Teaching Middle School ELA
Welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, where we are dedicated to helping English Language Arts teachers create dynamic and engaging lessons for their students, while also managing the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being a Middle School ELA teacher.
As educators ourselves, we understand the challenges of finding a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passion for teaching while also enjoying our personal lives. That's why each Tuesday, hosts Caitlin Mitchell and Jessica Cannata share practical and innovative solutions for managing your workload and staying inspired in your teaching practice.
Whether you are looking for fresh ideas to inspire your students, strategies for improving your writing instruction, or tips for managing your time more effectively, this podcast is designed to provide you with the tools you need to thrive as a Middle School ELA teacher.
Join us each week for curriculum and lesson ideas, classroom stories, and interviews with fellow educators who are experts in the field. We believe that with the right support and resources, you can create a classroom environment that encourages students to become strong and passionate learners.
If you teach reading and writing to middle schoolers and want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in ELA education, then this is the podcast for you! Tune in every week and let us help you make a difference in the lives of your students and in your own teaching career.
Teaching Middle School ELA
Episode 295: The First Day of School Activity Your Students Will Go Home Talking About
On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast Megan breaks down an EB Teacher favorite that will have your students strategizing, debating, and writing with justification on a deserted island! (Don't worry, there's no plane crash involved!) Megan shares all the details of this engaging back-to-school activity in this episode, so that you can easily recreate this experience with your students! It's perfect for those first few days back in the classroom because it naturally fosters skills like justification, evidence-based thinking, and critical analysis while hooking student interests with its engaging theme, right from the start!
You'll first begin by setting the scene of a deserted island in your classroom. This can be done in a big way or in small ways, too! Your students will "buy in" to the fun simply based on your excitement as they enter the room. The core task for students to tackle in this activity is to analyze ten character bios and determine which five need to be rescued immediately and which five could survive a few more weeks on the island before the next rescue crew can make it.
Students will use justification from the character bios to support their choices and have a blast revealing their choices to their classmates! You'll have a blast, too, as you get to know your students personalities and learning levels during these first fun days back to school!
Tune in today, and rest easy knowing you have this engaging activity penciled into your back-to-school lessons! You won't regret it!
FREE RESOURCE: Curious about trying Batch Planning this summer? Simply click the link below to grab our 10 Tips to Get Started Batch Planning and take a look at how easy it can be to begin!
https://www.ebteacher.com/free-10-tips-for-Batch-Planning
Batch Planning is the ONE thing you can do now that will have the biggest impact on your entire school year!
Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another episode. Today we are diving into the first day of school activity that your students are definitely going to go home talking to their families about, or their friends about, after school, whatever it might be, and at EB we love a fun back to school activity. Over the years we've shared a bunch of ideas on this podcast, from unsolved mysteries to finding evidence, to a narrative writing lesson, all kinds of things and you can learn more about some of those activities if you want to listen to episodes 138 and 187. But today we're sharing another first day of school activity that you're going to just want to add to your toolkit and this is all about justification, but through a deserted island activity. This is an EB teacher favorite. Their students love it every single year. Definitely take a listen in and make adaptations to it for your classroom so that it works, but it's something really fun that you can kick off the school year with. Megan is recording this episode, so we're excited to listen in to what she has to share with this particular activity.
Speaker 1:Hi there ELA teachers. Caitlin here, ceo and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher Digital Planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs, and we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description and in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. It's Megan here and I'm flying solo today, but I'm super excited to be with you all because I have an awesome topic to share with you. That's going to be helpful as you're making those back-to-school plans. We love a good back-to-school activity here at EB and over the years we've shared a bunch of ideas on this podcast, everything from an unsolved mystery activity to practice finding evidence, to a narrative writing lesson all about students named. And if you want to know more about those particular activities, you can listen to episodes 138 and 187.
