How I Structure My Middle School English Language Arts Class

I have a 90 minute period of English Language Arts daily with my sixth grade students. And before I break down what the structure of that period looks like, I want to acknowledge that seeing my students for 90 minutes daily all year long is something most ELA teachers can only dream of. Most middle school ELA teachers are working with 45-60 minutes, some even less. Some schools are on block schedules where teachers see students every other day or for only half of the year. And there's schools where reading and writing are broken up into two separate classes. 

While I don't know the pain of trying to jam it all into a 38 minute period, I have taught class periods of shorter lengths and could offer ideas about how to make things work with less time. But that is for another blog post. This one is just about what works for me in my current situation. I'll start with the parts of class that are always the same, the beginning and end of class.

Daily Do Now Routine: Frequently Asked Questions

After noticing gaps in students' learning that my curriculum was not addressing, I wanted to create a set of Do Nows (also known as bell work or warm ups) to use in my sixth grade classroom. My hope was that returning to using bell work at the start of class would settle students down in a way that starting class with independent reading wasn't.

I then decided on a theme for each day of the week that would remain consistent from week to week, so my first step was to determine what those daily themes would focus on. Monday would be defining unknown word parts, Tuesday would be sentence structure, Wednesday would be literary terms, Thursday would be writing and grammar concepts, and Friday would be word parts. If you missed my blog post with all of the details about these Do Nows, you'll want to read that first. If you've read that and still have questions, read on.

Build and Reinforce ELA Skills with a Daily Do Now Routine

Last summer my big project was to create a set of Do Nows (also known as bell work or warm ups) to use in my sixth grade classroom. My routine of starting class with independent reading just wasn’t settling my students down as they came into class and there were some gaps in my curriculum that I wanted to fill. I knew that I wanted to have a theme for each day of the week that would remain consistent from week to week, so my first step was to determine what those daily themes would focus on.