Teaching Middle School ELA

BONUS: How to Use EB Resources With Your District Curriculum (Without Getting Behind or Overwhelmed)

• Caitlin Mitchell • Season 3

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If you’ve ever felt like you’re being told to “do more writing” without anyone actually showing you where it fits, this episode is for you. Today, Caitlin is joined by a familiar voice—our membership manager, Genevieve and a real classroom teacher using a district-mandated curriculum and EB Academics side by side. We share a simple, three-layer framework for using EB resources with district-mandated ELA curricula without losing alignment, pacing, or sanity. 

• Keeping district texts while upgrading activities
• Replacing weak writing lessons with the EB writing approach
• Using writing as a thinking framework for discussion
• Adding grammar games, vocabulary, and quick routines
• Mapping the year around assessments and standards
• Leveraging graphic organizers, sentence stems, and checks
• Aligning with admin priorities and showing results
• Low-risk pilot option for campus or team trials

Get all the details on our pilot program:  https://www.ebteacher.com/pilot-program  

Join us now! 

SPEAKER_01:

Well, hello, teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. This is a fun bonus episode that we are airing on how to use EB resources with your district mandated curriculum. And we really want you to be able to use EB without getting behind or feeling overwhelmed or any of that stuff. And so this was one of the most requested episodes that you guys submitted when I sent that survey out. So thank you so much for providing your feedback. And I hope that this episode is helpful for you. And I do want to say that if you have been listening for a while, I brought on a guest that you may have met before, Genevieve, who is our membership manager. And I figured she was the perfect person to ask to interview for this episode because she is actually a teacher who uses a district-mandated curriculum in her classroom, but also EB academics. So this episode is perfect to ask her to come on and share her expertise and her knowledge with you. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. 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. All right, Genevieve, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming back and talking to our teachers about this very specific topic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I'm so excited. I, as you said, use a district-mandated curriculum. And when I found EB, I knew that it was filling the gaps and it was just so much fun and engaging for my students. So it's it's gonna be great talking about this today.

SPEAKER_01:

And I figured you're the perfect person to ask because even at our batch planning live events, we've done like a couple of breakout rooms with teachers who use a district-mandated curriculum and EB, and you were able to help them really or help really guide them toward how to use EB as a supplement, not necessarily as their core curriculum, but really enhancing what they already had. And how did that go for you in those batch planning live breakout rooms?

SPEAKER_00:

They were great. Teachers had so many questions. Of course, a lot of some questions were, you know, how do I use EB with XYZ curriculum? Um, so you know, we have those specific curricula that we have that teachers have to use. But what I I try to talk about and what we're gonna talk about today is all the little tips and tricks and strategies to use with any district mandated curriculum so that anyone who uses a curriculum can easily weave EB into whatever they use.

SPEAKER_01:

Perfect. I'm so glad that you said that. So just so you guys know before we dive in, this is like if you're using, I'm not gonna name any specific curriculums, but if you're using this one or you're using that one or this one, et cetera, um, a lot of these little tips and strategies are gonna be helpful no matter what district-mandated curriculum you have to use. But if you are an EB teacher, of course, you can join in our community and ask specific questions to your specific curriculum. And if you're not an EB teacher and you've been thinking about joining our EB world and using EB as a supplement, I think that this should really um kind of give you peace of mind that it really can be used to enhance your curriculum in a really beautiful way. So the first thing that I want to start by talking about is that sometimes it feels or we have this belief, or our teachers run into this belief that it's impossible to fit it all in, right? We hear that all the time. And it makes teachers feel like they're bad at pacing or they're bad at time management. And that's not really exactly the problem, right? Would you say agreed?

