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One of my favorite back-to-school tasks is setting up and organizing my classroom whiteboard. Whiteboard organization helps teachers create routines and establish porcedures in the classroom. Since my whiteboard is the focal point of my classroom, I want it to be both functional and visually appealing. A well-organized whiteboard helps students stay on track, makes classroom routines run more smoothly, and creates a welcoming learning environment from day one.

Over the years, I’ve found a handful of classroom organization tools that make a huge difference. Here are some of my favorite whiteboard organization essentials that help me start the school year strong.

Create a Defined Whiteboard Space with Borders

Adding a decorative border around your whiteboard instantly makes it look more polished and intentional. Borders help frame important information and can even make your classroom feel more inviting. For years, I’ve used these magnetic whiteboard borders to instantly organize and transform my classroom whiteboard.

Some of my favorite options include:

• Magnetic Border: A simple and versatile option that easily attaches to magnetic whiteboards and creates clean visual sections. Magnetic Border
• Crayon Scribble Border: Perfect for adding a colorful and creative touch without overwhelming the space. Crayon Scribble Border
• Composition Notebook Border: Great for English teachers who love a classic academic look. Composition Notebook Border

I like using borders to create designated areas for daily agendas, learning targets, important reminders, and classroom announcements.

Add Functional Storage Directly to the Whiteboard

One of the easiest ways to reduce clutter is by keeping frequently used supplies within reach. Plus, you’ll always know where they are.

A whiteboard organizer can hold markers, erasers, magnets, sticky notes, and other classroom essentials right where you need them. Instead of searching for supplies throughout the day, everything stays organized and accessible.

My favorite option is this convenient Whiteboard Organizer because it holds my markers and the eraser. Plus, my students know that markers stored within this organizer are off-limits.

Display Classroom Novels and Read-Alouds

One of my favorite back-to-school traditions is displaying our class novels for the year. Not only does this build excitement for upcoming units, but it also helps students visualize their reading journey. Sometimes I choose to display the book I am currently reading, and other times I choose to display the class novel and the current page we are on.

A small magnetic bookshelf placed on the whiteboard creates the perfect display area for class novels, featured reads, and fun decor.

I use a compact Bookshelf that keeps books visible and organized without taking up valuable classroom space. Plus, it adds a valuable focal point for my classroom whiteboard.

Displaying novels on the whiteboard area often sparks conversations and helps create a reading community from the very first week of school.

Keep Your Whiteboard Clean and Easy to Read

No matter how organized your whiteboard is, it can quickly become difficult to read if marker residue starts building up. After years in the classroom working on classroom organization, I’ve found that these two teacher supply items are absolutely essential!

Two classroom supply essentials I never start the year without are:

• A quality Whiteboard Eraser (I take these home every few weeks and throw them into the washing machine with my cleaning towels, and they are as good as new).
• Reliable Whiteboard Cleaner (Seriously, nothing beats this whiteboard cleaner. It helps so much for whiteboard organization).
• And of course, I use these Whiteboard Markers to for vibrant colors that are easy to read.

Regular cleaning helps prevent ghosting and keeps instructional materials looking fresh and professional all year long.

Suggested Whiteboard Sections

If you’re wondering how to organize your whiteboard layout, here are the sections I recommend:

Daily Agenda

Students know exactly what to expect each day.

Learning Targets or Objectives

Keep standards and lesson goals visible throughout instruction. And you know, admins love to see the learning targets and objectives on the board. This past school year, I moved away from displaying my learning objectives permanently on my board, and I now include them in my Daily Agenda Slides.

Homework and Upcoming Deadlines

A dedicated area reduces confusion and helps students stay organized. Again, I have a dedicated space for this on my Daily Agenda Slides.

Important Announcements

Use magnets, sticky notes, or a designated corner for reminders.

Current Novel or Unit Focus

Display novels, essential questions, vocabulary, or anchor charts connected to your current unit.

Final Thoughts

A thoughtfully organized whiteboard does more than make your classroom look nice. It helps establish routines, improve classroom management, and create a learning environment where students know exactly where to find important information.

With a few simple organizational tools, decorative borders, and storage solutions, you can transform your whiteboard into a functional command center that supports teaching and learning all year long. For more classroom supply ideas, be sure to check out my Amazon strorefront: The Daring English Teacher’s Amazon Favorites.

If you are gearing up for a new school year, you might be interested in how I conduct Back-to-School Night Stations or back-to-school activities for middle and high school students!

The final stretch before winter break is always a unique season in the ELA classroom. Students are buzzing with anticipation, schedules get interrupted by assemblies and spirit days, and we teachers are doing our best to keep learning meaningful without burning out. These last two weeks don’t have to feel like a slog or a free-for-all. With the right activities, you can keep your students engaged, creative, and focused while still protecting your own sanity.

