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
Re-Air Transform Your Planning Process and Take Back Your Time
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Let's listen once again to one of our Podcast Favorites. This episode empowers middle school ELA teachers to plan an entire month or semester of lessons in advance, transforming the weekly grind into a streamlined, stress-free process. Learn to map out units, align with standards, and categorize lessons into 'into,' 'through,' and 'beyond' for maximum impact. Say goodbye to late-night planning and hello to high-quality lessons and personal time!
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 1:So let's talk about why we should batch plan. So I want you to imagine this You've become an expert batch planner, right, and we'll talk about what that means. And you actually leave school when the bell rings. You don't even bring a teacher bag home with you, because you already have all of your lessons done for the next month or the next two months or even the whole semester, whatever it might be right? So that's who you are. You leave your bag at school and you don't take it home. You come to school with a purse and you leave school with a purse. Like what Could you imagine? Yes, because we did.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, love it. And this is possible for you, right? It was possible for us. It's possible for thousands of EB teachers who are now batch planners. And it happens when you master the four steps of batch planning. And the best part is your scope and sequence will actually be organized and building on different concepts and your students are mastering the standards and sequence will actually be organized and building on different concepts and your students are mastering the standards and you're actually fitting in everything you need to cover, even if you only have 43-minute class periods.
Speaker 2:And then, not to mention, you have your nights back, you have your weekends back. You can go to the yoga class you want to, you can watch a movie, you can hang out with your family, you can start planning that trip you've been thinking about for months. Right Now, you can do all those things because you're a batch planner. So, before we dive into like the steps, those two simple steps to transform your planning process, I just want you to know that we don't want to give you all four steps right now, because we don't want to overwhelm you, right? We want to make this manageable for you. So we're going to give you two of our favorite steps, and these are two steps that you can take, and then you can use them immediately so you can begin batch planning for this next school year and then enjoy the rest of your summer right Not even think about school until you walk in the door for those teacher meetings in August.
Speaker 1:Yes, and before we dive into these two things I just want to share, I also recorded a YouTube video about this, where I actually show you, like on a calendar, on my whiteboard, so you can get a visual of it too. So listen to it here, go over to our YouTube channel, watch it over there. I think it'll really like start to solidify the concepts and make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel too, because we have a new episode that goes out every single week. Okay, so the very first thing is to nail down your big units and content standards. So first things first is you want to take a moment to write down all of the big units that you plan on covering in that first month or two of the school year, like however long you're going to decide to lesson plan for. Is it a novel unit? Is it a few short stories? Is it a poetry unit? Is it a mixture of literature and informational text? Whatever it's going to be Like, write down those big, big units.
Speaker 1:So, for instance, in eighth grade, september was often when we read the House on Mango Street, right? I always started my eighth graders with that, so I would jot this down as my main focus for that first month or so as I start my batch planning session, and my goal would be to map out this unit right. Then, once you know the focus of the first unit that you choose, then you can determine the standards that you want to cover within that unit. So if I'm looking at my September calendar, I'm literally drawing like arrows through, like the. You know the first through, like whatever, the 27th of the month, however long it's going to take me to get through that. So I'm like marking it down on my calendar so that I know this is this one big unit that I'm going to be teaching during this time period. Okay, and that's great. Then I want to determine what standards I want to cover because, again, we're going to use our standards as our guide, which we talked about recently on a recent podcast episode.
Speaker 1:And if you're an EB Teachers Club member, what's great is that you can use your standards checklist, right. You can go to your EB Teachers Club dashboard. You can download your Common Core State Standards checklist and mark things off. Okay, I'm doing this standard here. So, like we're keeping track of what we're doing, right, if you're not an EB Teachers Club member, you can totally go to the Common Core State Standard website and, you know, create your own little checklist from there. Or perhaps you're a TEKS teacher. Whatever state standards your state uses, right? You are looking at your grade level, ela standards. You print them out for your grade level.