SPEAKER_00:

It's not a teacher ish teacher issue at all. It's the the curriculum itself. It's missing things, it's packed with too many things that they don't need, you know. So we just have to figure out how to how to use what we have and then how to supplement with P B, of course.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And one of the things that I think is important that I want to address here too is that, you know, a lot of these curriculum. I was looking at this teacher online who is saying that she has, um, gosh, what is it called? They're doing their adopt, they're in an adoption cycle. And so she got all of these materials from all of these different curriculums of uh, you know, for them to look through. And one of the units that she shared was literally a book that had to have been 300 pages for just one unit. And I'm looking at that, I'm like, oh my gosh, that is so bloated with like, I don't even know what's in it. But I'm just like, that would be so overwhelming for my brain, I wouldn't even be able to handle it. Is that even necessary? And I think too, this is what we ran into at EB. We were looking to get, you know, approved by a very specific um company, and they wanted very specific items, let's just say, that we were like, I don't think that's necessary for teachers. And I think that's actually not gonna be beneficial to teachers at all. Um, so we kind of made the decision to back off of that path because it was gonna compromise our values and beliefs. But it was just so interesting to me. It was like this was the gold standard of curriculum. And I'm like, well, who determines what's the gold standard of curriculum? And, you know, I think as teachers, we kind of get trapped by this kind of system at play that we don't really have control over at all, but we do have control over certain things in our classrooms. And, you know, Genevieve, can you talk about like you have a district-mandated curriculum, you're not necessarily replacing it with EB. Like, what did you kind of figure out?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I like you said, I didn't replace anything. I'm just using EB to supplement what I already have, whatever gaps are missing. So I just had to figure out how to make it actually work for my students by integrating and weaving in EB resources that have the biggest impact, right? Perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

