

Want to be first to hear about what's coming to EB Academics? Join our priority list to stay in the loop!

Get on the list here: https://www.ebteacher.com/portal

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe so you don't miss a Monday Mindset, share it with an ELA teacher who could use a reset, and leave a review to help more middle school teachers find the support they need.

Welcome back. For today's Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast episode, we are continuing our Hidden Gems of EB Series. 

Skip the unit test without skipping the standards. Caitlin and our curriculum writer Pat share three end-of-unit project ideas that feel like a fun weekend for students but function as a rigorous, evidence-based assessment for you.

First, we break down a classroom “drive-in movie” built around The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Students rotate through stations where each “movie title” is a topic, then they turn that topic into a real theme statement as a movie tagline. The best part is the built-in accountability: students explain and justify their theme with text evidence, so you can finally move them past one-word “themes” and into universal messages.

Next, we pitch a Fish Cheeks inspired film festival where groups create a short film (or a live performance if you want to skip the tech) that shows at least two themes from your unit text. 

Finally, we wrap with a Raymond’s Run style game night where students design board games and question cards that assess literary elements like theme, conflict, character, and plot. You’ll leave with practical ways to adapt every idea to any short story or novel, plus easy options for individual assessment.

Subscribe for more middle school ELA lesson ideas, share this with a teacher friend, and leave a review so more ELA teachers can find the show.

October has a way of humbling even the most prepared middle school ELA teachers, so for today's Monday Mindset episode, we talked about how the planning system you swore you’d follow starts slipping, the “leave by four” boundary gets pushed later and later, and suddenly your weekends are full of grading again. We don’t think it’s because you don’t care. We think it’s because you’re trying to make hard change alone.

When you’re surrounded by teachers who live the habits you want, those habits feel possible, practical, and real. That’s one reason professional learning communities can be so powerful: teachers come for curriculum and planning tools, but they stay because they finally find their people.

Press play, choose one change you want most right now, and decide who you’ll invite into it. If this helps, subscribe, share it with a teacher friend, and leave a review so more ELA teachers can get their time back.