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.
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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 312: Grab a Soccer Ball and Try this Discussion Activity Immediately
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Ready to have a ball during story and book discussions? In this episode, learn how to use a soccer or beach ball to create dynamic, engaging discussion experience with your students. We’ll walk you through all the steps, from creating prompts to guiding student conversations with discussion stems. Plus, hear about the researched benefits of adding movement to your lessons, like improving focus and classroom management.
Tune in for a fun, practical idea that you can "kick off" right away in your classroom!
Some of you might already know what I'm about to say, but some of you might not, and that is that movement can boost focus and memory while also improving classroom management. And that is exactly what the research actually says. And in today's episode, we are sharing a fun movement-based activity that uses a soccer or a beach ball to spark student conversations about stories or books. Plus, we've got simple steps, discussion prompts and sentence stems that are going to take your discussions in your class to the next level. So come, take a listen and get your students up and moving and having some fun in your classroom. 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:Hello everyone, Welcome back to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. I'm Jessica and I'm here with Megan, and it's Thanksgiving week. So happy Thanksgiving week everyone. I love this time of year. Me too. It's like my favorite time of year. Do you have the whole week off for Thanksgiving or just half week? Just half?
Speaker 3:week Wednesday, thursday.
Speaker 1:Friday.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Friday, friends, I'm going to go see Home Alone live with the Kansas City Symphony, and I'm so pumped it is the best.
Speaker 2:I think I told you that how we've done that in San Francisco for years, and Davey this year was like is it happening again? Are we going? And this year they're not doing Home Alone, which is, hands down, my favorite it's Elf, which is also good.
Speaker 3:Oh, my gosh Elf is so good and we've seen Home Alone Gosh that scene in the church at the end like, oh, I know the whole thing and the theme song is beautiful, anyway, yeah, it's going to be great. I know we could go on a tangent, just about that.
Speaker 2:What a great way to like end Thanksgiving week. Yes, I'm so pumped for this whole week. We actually it's our first time getting the entire week off for our kids Like I've never had this before and I'm like we're pulling them early from school. Actually, by the time you guys will listen to this, this will already have happened, but I'm flying to San Francisco so we'll be with family for the whole week. Like I just cannot wait. I'm like dreaming of my mom's banana cream pie for Thanksgiving. Oh, that's delicious, so good. I mean, it's like kind of random, I feel like for Thanksgiving, but no cream pie is always on the docket.
Speaker 3:Yeah, love it.
Speaker 2:All right, but back to today's episode. This is actually a really fun one. It's all about adding movement to your ELA lessons. Specifically, we're going to be talking about one really engaging idea that students are sure to have a ball with, and if you caught our title for this episode, you'll notice that little pun there.
Speaker 3:This is going to be a super fun discussion activity that kids are really going to get a kick out of. There's another pun for you. We're wanting to offer you all, just like a fun movement-based activity, because movement really is so helpful in the learning process. It can improve focus and attention, it supports memory, it calms nerves, anxiety, it increases social interaction and more. And there's actually a lot of research that supports the case for more movement in the classroom, and one article that sums up several benefits really nicely is called the Effects of Movement in the Classroom by educator Carrie Jean Braniff, and feel free to Google it for more info. But basically through a small action research study, she observed that movement could help students engage in learning, pay better attention and also feel less anxious. I mean.
Speaker 2:And who wouldn't want that in the classroom, right? And in addition to that, as teachers we know that it can also improve classroom management. Think about it. Movement can help your students stay engaged, stay on task, and doesn't that help those negative behaviors that come when students are bored, when they're distracted? Of course it does. It also helps students get their wiggles out, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Adolescents and teens have a lot of energy to spend, but so often they are stuck sitting for most of the day, and that has got to be so frustrating. I'm thinking of Jameson now. I talk about him a lot in the podcast sixth grade right now the way his school organized their electives. This year he had PE for an entire quarter I think I told this to Megan and then tomorrow no, today, as we record, today is his last day of PE, so he doesn't get it for the rest of the year. He moves on to art for a quarter and music for a quarter and writing for a quarter. His school also does not have recess, which is a whole other story for me. They have lunch recess, but my active athletic kid gets maybe 15 minutes a day to move. It's not enough, right? So I'm thinking what are his favorite classes besides PE, when a teacher is like today we're doing some kind of moving activity or we're going out to the schoolyard and we're doing an experiment, anything to get him up and moving. So the one that we're going to share today I know Jameson would love it. I know so many middle schoolers would love it because it's simple but it gets them active. So we actually got the inspiration for this idea from Ashley Bible.
Speaker 2:A lot of you may know her. She's a building book love and she was actually a guest on our podcast way back on episode 29, where she shared all about bringing podcasts into your classroom. So if you don't follow her already, she's fantastic, definitely go check her out. And you can actually find her article about this idea that we're gonna share on buildingbooklovecom and her article is called how to Liven Up your Socratic Seminar and Get Students Talking. So again, go check that out. But we're kind of adapting it, getting taking some ideas from that and how you can bring it into your own classroom. So Megan is going to share with you how you can prep for this idea with your students.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love Ashley Bible. We should have her back on the podcast. Let's make that happen.
