What is Classroom in the Middle? Classroom in the Middle is a blog and a store all about language arts resources for middle school and upper elementary. In the blog, you’ll find a big (and growing) collection of teaching ideas and activities, along with freebies that you can download at any time, for English teachers in the middle grades. In the store, you will see both free resources and resources for sale including ready-to-use printables and presentations.
The Blog
The blog articles are in five categories:
Reading Skills
Writing Skills
Vocabulary Skills
Seasonal and Holidays
and Other Good Stuff
Here are a few examples of what you can find there, starting with reading. This post, as you can see includes teaching ideas for figurative language and imagery. One of the ideas is about using picture books to introduce figures of speech and includes suggested picture book titles.
This post in the writing section, includes suggestions for specific changes that students can make as they revise their paper. The possibilities range from simple changes like replacing adjectives with more interesting ones to more complex ones like adding a few lines of dialog.
Solving Seven Types of Analogies, a post in the vocabulary section, provides a helpful way to organize analogy lessons with examples of seven specific types of analogies.
Mixed in with the articles on the blog, you will find links to free mini-posters that you can download and links to more freebies that you can pick up at any time from Classroom in the Middle’s store.
The Store
The teaching resources at Classroom in the Middle, a Teachers pay Teachers store, fall into a number of categories, all essential teaching areas for language arts teachers. They include these categories:
Novel Studies
Close Reading
Informational Text
Reading Skills
Writing Process
Writing Prompts
Vocabulary
Poetry
Figurative Language
Holidays
Seasonal Resources
As an example, in the novel studies category, you will find these two resources for the middle grades novel, Pictures of Hollis Woods. As you can see, the second one is a freebie, in case you would like to try it out. You can find out more about any of the resources by viewing its preview.
This card game is now included with the novel study!
In Classroom in the Middle’s store, there are always a number of free resources! Currently, one of them is this informational text activity, Peaceful Transition of Power. It includes a magazine-style reading page, close reading questions, and an analyze and respond activity sheet.
The reading page is designed like a page in a magazine or textbook with four short articles, several images, and a number of text features. The content is about the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next as it is provided for in the US Constitution.
You can follow Classroom in the Middle at the store or on my Facebook page, where you will find posts announcing all the latest articles and resources as they are posted.
So, what Is Classroom in the Middle? Check it out for yourself!
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