Here are five engaging, high-impact ELA activities, perfect for Grades 7–10, that will carry you smoothly into winter break while still hitting essential skills.

1. Make Poetry Fun with Blackout Poetry

Blackout poetry is one of my favorite pre-break activities because it is quiet, creative, and naturally differentiated. Even your most reluctant writers get excited when you hand out book pages and markers. Blackout poetry taps into analysis, theme, diction, and connotation, but students feel like they’re creating art.

If you want an easy, ready-to-go option, my Blackout Poetry Lesson & Unit includes editable templates, modeled analysis, poetry writing scaffolds, and options for both print and digital instruction. Many teachers use it as a two-day mini-unit or as a calming activity after a test or assembly.

Why it works in December:

• Creative and artsy (a win for restless students)
• Minimal teacher prep
• Meaningful literary analysis disguised as a fun project

2. Build a Literary Theme Park (Yes, Really!)

If you’re looking for a collaborative, high-energy project that channels student excitement productively, you will love the Literary Theme Park Project. Students choose a novel or short story and transform key literary elements, theme, conflict, characterization, and symbolism into rides, restaurants, shows, and attractions.

This project naturally encourages deeper textual analysis because students must justify each design decision with textual evidence. It’s creativity with an academic purpose.

You can run this project over 3–5 class periods, and it is AMAZING for classes that need something hands-on and imaginative right before break.

Why it works in December:

• High student buy-in
• Encourages movement, collaboration, and creativity
• Requires in-depth textual understanding (but feels like play!)

3. Survive the Snowstorm: Escape the Yeti!

When your students are extra wiggly or your classes feel extra long, an escape room is the perfect way to keep the energy up and review essential skills. My Winter ELA Escape Room: Escape the Yeti is a collaborative challenge where students work together to solve puzzles, answer ELA questions, and ultimately avoid becoming the Yeti’s next snack.

This activity reviews grammar, reading comprehension, figurative language, writing skills, and more, without feeling like a traditional worksheet. You can complete it in one or two days, and because students work in small groups, you can circulate and support rather than lead the whole time.

Why it works in December:

• Students move, collaborate, and problem-solve
• Perfect for shortened periods or block days
• Built-in review before benchmark assessments

4. A Thoughtful Winter Classic: The Gift of the Magi Close Read

If you still need to squeeze in a meaningful literary analysis lesson before break, The Gift of the Magi is perfect. It’s short, accessible, and thematically rich. This short story is ideal for teaching irony, symbolism, theme, and character motivation.

A structured close-reading assignment helps students dig deeper into O. Henry’s craft without overwhelming them. My Gift of the Magi Close Read includes text-dependent questions, scaffolded analysis tasks, and both print and digital options, making it easy to use with any schedule.

Why it works in December:

• Short text + high-level literary analysis
• Seasonal without feeling cheesy
• Easy to complete in 1–2 class periods

5. Review Literary Elements with an Escape Room

If you want something academically focused but still student-approved, a classic Literary Elements Escape Room is an ideal option. Students work together to solve puzzles tied to conflict, plot, characterization, theme, setting, symbolism, and more. Because literary elements spiral throughout the year, this is a perfect mid-year comprehension check.

It’s high-energy but easy for you to manage. The students drive the activity, and you facilitate.

Why it works in December:

• Engaging review without extra grading
• Ready-to-go print or digital options
• Strengthens foundational literary analysis skills

Final Tips for the Home Stretch

Even with the best activities, these last two weeks can be a lot. Here are a few reminders as you head toward winter break:

• Give yourself permission to keep things simple.
  Not every lesson needs to be a masterpiece right now, and that’s okay.
• Lean into creativity and collaboration.
  Students are more engaged when they’re building, solving, designing, or creating.
• Choose activities that feel fun for YOU, too.
  If you’re excited to teach it, your students will be excited to learn it.

You deserve a peaceful, joyful countdown to winter break. If you try one of these activities, I’d love to hear how it goes. Tag me on Instagram @thedaringenglishteacher!

As ELA teachers, we’re always looking for fresh ways to help students dive deeper into literature, especially with ways that go beyond the standard five-paragraph essay or chapter quiz. That’s exactly why I created my Theme Park Literary Analysis Project. This is a creative, engaging, and rigorous assessment that invites students to interact with literature in a totally new way.

This project has quickly become one of my favorite go-to final assessments for novels, plays, and even short stories. Whenever I finish a novel, I usually assign two major summative assessments: a standard novel test and a fun, collaborative project. Together, these two forms of assessment help me see what my students know. And this literary analysis amusement park project fits the bill for an engaging, collaborative, summative project!

What Is the Theme Park Literary Analysis Project?