Speaker 2:But today I'm sharing another first day of school activity to add to your toolkit, and this is one we've actually talked about before on the podcast, on episode 241. And that is the deserted island justification practice activity. Today I'm actually going to give you more details about this particular super fun activity and, if you choose to do this with your students, not only would you have your lesson plans complete for those first few days of school, but you'd also be covering a bunch of skills and standards that are really critical to your ELA curriculum, and that is requiring students to find evidence and then also justify their thinking and of course, that's something we need students to do all year long when they write essays, when they write text-dependent or answer text-dependent questions, and also participate in class discussions. And let's face it, students always need more practice with justification so that they aren't writing things like I picked this quote because, or I think this is important because and then they just basically summarize the quote and I know many of us, many of us, have seen that in students writing. But instead I want you to imagine your students' first experience walking into your ELA classroom right First day of school and they walk in and it's set up like an island and let's say, you've printed out pictures of palm trees and waves and if you're really setting the scene, you could even dress like a pilot or maybe even a flight attendant welcoming your students on their upcoming flight, or maybe even a flight attendant welcoming your students on their upcoming flight. We've actually created an entire resource for this activity and it's available inside our EB Teachers ELA portal and if you're a member, this resource is ready and waiting for you inside the portal and you can just print out everything you need, including a welcome audio for your students.
Speaker 2:Now, I actually recorded this welcome audio last spring, I think it was, and it's an audio of me being a flight attendant, which I think I've said before on the podcast. I, at one point in my life, thought about being a flight attendant, so this is like I was born for this. So I'm going to give you a sneak peek of what that audio sounds like, so you can get an idea of what's included in this resource. Let me get my best flight attendant voice on so you can get an idea of what's included in this resource. Let me get my best flight attendant voice on Passengers. May I have your attention? Please? Welcome aboard flight 236 bound for Los Angeles, departing from Tokyo, japan. On behalf of the entire crew, I'd like to thank you for choosing EB Airlines for your travels today. Before we take off, we must review some important instructions to ensure your safety throughout the flight. I'll stop there, but you get the idea.
Speaker 2:So students might hear this and kind of look around at each other. Maybe they're a little confused, maybe they're a little excited because they're not just going over a syllabus and expectations like you've probably done most days on the first day of school, which is also okay. Those are things we need to do, but this is different, right, and it gets them excited and it's a change of pace for them on the first day. And little do they know that you've actually transformed your classroom into a space of critical thinking, lively discussion and also persuasive arguments with this fun activity. So your students will use critical thinking to decide the fate of 10 people who have been stranded on an uninhabited island. They have to figure out who they think needs to be rescued immediately and who will remain on the island for at least a few more months until they can get rescued. And so students are going to work in groups to decide whose days and who goes, and then they must justify their choices in writing. And because of how this activity is set up, students will be so engrossed in their discussions that they won't even realize that they're doing some really rigorous academic learning.
Speaker 2:So if you're not part of the EB Teachers Portal just yet, I would encourage you to join. But we're going to walk you through how you can create this activity on your own. So first you'll want to come up with about 10 character bios. These will represent the 10 passengers from the plane who actually get stuck on this uninhabited island. So I'm going to give you a quick example of what a character bio might look like.
Speaker 2:Maya Patel is a highly respected architect who was on her way to a construction site visit for a large-scale sustainable housing project that she designed. Maya is known for her inventive and eco-friendly designs, as well as her passion for creating functional and beautiful living spaces that are environmentally responsible. As a lover of nature, maya has several outdoor hobbies, including camping, fishing and mountain climbing. On weekdays, maya also watches her five-year-old granddaughter before school, so her daughter and son-in-law can get to work on time. Notice how there's just enough details in that bio for students to debate why Maya should get on the first rescue plane or if she should remain on the island for just a bit. And I would encourage you here utilize ChatGPT to help you come up with these bios.