Speaker 1:You determine exactly which ones you're going to cover in this very first unit, because knowing which standards you're going to focus on in the month or two that you're planning for that's going to make your planning time so much more focused. We don't get distracted. Oh, maybe I should do this, or maybe I saw this thing on TikTok this one time, or whatever, right? No, we're staying hyper-focused on these standards because they are our North star. They should be your sole focus on everything that you're going to teach. So even if you saw something on TPT or on TikTok or on whatever is the new social media thing nowadays?
Speaker 1:Right, you want to be thinking about does that align with my standards that I want to cover? And if it doesn't, you don't do it. Right? As sexy as it might be that you want to, like, try this thing. If it's not standards aligned, like we're not bringing that into our classrooms. Right, we get to be very intentional. I know that was one of the words that at our last batch planning live event that we did with our teachers, it was like what landed the most, and a lot of teachers said just this thought of being intentional being intentional with what we're doing and we use the standards in order to do that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is one of the reasons why a lot we find that a lot of teachers find it difficult to cover everything in their class periods is because they're trying to cover so many concepts that actually aren't a part of their grade level standards. Right, we got to trim that excess off in order to focus on what's necessary for your grade level and for this particular unit, and so if you're having trouble figuring out which standards to focus on, you might consider covering any that have to do with our favorites, which is finding evidence, justifying the evidence, right, things like that, because those are present everywhere. Those are present in reading for informational text standards. Those are present in reading for literature standards. Those are present in writing standards, right. So those are some of those big ones that are really helpful to focus on, especially if you're first sitting down to batch plan.
Speaker 1:So these concepts, like I said, are covered in those standards for grades five through eight. Right, it's across the board. So choosing these concepts, that's a great way to start set the foundation for being able to cover other standards throughout the year. So tip number one and I know that was fast, that was like fast and furious it felt like, but again, I think the YouTube video is going to help support exactly what we're saying and they're both going to benefit each other, because we're going to talk about a little things differently here than I talked about in that YouTube video. But tip number one is to plan out your big units and keep them aligned to the standards.
Speaker 2:And then tip number two is to structure those big units using the into, through and beyond framework. So each of your units is going to start off with an into lesson and then with that, your number one goal is to like hook your students, grab their attention, get them excited. So a quality into lesson is going to set your students up for success with the upcoming unit. So it's typically like one class period, maybe two, and you might provide background information, you might introduce key vocabulary, or you're just going to set the scene for your unit of study and again, the key is to make it fun, make it engaging. So they're like okay, this is really interesting to me, I want to come to class, I want to learn more, right, you want to get their buy-in. And then the heart of your unit are your through lessons. Gosh, I'm like having trouble speaking today, I'm like getting over a cold and I feel like it's like all fuzz in my brain.
Speaker 1:I actually can't. I can't tell that was the first time. Oh well, okay, Well, good, Good Now.
Speaker 2:I drew attention to it. So you're in your through lessons this is like the meat of your unit, and here your number one goal is to provide your students with opportunity after opportunity to practice those standards that you're covering. So if you're doing a literature unit, some of those through lessons might be like reading a chapter or two, having a discussion, having a Socratic seminar, filling out an evidence tracker, doing a characterization activity, whatever it is that's aligned to the standards for that particular unit. And then your unit will wrap up with a beyond lesson and your main goal here is to provide students with an opportunity to apply what they've learned during the unit. So a quality beyond lesson is going to allow your students to demonstrate what they've learned, demonstrate how well they've mastered those standards and, honestly, like it's really one to two class periods Again, maybe it's a final project, maybe it's an essay they're writing, maybe it's some kind of presentation, whatever it is, they're showcasing their knowledge.
Speaker 2:So then, excuse me, for every unit that you plan during the year, you're going to follow that framework into through and beyond. So, caitlin, do you want to take it from there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. One of the things that we want to talk about here is, like having a planning framework. You didn't cover this, right. It makes planning so much more efficient because you're plugging stuff in, okay. So having a planning framework you didn't cover this right. It makes planning so much more efficient because you're plugging stuff in, okay. So having a planning framework is great because it makes it so much more efficient for you, because what you're doing is you get to think about do I need an into lesson, do I need a through lesson, or do I need a beyond lesson? And again, I talk about this more in depth too in our YouTube video and I kind of show you, like, what that looks like on a calendar as you're planning and then you get to plug it in right.