In this project-based assignment, students work in small collaborative groups to design an amusement park based entirely on a piece of literature. Yes, a theme park! They will be having so much fun as the brainstorm and plan for this project that they won’t even realize they are learning and showing their understanding!

Each group creates an entire literary theme park from the ground up: they name the park, create a park logo, design themed lands based on the story’s settings and conflicts, create rides and attractions inspired by major plot points, develop character meet-and-greet experiences, and even design food and souvenir items that represent key symbols or motifs in the text.

Students then create a park map, which is something they will absolutely love, and “pitch” their park to a group of potential investors (you, the teacher and their fellow classmates!) in a short, persuasive digital presentation.

It’s a perfect blend of literary analysis, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. Your students will actually be excited to do it.

Why This Novel Project Works

Here’s the magic: students engage deeply with theme, symbolism, characterization, conflict, and setting, which are all of the essential literary elements we want them to analyze. However, they’re doing it in a way that feels more like design thinking than test prep.

And because the project includes both overview and in-depth planning pages (and a completely editable student assignment page), you can easily differentiate how you. You can assign only the core components, or let students go all in and complete every detailed page. The resource is flexible and adaptable for grades 7–10, but also comprehensive enough to use in honors, AP Lit, and IB classes as a creative companion to deeper analysis.

Even better? This project gets students off screens. It encourages real collaboration and face-to-face interaction. That’s right! Students can complete all of the initial planning and brainstorming without any technology so you know the students are the ones doing the work!

Built-In Literary Analysis (That Doesn’t Feel Like Work)

One of the most powerful parts of this project is that students are constantly referencing the text. Every single element from the roller coasters to the souvenir stands must be based in textual evidence and include clear connections to the story. This helps you see just how much your students understand the text!

For example:

• A spooky, dark ride might symbolize the protagonist’s internal conflict.
• A food stand might serve items that reflect a key motif from the story.
• Themed lands might represent major settings or contrasting worldviews in the book.

Students have to justify their creative decisions with analysis, pulling quotes, paraphrasing events, and explaining the deeper meaning. It’s literary interpretation in disguise. It’s not just a fun, cutesy project. It is based in the standards and rooted in rigor!

Use It for Lit Circles, Too!

This project is also an excellent choice for literature circles. After students finish their group novels, have them complete this project together to synthesize their understanding. You’ll see thoughtful conversation, organic collaboration, and some incredible creativity.

What’s Included

The Theme Park Literary Analysis Project includes:

• A teacher guide and student assignment sheet
• Pages for brainstorming and planning park features
• Detailed templates for themed lands, rides, characters, and more
• A rubric for grading
• A digital version for Google Docs
• Optional extension ideas (think brochures, dioramas, gallery walks!)

Let Your Students Take the Lead

One of the things I love most about this project is that it puts students in charge of their learning while also reinforcing college and career readiness skills. They’re not just answering questions or responding to prompts; they’re building something meaningful from the ground up. Plus, they’ll have to put together a proposal and a pitch and present their theme parks to the class! What a fun day of group presentations!

So if you’re looking for a fresh, fun, and standards-aligned way to assess literary understanding, I highly recommend giving this project a try. You’ll be amazed at what your students create. Also, if you are looking for more creative projects, check out this literary analysis square project!

We’ve all been there—the class period feels sluggish, students are zoning out, and your perfectly planned lesson just isn’t landing the way you hoped. Whether it’s the day after a long weekend or just a typical Tuesday, every teacher needs a few go-to strategies to energize classroom lessons and increase student engagement fast.

Teachers often find themselves searching for new techniques to invigorate their lessons. To truly captivate students, educators must adapt their teaching styles to accommodate varying energy levels and learning preferences. This post will explore effective strategies to energize lessons, ensuring that each student feels engaged and valued.

The good news? You don’t need to start from scratch or overhaul your curriculum to boost student engagement. These three classroom engagement strategies are easy to implement, adaptable for any subject, and perfect for middle school ELA and high school English classrooms.

By integrating these strategies, educators can create a vibrant learning atmosphere that propels student participation and enthusiasm. Engaging students requires creativity and a willingness to experiment with new ideas and methods. In the following sections, we will delve into specific techniques that can breathe new life into your classroom.

1. Add Sticky Notes for Increased Engagement and Literary Analysis

One of the fastest ways to spark energy in the classroom is with sticky note activities. Something about handing students a stack of colorful sticky notes makes the lesson feel hands-on, collaborative, and just a little more fun. Plus, it’s an excellent tool for interactive ELA activities.

Sticky notes serve as an engaging medium for students to express their thoughts and opinions as they work through complex texts. When students are able to physically interact with the material, it fosters a deeper understanding and connection to the content.