Speaker 2:She's fantastic and such a sweet human.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, just a gem of a human being, absolutely so. Okay, for this lesson you will need a Sharpie marker and a soccer ball. I hope that intrigues you all. So the ball can be real, or it can be inflatable, and you can also use a beach ball instead, if you want. So if you don't have a soccer ball on hand to use, we recommend reaching out to your community, emailing maybe staff or parents, or even reaching out to your local community group, just to ask for a donation of a soccer ball that's in fairly good condition. People generally love to help teachers and lots of families have, you know, old soccer balls running around the house. So, please, oh sorry, so I was going to add a pun here. You might have an old soccer ball kicking around the house. There's another pun for you.
Speaker 2:I love it. Students would be like oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:So back to the lesson. So on the white parts of the soccer ball or on the stripes of your beach ball that's what you choose to use You're going to use the Sharpie to write your questions or your prompts. So a note here that soccer balls usually have about 20 white spaces that you can write on, but a beach ball only has six stripes usually. So if you're using a beach ball you may want to use more than one ball. So on the ball you're going to write your discussion prompts. These will probably be questions or prompts to help students discuss a short story or novel. But you can be creative and just use it for informational text too, or poetry. Even so, you are writing with permanent markers, so just write very general questions so that you can reuse this ball with any similar text. So here are some examples if students will be discussing, maybe, a short story or a novel.
Speaker 3:First one how does blank enhance the story? Next, why did the author blank? Third one how would the story change if? Next, explain a theme, then describe the main character. Next one is what role does blank play? Why is blank important to the story? And finally, why is the setting important? So you get the idea here Students will be asking these questions to each other during the discussion, so it will help you to share with these questions with them the day before the discussion, to give them the time to consider their responses, of course, and kind of along with how they want to fill in those blanks when asking a question. So then, jessica, tell us what's next in this lesson. Okay, so you?
Speaker 2:have your soccer ball ready. You've shared the questions and prompts with your students. They've taken time to consider them. Maybe they've jot down some notes about how they would fill in those blanks or answer the question, if you know. A peer asked it of them.
Speaker 2:So now let's talk about discussion sentence stems. So we find it really helpful to generate some good sentence stems as a class and display them clearly on the board or screen so students have them on hand to use as a discussion, right? Because in a minute or you know when you do this lesson, students are going to be throwing that ball around and asking those questions. We don't want them to be like um, uh and then just have a very basic answer. We want to give them some guidance here.
Speaker 2:So there are lots of kinds of stems you can use, but if you want to keep it simple, you can focus on stems for agreeing and adding on, stems for disagreeing and then stems for agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. So first we're going to talk about agreeing and adding on, because we all know nothing kills a discussion faster than when students just nod their heads and say yeah, I agree or good, point, right, and they don't add anything new and they think well, that counts as participation. Oh my gosh, that just grinds my gears. So it makes me really think of the rules of improv. If you've ever gone to like an improv show, I don't know, have you done that, megan?
Speaker 3:I have actually. They're quite fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it too.
Speaker 2:And it's like one of the first rules of improv If you're participating in it, you're always supposed to say yes and to keep the scene moving forward. So keep that in mind. If you ever go to an improv show, you'll notice when they're not. They're not acting, they're improvising, but they're never just going to say no and kill the whole scene. They're going to say yes, and, and it's the same thing for our discussions with our students. So here's a few that we really like, and your students could, of course, come up with more you might have written down. I agree with you because that's a good point. Another example that supports that point is to add to your point I share your view about blank. Furthermore, you make a great observation to add to that. So notice, students are always adding more information. It's not just yep, good point.
Speaker 2:Next, for disagreeing, you can brainstorm ways to respectfully share an alternate view. So here are just a few. That's a valid thought, but I disagree because I respect that viewpoint. But have you considered? That's an interesting point. Alternatively, perhaps I can see where you're coming from, but I think I hear what you're saying, but on the other hand, and then finally, sometimes we both agree and we disagree at the exact same time.
Speaker 2:So here are some stems that can really help students articulate these more nuanced responses. I agree with your point, but for a different reason, and then they could go on and explain it. I agree with you on blank, but my thoughts differ on blank. I agree about blank, but I think we should also consider blank. I agree that blank, but I have a different view on blank.
Speaker 2:Or I had the same thought, but I changed my mind because and I promise you, you are going to be blown away with how much stronger your class discussions are when you not only have these stems displayed but you require students to use them. And I know some of you listening are like my students are never going to say that stuff. They're going to think it's cheesy, they're going to think it's ridiculous. Well, tough right, Make it a requirement until they can naturally hold a higher level discussion without those sentence stems. I promise you, if you make it that requirement, your whole discussions are elevated. And I feel like I've shared this before on the podcast, but I had these sentence stems on display all the time in my classroom and it was a requirement for my students to use them, and one time my principal unexpectedly walked in and he, I will never forget, Brian was the kid's name. Brian was like that's a valid thought, but I disagree because, and he like went on to say and my principal like just looked at me in the back of the room like what?