Speaker 1:Once you get really, really good at batch planning, you'll be able to not just plan for a month or two at a time, but you can plan for the entire year in one weekend, which is what Jessica and I did, right, like it. Just it's a skill, right. It's a skill that just gets honed in over time. You just get better and better and better at it, and no matter how far in advance you batch plan each week. What happens is you just get to make minor tweaks to your lessons, right, you can walk out the door each day when the bell rings. You know your lessons are done, your copies are made Like.
Speaker 1:We talked to our teachers about a little bit of a framework of how they could do that. You know, like Thursday Jessica, during her prep period, would plan for the next week. I stayed 30 minutes extra on Fridays and did it right, whatever works for you. But what you're doing is like. I remember I would go in on Mondays sometimes and I'd be like, oh my gosh, wait, what am I? What am I doing? Because everything was all set up for me Copies made on my desk, lesson plan printed out. I didn't even think about school until the bell rang on Monday morning. Right, like it was. It's just a wild experience to go from planning all the time to like being given this gift really like it's a gift of like just your life back.
Speaker 1:You know, and by batch planning, like you are singularly focused on planning quality lessons, and that's what I love about it, whereas opposed to when you're planning day to day and like you're looking online what can I do tomorrow to teach Jaren's. That's not intentional planning. That's actually a massive disservice to not just you but your students. So why not set aside just this little bit of time? Like there's to me? There's no argument against batch planning. Like there's just no argument against it.
Speaker 1:People will say the biggest argument against it is well, how do you plan for the students that you're going to have, which is a hundred percent fair. But because I have the foundations of what I want to do, it's actually a lot easier for me, once I meet my students and get to understand their needs and the dynamic of this class and the culture of this class, whatever to make those adjustments on top of the foundation of what I've already created. It doesn't work to wait to meet them and then start planning. I'm not going to do nearly as good of a job and as intentional of a job as I could have done if I at least had the foundations first that I could then make adaptations to. So I love that. Was there anything else that you wanted me to say?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you kind of started touching on this. But when you're intentional with batch planning, it becomes so much more effective because I don't know about you. When I was planning you know, week to week, way back when it was so distracting, right, I would have a teacher walk into the classroom and talk to me or I'd be like oh wait, shoot, I need to respond to that parent email. So I'd stop planning, I'd go do that. Then I'd come back to it and it was like where am I? So my plans now that I look back on it, we're not as strong as they could have been because I wasn't 100% invested. But with batch planning it's like that is your sole focus and so it really just does like up-level what you're creating.
Speaker 1:Yep, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. I could not agree more. So if you're excited, you want to learn a little bit more about batch planning. You want to start this next school year off like on the right foot, ready to go. But, more importantly, like you want people to hold you accountable, you want people to show you what to do. I think of it like like going to the gym Sorry, everything's going to be about working.
Speaker 2:All good.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm done, apologizing, it just is this Just?
Speaker 2:say it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just say it. Um, you think about you join the gym and you could go and you could do the exercises yourself A hundred percent. You could watch some stuff online, whatever, try to bring that into the gym but you don't have a plan and you're not being taught by somebody who knows what they're doing. Right, it's a very different experience when you have a trainer and the trainer shows you this is your nutrition plan, this is your workout plan, these are your splits, this is exactly what you're doing. This is you're actually going to find it's more. It's actually easier.
Speaker 1:Right Before, I had a trainer and I was actually doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was doing, you know, running, and I was doing cycling and all this stuff. That actually wasn't helpful for my body type. What I needed to be doing was lifting strong, heavy weights, not doing a ton of cardio, right, but I wouldn't have known that if I didn't have the guidance from somebody to show me what I was supposed to be doing. All right, you guys, we will see you soon. Bye, everyone, bye.