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These time-tested writing prompts are sure to get your middle school students writing! Each day, select a journal prompt that goes with your current area of study. There are 25 categories and 225 prompts from which to choose, truly providing enough variety to frame the writing prompts to your students. Students use prompts containing inspiring quotes, relevant statistics, poetry, well-known dates, and many other attention-getting materials. This provides opportunity to write about personal i

Quick and ready-to-use, this assignment has my middle school students loving poetry and creating some of their own 'inspired' versions of this classic! This assignment takes the old favorite, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and teaches students about poetic devices such as rhythm, rhyme, couplets, and syllables. After learning about this age-old poem, students are given a ten-line start of a poem with a classroom flair inspired by this same poem. Students must finish the poem using rhyming

If you are looking for an authentic learning experience for students to have while learning about Martin Luther King Jr., this is your assignment! I show the "I Have a Dream" speech to my students and we talk about his words. We also discuss his life and different roles briefly before I hand out the following assignment. I found several thought-provoking quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. that were challenging, but accessible to 7th grade students. Students discuss quotations in partn

This assignment meets two real goals. The first is to have students practice using dialogue correctly. The second is to have students practice getting up in front of their classmates for speeches. After reviewing how to punctuation dialogue, my students draw a number from one to 18 to see which characters they are going to create short conversations for. They are all fun and creative. For example, they may have Russell Wilson and Thor talk about throwing techniques or Santa Claus and Neil Arm

This common core historical fiction book project asks students to revisit specific parts of the novel read and explain how that portion of the novel helped him/her understand more about a certain aspect of history. Because direct citation is required, students cannot "Google" the answer. This is a genre my middle school students love and a useful activity to show learning and critical thinking. Please let me know what you think!

Earnest Hemmingway's "A Day's Wait" is a favorite story I use with my 7th graders each year. This short assignment asks a few quick questions that require students to cite evidence from the story in order to show understanding of theme. Additionally, students must figure out alternative meanings of words and make an inference regarding the meaning of the title. This is a time-tested assignment I pull out for quick review and practice of basic concepts. The story is not included in the assignme

This excellent source for middle school narrative writing provides students the one thing they crave and desire more than anything else when writing - choice! It includes three well-developed narrative writing prompts. Each prompt allows students to write personal, biographical, or fictional narrative stories. It includes a proven graphic organizer that helps students develop character and plot and a revision checklist that aligns with the common core rubric.

Using the story Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, students work on character trait identification citing specific evidence from the text, writing a summary using a provided graphic organizer, and finding and identifying appositives in the text. All include four-point rubrics are included. The story itself is readily available other places, but is not included in this assignment due to copyright.

If you are a middle school teacher who is tired of teaching the kindergarten skill of capitalization regarding the pronoun 'I' this product is for you! It shows clear rules out for the pronoun 'I' and its contractions along with graphics. It also has a tongue-in-cheek section for students to fill in the blank on proper use of the pronoun followed by a signature section for students to promise to use it better. The final portion requires for students to write a paragraph using all forms of t

This is a basic resource guide to help students formulate a theme using a simple, three-step process. It is very effective!

This book project is a basic, but effective, book project that helps students practice finding specific evidence to support a theme of a book read by students. I have used this before, but added a section for revision, as my students need more practice with this. This project does not teach theme. It does, however, help students to practice its implementation.

This is a quick guide for students to use in identifying what type of genre they are reading for independent books.

“Who’s Rich and Who’s Poor” is one-page story that makes kids think differently about what being rich and poor means. Students will evaluate the action of a character in the story and react personally to what it means to be rich or poor. Graphic organizer and rubrics are included.

This organizer helps students to analyze theme and character emotions in a way that drives plot. When using this as a guide for writing fiction, my students create much stronger plot with deeper and richer details. The best part is that it can be used with any sort of narrative!

If you are looking for a way to assure student learning, look no further! Students, unfortunately, don't always work on our timeline. Sometimes it takes a student multiple attempts to pass an assessment. I used to be against this because I felt students would fail again and it created more work for me. I hope you love using it as much as I do. It reduces my paper load, and students are really learning the material. It also makes students work harder to do the work ahead of time so they don't

With just a day of notice before our schools closed for six weeks and a lot of uncertainty about what we could and could not provide for instruction, I created a quick BINGO card for students to use while they were at home due to the coronavirus outbreak. I designed it for use with my 7th-grade classrooms, but it is easily adaptable for any grade or subject. Please use it, modify it, and share it with anyone you wish. This product is free.

This book log helps students keep track of books read during a school year, enjoyment level, and whether or not it was used for a book project. Please let me know what you think!