Speaker 2:Right, you can just type in something like write a short character bio for dot dot dot and then maybe add a brief description, like you know, female doctor or college athlete or grandfather, retired carpenter, whatever it is and then, once you have those 10 character bios ready, make enough copies so that you can pass out a complete set to each group, and you want to include about three to four students in each group. Then you're going to tell students that each group has the important task of deciding which five of the 10 passengers will be immediately flown to the destination of Los Angeles and which five passengers will actually remain on the island for what could be months, as a mission is assembled to safely rescue them. So students will read the character bios that you've put together and discuss which people should go and which people should remain, and you can draw students' attention to the following questions. That will kind of help prompt them, as they're kind of putting their thoughts together and you could even just write these on the board. So here's the first question Do any passengers have training that would be valuable in case of medical emergencies on the island, such as injuries or illness?
Speaker 2:Do they have previous experience in wilderness survival? Do any passengers have strong leadership qualities that could help maintain order and organization on the island? Do passengers have cooperative personalities or skill sets that would help them work well with others? Do they have special skills or knowledge that would help in the group's long-term survival, like construction or hunting? Do any of them have athletic traits that would help in performing physically demanding tasks? Do any of them have a personality trait that would help keep people's spirits and optimism high. Do any of the passengers have a personality trait that could create difficulties for the group? Is there someone waiting for a particular passenger in Los Angeles who requires their care or help, or is there another pressing need to return to Los Angeles quickly?
Speaker 2:So as each group discusses their reading reasonings for each of the character bios, they should write down a claim right, a premise, evidence from the character bio in particular, and then justification as to whether a person should be rescued immediately or remain on the island. So here's an example of what that writing just might look like, with all of those elements included. So here's an example claim. So the claim, of course, is your student's position. So here's what this might sound like.
Speaker 2:Violet Rose should be chosen as one of the five survivors, and here's what a premise might look like. Now a premise is going to be their reason for that claim, for their position. Violet Rose should stay on the island because her skills as a botanist would be helpful in the group's survival. And here's some evidence that students might pull directly from the character bio. So it's going to be a direct quote from that character bio. According to the character bio, violet Rose is an accomplished botanist with skills in identifying and using various plants for nutritional and medical purposes.
Speaker 2:And finally, justification. This is actually going to be an explanation of how your student's evidence supports both their premise and their claim. So students should write at least one sentence that ties back to their premise and then one sentence that ties back to their claim. So here's what justification could sound like. Violet's skills could help her show the survivors which plants are safe to eat. Also, she could possibly give advice on how to safely use plants to treat an injured or sick survivor. Without an expert present, survivors should not ingest or touch unknown plants, so her guidance could be critical. This supports the idea that Violet Rose should remain on the island as a survivor. So notice how students are essentially writing a text-dependent paragraph and yet, because the topic is so engaging, there's no groaning or eye-rolling about another writing assignment, right? So this entire activity sets the tone that your ELA class is all about evidence and justification, not just in writing but in class discussions as well. So you can discuss the importance of tying evidence and justification into all your lessons right on that first day, so that it just becomes second nature when students write any type of essay, whether it be literary analysis, argumentative, persuasive or expository.
Speaker 2:We just want you to think about the power behind creating a memorable first day of school activity for your students, to have them actually feel excited about school and learning after two and a half months of vacation. For most of us, think about how it would make them feel to actually want to come to ELA class the next day and see what each group decided like which characters are staying, which characters are going, and just to get a sense of what your ELA class is like. So there will be time to go over your syllabus and expectations later and we know those are important things. Right Routines and procedures help us with classroom management. Absolutely cover those management, absolutely cover those. But we just ask you to kind of consider making this first day engaging and also rigorous and setting the tone for your whole year with this fun activity that really pays off so much for you.
Speaker 2:Because it's also rigorous and if you listen to last week's episode with Caitlin about the four words you should use every day with your students to skyrocket their task boards, then you'll know that this activity really hits the mark and because it requires students to create claims and premises and back them up with evidence and justification. So what a perfect way to introduce your students to these words and tell them that they will be using them and applying them in your class every single day. So we would love to hear how you love this idea for your first day of school. So share with us on social media. If you do end up using this, share pictures with us. Send us a message on Instagram if you'd like. At EB Academics, we'd love to hear if you use this and if it goes well in your classroom. And until next time, we will see you back on another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast. Bye, everybody.