And so we're gonna talk about like exactly how you did that, right? So we know the problem. The problem is that the district mandated curriculum isn't the best. And then we have to supplement certain things, right, to help us. And also the problem is something that's outside of our control sometimes, that we can't necessarily always have a say in what we get to teach. Some of us do, which is beautiful and is respectful of teachers' professional opinions. Um, but that's not the case for everybody. So I want to talk about kind of this like three-layer integration framework that we've loosely established here at EB for how to weave in EB as a supplement to what you are already doing from your district mandated curriculum. So this is where I always tell people like listen closely because having a framework changes everything. And we're gonna walk you through right now. So, Genevieve, can you take us through kind of each layer of this, let's call it like the E B integration framework and how it works and how you use it in your classroom too.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. I love that. I love that name, E B integration. So the first thing, so the first thing I always think about is, you know, you have to keep your mandated curriculum. You can't well, some people can, but you can't just throw it all out, right? Um, if that's something that you can do, great. But if you have to keep it, you want to keep your mandated units and texts, especially the texts maybe in your textbook. Um, this keeps admin happy and keeps you aligned with all of your pacing expectations. So nothing gets tossed. We're just going to layer in, right? So then layer two, we have replace or add in probably what your district mandated curriculum is missing, which is writing instruction. That's how I found EB. Um, and I was looking for a robust writing framework or system that my district mandated curriculum did not have. And so this is where EB really comes in because instead of juggling random writing lessons from the curriculum or looking on teachers paid teachers for all these random things, teachers can simply plug in EB's writing structure, whether it's paragraph-based or essay-based, and use it across every text. I cover the EB writing approach first thing at the beginning of every year because I know that my students are going to use that for the rest of the year. Students have a framework to follow every time we write about our district texts. And that's the consistency that students are usually missing, right? The textbook might tell students to write an essay, but it doesn't break it down step by step for students like Eevee does. So students are just left wondering how to write the essays that they've been given from the text and not like exactly how to how to write them and how to think about the texts that they're given.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm going to interrupt really fast on this one and just say that this is what most school and districts come to us for is they say the writing portion of our mandated curriculum is less than desirable. And we have heard great things about your writing program. So we really want to use you as a writing supplement. Um, so that's huge. So if you are an EV teacher and you're like, I there's so much to choose from, which there is, right? That's the goal is to create autonomy for you so you can pick what works for you and what doesn't work for you. But if you do have a district-mandated curriculum, then we suggest you start with just the EBW approach. And if you do nothing else, that is so worth it for your students and the time that you're gonna put into it. Because to what Genevieve said, like students are still gonna read the texts that are mandated from your district, but now they're going to have the knowledge and the structure and the framework to very well write about what they're reading about. Because we we believe that students should be writing about what they're reading about. And a lot of the times in those textbooks that we have, it's like, here's a basic overview of an essay. And it's like, um, okay, that's not really helpful, right? With our approach to teaching writing, we explicitly teach every single layer of writing one step at a time. So it's like we start with tag as a full lesson for 20 minutes in class. And so it's like, yes, we slow down to speed up later because we have to teach our students all of those crucial components of an essay. And then what's beautiful too, eventually, and I'm I'm going a little bit too deep, maybe, is that once your students understand the essay structure, it's very simple to move them down into a paragraph structure using the same exact language and the same exact components of an essay. It just looks slightly different. And so this is really helpful because your students are still going to be reading the texts that are required to be read, but now you have this common writing framework and this common language for them to really convey their ideas. The other thing that's cool about the EBW approach and the way in which we teach it is that yes, it's a writing framework, but it's a thinking framework as much as it's a writing framework. So students are formulating claims, they're creating premises to support their claims, they're finding evidence from the text and justifying their reasoning. That doesn't just have to happen in an essay. That can happen in a classroom discussion. That can happen when they're working with um, you know, classmates and small group discussions or whatever it might be. And in fact, that's what my episode was about last week on January 6th. I titled it the first writing routine you should teach after break, but it really had nothing to do with writing and had everything to do with using the framework as a thinking framework. So if you haven't listened to that one, definitely go back and check that one out. So sorry, Genevieve, I totally went off topic on that one. But layer number two is to add in the writing instruction. And that's just how important it is. Can you, is there anything you want to add to that or you want to move into layer three? No, you said it perfectly.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it the first year that I used EB, I only used the EBW approach. And I saw my students grow when they're writing by leaps and bounds. And I was still using my district texts, right? But the way that they were writing about those texts, and to your point, thinking and discussing those, thinking about and discussing those texts was again leaps and bounds. They had the framework, they had the um they had the vocabulary to be able to go further in their discussions and in their thinking. So the EBW approach, hands down, is is the most important layer, I think. If you if you don't teach anything else EB, supplement with the writing approach, absolutely. Yeah. So layer three is, you know, if you do have a little more time or you do want to add in like some of these other things, you can um layer in EB routines in your daily or weekly routine that you already have. So for instance, um think about what is sustainable for you: grammar games, writing warmups, vocabulary work. You can layer those into your openings or your closings. Uh, we have our into, through, and beyond. You can take, you know, pieces of those and use those as your as your weekly routines if you want. So for instance, when grammar comes up in the textbook, I'll say, okay, instead of doing this worksheet from the textbook, you know, or this page from the textbook, let's play a grammar game first to hook my students. And then maybe we'll do the page in the textbook, right? So then I can at least say to admin, yes, we did it. We did the page in the textbook. But then they've also had that fun part. So using those um EV supplements to weave into your daily or weekly routine.