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 302: Navigating the Science of Reading Part 3: Language Structures
On this episode of The Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast, Jessica and Megan continue their series to help you navigate the essential strands of the Reading Rope. This episode focuses on language structures, exploring why they are crucial and sharing effective ways to teach them.
After listening, you'll know a fun and adaptable activity that uses drawing and writing to teach grammar concepts. This hands-on activity will enhance your students' grasp of language structures and help them apply these concepts in their writing. Tune in for this practical and engaging approach to strengthen your students' reading and writing skills!
Hey there, teachers. On this episode of the podcast, jessica and Megan continue their Science of Reading series focused on language structures. Today, this is the third strand on Scarborough's Reading Rope. You're going to learn what language structures entails and why they're essential for reading comprehension. We'll also share a versatile and creative drawing and writing activity that helps students understand and apply different parts of speech. This activity can be used with all kinds of language concepts outside of parts of speech, so it will be a great one for your ELA teacher toolbox those rinse and repeat activities. All right, let's dive into this episode for creative ideas for making language structures fun and meaningful for your students. Hi there, ela teachers. Caitlin here.
Speaker 1: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:Welcome back to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast and to our Science of Reading series, where we're really helping you navigate the strands of the reading rope with tips and activities to help your students strengthen their reading skills. So there's good stuff coming your way. This is actually the third episode in our series and today Megan and I are talking about language structures. So this is by no means required. But if you want to start from the beginning, you can go back to episode 300, and we'll give you a little bit more background knowledge about the science of reading and the reading rope, but you definitely don't have to do that. So the first episode focuses on background knowledge. Second episode was vocabulary and now here we are at language structure. So again, you can listen to it from the beginning or you can start here. Either way, you're going to be bringing back a lot of ideas to your classroom. So, diving into today's topic of language structures, this is the third strand on Scarborough's reading rope and, in case you need another refresher, I just mentioned it, but background knowledge and vocabulary were first, and now we're tying in language structures to really help students start to comprehend better in reading. So it's when we tie in all these different skills. That's where we're going to start to develop fluent, proficient readers. So most middle schoolers are at least a little familiar. If we said to you, background knowledge, are you doing in your classroom, you're probably like, yeah, yeah, I've got that. And, for sure, vocabulary right. Maybe you're required to teach it or you do it on your own, so you're comfortable with it.
Speaker 2:But in the last episode, I was mentioning to Megan that when I first heard language structures, I was like I don't even know what that is Like. Did I do that in the classroom? It seems very abstract. It does. It's totally abstract. And maybe some of you are like I don't know, do I do that? How do I do it? And here's the thing, though we assure you, once we start talking, you're going to be like, oh yes, I absolutely do these things. So hopefully we'll give you some fresh ideas to develop language structures. But also that like reassurance that, hey, maybe the science of reading isn't so daunting after all. I'm actually doing a lot of this stuff already. Maybe I just didn't have the name for it For sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're trying to make it less of a mystery, for sure. So you're really going to see that language structure. It's just a very broad category that incorporates common language arts standards and today we're just going to talk about them a little bit so that you can make sure you're addressing them with intention in the classroom. Plus, we're going to give you another fun activity, of course. So the language structures category of the reading group refers to understanding and using the rules and patterns that govern how words, phrases and sentences are constructed. So this category includes areas like syntax, and syntax includes grammar and punctuation. It also includes semantics, which involves the meaning of words, phrases and sentences, and that's including how meaning is constructed and interpreted. So, for example, talking about the differences, like when we use the word joyful versus happy, that would be semantics, for instance.
Speaker 2:It's like, so helpful to have a visual like that, I'm like, oh, yep, get it now Right. So, hopefully, already just hearing Megan speak, you're like, okay, yeah, I probably do do some of this in my class, Like I probably teach grammar and punctuation and we talk about the meaning of words. So we're not going to sit here and create, you know, a whole list of activities for you, for all the different types of language structures, in one episode. We don't want to overwhelm you, so instead we're going to give you like one really good one so you can walk away and be like, okay, I got this and this activity. It's one that addresses parts of speech, but you can also adapt it for, like, pretty much any grammar concept. So for this particular example, we're going to use prepositions to kind of walk you through it. But again, you do not have to use this one in your classroom. Use whatever topic you want. So here we go. You can go as simple or as high level as you want with this activity, which is why it can work for all grades and readiness levels, and that's big right. If you're listening, you're like, well, I teach eighth grade. Is this going to work? Yes, it will. I teach fifth grade. Yep, you've got you covered. So if you're an EB teacher and you've used our parts of speech, splash, bash unit, you're going to find that this activity is really similar to the water balloon toss drawing activity. But what we're going to walk you through today is more adaptable for different concepts. So if some of you are listening, you're like wait, I think I may have even done this with my students. You're probably right. So I want you to imagine that you're in a grammar unit and you're covering prepositions and you've taught your students students the definition. Maybe you've written it on the board. You've said okay, prepositions are a word or a group of words.
Speaker 2:They're used before a noun, a pronoun or noun phrase. They show direction, time, place, location or spatial relationships. You're like okay, good, we've defined the word. Maybe I've even given them some examples. I've showed my students different types of prepositions and now it's time for them to put that into practice. So here's where the activity begins. So, step one you're going to place your students in small groups or, if you want, if your class is a little rowdy, they can do this independently. But you know group work, it's usually more fun. Okay, and you're going to give each group or individual student if they're doing it individually a blank piece of paper Then for step two, you're going to instruct your students to draw a scene on the paper that shows, let's say, six prepositions.