Speaker 2:is happening in here and I was like, yep, this is how they talk now and it's fantastic and our discussions were so much better, so please give it a try and I do feel like when you use sentence stems, you're always going to have those kids that are bought in regardless.
Speaker 3:Yeah, once the other kids hear them use those sentence stems, they, they see how good it sounds and they don't want to be left out. It has been my experience. So I, you know, give it a whirl.
Speaker 2:Well, I like your, I like hearing your experience, especially having taught eighth graders, because those are probably the students who are like I don't know if I want to say this.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, exactly. So it does work, even with the older kids, promise. Okay, now, with those stems displayed on your board or your screen, you are ready to play or discuss, as it were. So I'm going to share the rules the way that you'll say them to students. So note that if you have a really big class, you can actually use two balls instead of just one and kind of break the group into two circles, if you'd like. So if it's a small group, you can toss the ball, and if it's a large group, you can gently kick it. If students are kicking it, the recipient will pick it up once it's kicked to them. We've worked these directions as if you're tossing it, but you can change the wording as needed. So, step one form a circle.
Speaker 3:Step two the teacher starts by tossing the ball to a student. Step three the student checks where their dominant hand is touching the ball. So the student reads a question or prompt from that particular section and if there's a blank, they will fill it in with details from the story. Step four the student tosses the ball to another student to answer. Step five the student who catches the ball uses a sentence stem from the board to respond. Step six if someone wants to add to the discussion, they can raise their hand and the student holding the ball can call on them. Step seven when done, repeat that process. The student with the ball reads a question from the section their hand is touching and tosses the ball to a new student. Step eight include everyone by tossing the ball to students who haven't spoken yet. And step nine if all the prompts in your section have been discussed, choose a nearby section to read and that's it. And you can rinse and repeat this game with the next story your class reads, and you'll see that they get better every single time.
Speaker 2:It sounds like so much fun, doesn't it? Yeah, oh, yes, yes, and it's like organized fun. You know you got to set the parameters and the guidelines, but students can do it, I promise For sure. So now let's talk about what you can do with that soccer or that beach ball when you're not using it for a circle discussion, like Megan just went over Because of course, you don't want to keep such a fun prop in your classroom and not use it all the time, right?
Speaker 2:Well, not all the time, but you know enough of a time to keep students into it. So if your ball is inflatable, you can use it during full class lectures or discussions when you want students to respond to a question or share an idea. So, instead of calling on students, instead just toss them the ball, and you may find that some of your quieter students are actually begging you to give them a turn to respond. Right, like, I don't know. It just involves them in the game, and then they're more likely to share because they don't actually have to raise their hand and, like, initiate it. And this is a fun one, whether you're using a real soccer ball or an inflatable beach ball, but you can set up two soccer goals in your classroom, the front of the room, or you could even go, you know, if you have like a big multi-purpose room at school or out to the schoolyard, you can do this.
Speaker 2:And you can make these little goals out of cardboard boxes or laundry baskets or even just painter's tape on the floor, and then what you would do is call up students, one at a time, to respond to a question that has two options.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if students are learning similes and metaphors, you could read one out and the student kicks the ball in the first goal if they think it's a simile, or the second goal if they think it's a metaphor, and then have them explain their thinking after they kick. So for that one they're not using the prompts on the ball, they're just physically using the prop for a different game. And then you can also use this for taking a position. So, for example, you could give a controversial statement related to students reading. Like people always deserve a second chance. The student kicks the ball into the first goal if they agree, into the second one if they disagree, and then you tally the votes on the board, have students talk about the statement. As a class, you can really get creative with these goals, use them throughout the year with honestly any different topic, just to add some kind of fun and something different to a lesson.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that last idea because it's almost a different version of pick sides Totally yeah, but they're doing the same thing but with a prop, which is really fun, and there is something about bringing props in the classroom. I think I said this on a previous episode, but I have this Pete the cat pointer in my classroom this year and, like you know, we do a lot of fun games in music class but, like, sometimes there's a few things that I'm teaching that gets a little dry. But like, I pull out the Pete the cat pointer and all of a sudden you have volunteers answering questions, so it's not funny how that works Something so simple but so effective yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 3:Super fun activity and we hope our listeners really enjoyed these ideas to get kids moving around. So try some out soon to help your students kind of really flex their discussion muscles, excuse me, and definitely let us know how it goes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and all of you. Please have a wonderful Thanksgiving break. If you're spending time with your families, enjoy that. We are so incredibly grateful for all of you in this community and we appreciate you spending time with us listening to this podcast. So happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and Megan have a fabulous time at home alone. I cannot wait to hear more about it.
Speaker 3:Will do. Happy Thanksgiving everybody.
Speaker 2:Bye everyone.