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, another thing that I want to add into that a lot of our teachers will do is that if we have a text that's required in their curriculum, um, like the monsters are do on Maple Street, for example, is the first one that comes to mind. They'll just use our version of it as opposed to the unit that is from their district mandated curriculum. So sometimes you have the ability to like match things up in that capacity too. Um, but let's dive into Genevieve, like where this kind of fits into a real pacing guide as well. So, like, where does this stuff actually live in my week? And I was hoping that you could give some just real life examples from how you use EB in your classroom with your with your curriculum as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So you already gave one example. I taught ninth grade one year, and I are in our textbook was Romeo and Juliet, and I thought this is fantastic because it's in my textbook just the text and then some questions at the end of each act. And how boring is that, right? So I thought I'm gonna use what EB has, and I I'm again still reading the text from my textbook, but I'm using all of the activities that EB has provided in our Romeo and Juliet novel unit. So that's one example. That's a fantastic example. Um, the first thing I do in like a pacing guide is mapping my year around the school calendar and any assessments first. So I always plug in my school calendar days, and then this part is really important to map out your assessment days to the best of your ability, of course, so that I know which assessments are coming up and how to prepare my students for them. For instance, we have a district writing assessment that we are actually doing right now. And I am not using my textbook texts, I'm using EV text, but they all center around the essential question that I've been given and they all center around the standards that I've been given by my district. So I'm still using district stuff, just EVFying it because it's just more fun and engaging for my students. And they're gonna be more prepared for that essay. Um, and then of course, teach the EV writing approach first. Like I said, I taught it at the beginning of the year. So now they know how to write this district writing assessment that they have been just given, right? Um, and I use it for anything that we read. And then something else you can do in your pacing guide is again, say you have a text, and maybe it's not the exact same text as a novel unit or short story unit that we have, but you can use ED as a bridge to transition into that unit. And so you can front load skills that we that we use in our resources before you get in dive into the text. For instance, you can grab the into lesson of one of our units that matches the topic or the theme or the skill from your curriculum to hook your students. Then you can use the through as your or you can use the textbook as your through lesson. And then you can end with E B writing or discussion, like a Socratic seminar. Um, because our our writing is a thinking framework, as we've said. Uh so that's kind of how you can pick and choose what E B resources you want to use with your tasks. And then again, tying in those grammar, vocabulary, word study, and bell ringers as a weekly mini lesson that students can then apply directly to writing. And then this one's really important. If you don't have a lot of time to add those, you know, weekly routines in, you can always utilize graph E B graphic organizers. That is so such a game changer. Even today, my co-teacher in my um co-teach class in my special education class, she said, okay, um, you know, let's use our graphic organizers. This is to the students, let's use our graphic organizers that that you've worked with so that you can write this essay, right? So students are using the EV graphic organizer to help them write this writing assessment. Um, you can also use EV sentence stems that we provide in a lot of our units and especially in the EBW writing approach. You can use application to writing checklists for grammar, and then for our pro tier and all access members, we have the skill-based passages. I really love those because after we've done this whole unit, I can grab one of those skills-based passages and, you know, say our focus standard is main idea. And I can give them the main idea skill-based passage, and that's like a formative assessment right there that maybe I don't have in my textbook. So that's a lot, but you, you know, you pick and choose what you need and and when you need it.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think too, I mean, it it is, it sounds like a lot, but it's really not. And you don't have to start right with all of that. Like to our point, just start with the writing program. And then the second thing that you could layer in is perhaps the way I love that you did the grammar. So right at EB, if you're using just Just E B. We teach you to use direct instruction, then the grammar games, then the application to writing. Well, that might not be what you're able to do. Maybe you have to teach it this way through the textbook, but you could use one of our grammar games for that particular grammar skill to hook students before you even start teaching the concept and then do the boring worksheet, right? That's mandated from your school or your district. So there's just a variety of ways to use it. And I think the payoff in like the little bit of extra work that goes into it is so worth it because your students are much more engaged, they want to be there, you want to be there, right? Because it's fun. Um, and it also gives you some sense of autonomy. And I think that that's a big part in wanting to do what's best for your students, at least for me. Like if someone told when someone tells me, this is just my personality, but when someone tells me what to do, I'm like, definitely not gonna do that. But if I'm allowed to do my own thing and make my own choices, I feel just much more like I'm the trusted professional in that regard. Um, so perhaps this gives you like that little bit of autonomy that you're really seeking outside of your district mandated curriculum as well. Um, what are some things that our teachers could say to their administrators? Like, how did you approach your administrator with using EB as a supplement? I know that this is a really big hiccup. And I will say that if you are listening to this when it airs on January 15th, we are in the middle of our pilot program promotion. So that means that you can get access to our all access suite, which is literally everything EB has to offer. Our formative assessments, our benchmark assessments, our student logins. We're adding more tests into the student portal so that you're you have a ton of self-grading options for vocabulary and word study and any other assessments that we have in the EB world. But this is a great opportunity to bring EB to your admin as a supplement and say, hey, it's$300. This lasts until uh January 22nd that you have the opportunity to join the pilot program and you get access through the end of the school year. So it's a great low barrier to entry opportunity to have a conversation with your admin of like, look, I'm not gonna not use the district mandated curriculum, but I really need support in these other areas, or I really want to make it more fun for my students. Um, so this is a great opportunity to talk to your admin. You can go to eBteacher.com forward slash pilot dash program for more information. I'll put that link into the show notes for you guys as well. But Genevieve, can you tell our teachers how you originally perhaps approached your admin about using EB in the classroom? Like how did that conversation go for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Well, about four or five years ago when I found EB, we I did have a lot more autonomy. So I kind of just closed my door, which you gave me permission for. And I used our writing program. Um and I did still, of course, use the text because you know, I wanted to, I wanted to make sure that I was doing what I needed to do. But I knew that the writing program was gold. So I just kind of closed my door. And then that year I got really great results. And my principal came to me and said, Hey, this is amazing. And I said, and this is what I used. And I showed uh I showed her E B and she was like, This is great, you know, keep using it. Um, and and I have ever since, and and I've had admin turnover, you know, throughout the years, and and so I kind of constantly have to, you know, say to them, this is why I'm using it. But, you know, something as simple as I'm keeping our required texts and I'm aligned to the standards. I'm just using a consistent framework so students can show mastery more clearly across all of my units. And that usually lands well because you're not saying that you're changing what you're teaching, you're just improving how students demonstrate mastery.