Speaker 2:Honestly, any number you choose is fine. So if your students are learning the different types of prepositions, you could say, for example, okay, you need to include at least four prepositions of location and two prepositions of movement. So it's really up to you and what your students are learning. And then students get to be really creative and now they get to draw those prepositions within the scene. So, to help you picture this better, they have their blank piece of paper. You've told them okay, you need to include six prepositions, and maybe they draw a picture of a girl throwing a ball over a house and then next to the house, maybe they have a cat sitting near a tree. Okay, so they're using over, they're using near, et cetera. So hopefully you're seeing how this kind of works in your drawing. Does that make sense, megan?
Speaker 3:It absolutely does. Okay, I have actually used the parts of speech pool party in my classroom with graders I absolutely, and they love it, so love it.
Speaker 3:So step three, then, in this activity is really, really fun and it just helps students visualize how prepositions work. But in the end we want students to really be using these concepts in their writing. So next thing you're going to do is instruct students to write a paragraph describing the scene they have drawn. So their paragraph should include all those prepositions that they used in their scene. And if you want to go further, then you can add sentence structure and punctuation to the lesson by just requiring students to include at least a few sentences in their paragraphs that start with a preposition, using a comma after that prepositional phrase. And I taught eighth graders, and even for eighth graders this can be tricky, so this is a great idea to include in this, and so, for example, with this, a student may write near a tree comma a cat is sleeping. So after they've done that, you're going to let students go back to their drawings to add or adjust things if they have trouble in their writing and need to change their scenes a little to just, you know, make their writing easier to implement.
Speaker 3:Step four, then with this, have students share their pictures and paragraphs with the class.
Speaker 3:Again, we keep going back to this reflection piece, I think, each time. But it's so important as they kind of you know, mentally kind of solidify this knowledge you're giving them, point out particularly unique and interesting uses of prepositions from the different teams or different individuals, and then just talk about why prepositions are important in their writing, and you can probably see there's just so much versatility with this lesson. It's your students could draw a scene with a lot of action in it for verbs, for example, or maybe you want them to practice adjectives or adverbs, and they can draw a scene and describe those elements with those parts of speech. You can get as specific as you want with this. You can maybe even require students to use particular verb tenses or specific types of adjectives or adverbs, if you want to make it a little more advanced. And then for nouns, for instance, you could even have them include maybe abstract and concrete nouns or nouns that end in certain suffixes. There's just a world of possibilities with this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I'm thinking like this is what I used to do in the classroom. It'd be so much fun to do with this activity in particular. Create like themes to get student buy-in. Like, even if you come up with three like do we want to draw scenes about a sporting event, a summer vacation and I don't know, going to a restaurant, and then let the students pick, like this is the one we're going to focus on, or they come up with the themes, and then what you can do is you can rinse and repeat this activity. Right, just because you're doing it one time with prepositions, you might have a class that is like nope, we're still not getting it.
Speaker 2:Okay, then next week, draw another scene, you know different theme and let them practice again after you've done some more direct instruction, and then, like Megan said, again rinse and repeat with all these other topics. And I think it's just so simple, right, like everyone has extra blank paper in your classroom. This requires no prep on your part, just knowing about the activity. You can pencil it in for five minutes with your students, or 10 minutes, and it's like it's so easy. So I just love that.
Speaker 3:It's also an activity that you always have those kids that are just super creative in your class that love to draw, and it gives them an opportunity to express that and express their knowledge in that way, and I just I love that For sure.
Speaker 2:And you kind of started talking about this, about how you could differentiate it. But like, if you want to take this to the next level, I'm thinking if you have older students, you could absolutely do it with like the different types of sentences, right, like compound, compound, complex, all that stuff, and have them them create a scene and then they have to come up with each of those types of sentences to describe the scene, or even active voice and passive voice. Like that's already a lot harder than just including some prepositions or some verbs. So there's really so many different ideas and the differentiating is really easy because you can challenge your students with more high level requirements and then, for students who need more support, just give them more basic requirements, maybe only draw three things in their scene, or you know three requirements. So I just love this For sure.
Speaker 3:And we could go on and on. We won't today, but we've given you several ideas. So this is just one example of a really fun way to get your students thinking about structure of language, specifically with parts of speech. And I just love, again you know, we're activating different kids' strengths and that we're drawing and then using it in writing specifically, and just that action of taking a grammar concept and applying it to writing, that's what our EB grammar program is really focused on, because and I say it all the time to teachers, and I even told my eighth graders like we could learn definitions of grammar all day, If we're not using it in our writing, it doesn't matter, you know.
Speaker 3:And so, again, any activity where you can get students to take the knowledge about the grammar skill and then actually use it in writing is just so powerful, and so there's different ideas for that. This activity does it well. But even you know, if they're writing a story, require them to use specific parts of speech in different ways or sentence structures, have them highlight it, have them underline it, so they're really seeing the grammar skills they're using in their writing Definitely and we say this all the time at EB but it's like when you have the direct instruction and then you have a fun game or activity like this one, and then you have the application to writing.
Speaker 2:That's when you're going to see growth in your students and it's like you can't just be doing one right. We can't just have fun all the time, we can't just apply it to writing if we don't get that direct instruction. So it's really the combination of all three of those the direct instruction, the fun, the engagement and then the application to writing. So we really hope you give this activity a try with your students, whether it's with grammar or with some other idea that you come up with, and we also hope you learned a little bit more about the language structure skill that is part of the reading rope. Again, it doesn't have to be so daunting when you're like oh, I probably am doing some of this already in my classroom. So we really appreciate you joining us and we hope we'll see you next week when we're talking all about verbal reasoning. That one sounds fun. That activity, you guys are going to like it. When I was reviewing the notes last night I was like, oh yeah, this is good A little teaser for you.
Speaker 2:So thanks for joining us and we hope you all have a fantastic week. We'll see you soon. Bye, everyone.