SPEAKER_01:

Beautiful. It's really just an enhancement to what you're already doing. Because I think a lot of administrators, they feel pressure from above them, right? They feel pressure from the amount of money that's being spent. We have to do this thing, right? Um, so they're just trying to do their job, right? Which sometimes makes our job as teachers a little bit harder. Um, but one of the things that I do want to say with this is it's like you've got to look at it as you're not necessarily breaking the rules. I think a lot of the times teachers feel like, oh, this is risky. I don't want to do this. And Genevieve, what would you say to a teacher who's maybe feeling that like kind of maybe fear around bringing EB, like they're gonna get in trouble or something?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. It's not breaking the rules, you're aligning with best practice, right? You're still teaching the standards, you're still using the required texts, you're just giving the students uh this writing and thinking structure that they need to thrive. And you know, EB is flexible by design, you know, like to your point earlier, we have so much in our portal. And it's impossible to even use everything that EB offers. And so that's why it works with different district curricula instead of you know, just like trying to fit every single thing in, like pick and choose, take what fits for you, take what you need, and just make it work for you and your students.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I love that. I think sometimes teachers just need that permission to make that decision because a lot of the times it feels like we don't have the permission to make those choices. So again, you know, I just want to remind you guys that this is the perfect opportunity to take us up on this pilot program, bring this to your administrator and let them know, like, hey, this is a very, there's no um, what's the word I'm looking for? There's no like long-term risk really. It's only$300. You get access to our whole all access suite through the end of the school year. And it just gives you the opportunity to really test out EB using some of the strategies that we've shared today, of even if it's just the writing program, or even if it's just some of our super, super engaging writing units that are short, like our detective lesson activities that have students work with claim, premise, evidence, justification, you're gonna notice that when an EB activity is being used in your classroom, the student engagement is just different. And your feeling about teaching is just different as well. So I just want to kind of end this by saying like, this is such an important reminder that you don't necessarily need a new curriculum. You don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know, is that a phrase that I used properly just there? That's the one. Okay, you got it. Thank you. You don't need to get rid of everything, right? You just need a better system and better supports for the one that you already have. So using EB as a supplement is a great opportunity and option for that. So thank you so much for being here, Genevieve. It was lovely to have you. Yes, thank you. I always love coming on the podcast and talking to everyone. So thank you so much. Yeah, we'll have to have you back another time. Um, and thank you guys so much for listening and for being here. And we will see you next week on the podcast. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.