In my classroom, I love using sticky notes to boost literary analysis skills. Whenever I hand out the sticky notes, I immediately see a boost in student engagement. Students can annotate text, track character development, or analyze themes—all while interacting with the text and each other.

For instance, after reading a passage, students can jot down their thoughts or questions on sticky notes and place them in relevant sections of the text. This visual representation of their ideas allows for a collaborative discussion, fostering a sense of community and shared learning.

📌 Ready to try it? These sticky note literary activities are perfect for getting started with this engaging method:

• Literary Analysis with Sticky Notes – Short Story Unit
• To Kill a Mockingbird Sticky Note Literary Analysis Activity

Looking for more about teaching literary analysis? Check out this blog post: Teaching Literary Analysis: Improve Your Student’s Literary Analysis with the OPTIC Strategy and Art

2. Use Station-Based Activities to Energize Classwork

If your students are dragging their feet through independent work time, station-based activities can completely transform the learning environment. Rotating through stations adds movement, breaks big tasks into manageable chunks, increases student engagement, and promotes collaboration—three things that naturally boost student engagement.

Whether you’re teaching writing skills, starting the school year, or reviewing content, station-based learning is a flexible, high-engagement option. These work especially well in middle and high school ELA classrooms where routines and student ownership matter.

I love using stations at the beginning of the school year, for peer editing during my essay writing unit, and with literary analysis activities.

💡 Try these easy-to-use station activities to liven up your classroom:

• Back-to-School Stations – First Day and First Week of School Activities
• Peer Editing Stations – Revision and Editing Checklists

3. Use Bell Ringers to Increase Daily Engagement

If you’re not using bell ringers yet, you’re missing one of the simplest and most powerful ways to boost classroom engagement. Bell ringers create a consistent routine that signals “it’s time to learn” from the moment students walk in the door. They also provide meaningful, skill-based practice that sets the tone for the rest of the class.

I love using bell ringers for daily writing, grammar review, and growth mindset journaling. They’re short, effective, and require minimal prep—perfect for busy secondary ELA teachers looking to keep students focused from the first five minutes.

🔔 Add structure and energy to your daily routine with these engaging bell ringer sets:

• Sentence Combining Bell Ringers – Daily Writing for the Year
• Growth Mindset Bell Ringers – 60 Writing Prompts & Journal Activities

Whether you’re teaching literary analysis, launching your first week of school, or trying to refocus a restless class, these quick and effective strategies can help energize your classroom and keep students engaged all year long.

By adding sticky note activities, rotating through classwork stations, and starting strong with purposeful bell ringers, you’ll create a dynamic and student-centered learning environment your students will actually look forward to.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is a powerful and harrowing account of his experiences during the Holocaust. As a high school English teacher, I teach this book at the sophomore level, so my students are roughly the same age as Elie in his memoir. If you are teaching Night this year, keep reading to learn about two powerful activities to incorporate into your unit!

Teaching Night in a high school English classroom provides an opportunity to explore themes of identity, dehumanization, morality, and the consequences of hatred. However, it is also crucial to provide students with historical context to help students can understand not only the longstanding antisemitism in Europe, but also the breakdown of Germany’s government, and its rise to fascism.   

Facing History and Ourselves is a great resource for teachers who are teaching Night. The organization offers an extensive collection of resources that help educators teach Night with sensitivity and depth. Also, it is important to note that this is NOT a paid endorsement at all.

Below are two activities that integrate Facing History’s materials into your curriculum while fostering student engagement and critical thinking. You can access these materials for free by signing up for a free Facing History and Ourselves account!

Teaching Night: Introduce Students to Antisemitism from the Enlightenment to WWI

Before starting Night, it is important for students to understand the long-standing history or antisemitism. It helps to have students explore the historical context of antisemitism before World War I so they can understand that the anti-Jewish hatred wasn’t a new concept. I like to do this before students begin reading chapter 1. 

Facing History and Ourselves has a great, 11-minute video that helps students see this!

• Activity: Have students create a KWL chart about what they know about antisemitism, especially before WWII and WWI.
• Play the VIDEO for students. As students watch the video, have them complete the KWL chart with information they learned from the video.
• Discussion Question: Why is understanding historical context important when reading memoirs like Night?

Teaching Night: Learning about the Breakdown of Democracy

Since sophomores are also concurrently enrolled in World History classes, teaching Night and its historical context go hand-in-hand with cross-curriculular learning. Students will easily see the value of what they read in English class in their social studies class and vice versa.

Once students start reading Night, I like to incorporate nonfiction reading top help supplement students’ understanding of pre-WWII Germany.

• Activity: To do this, I assign a jigsaw activity. I have students read one of the five below articles. They read the article, take notes, become experts in the subject.
• Then, after about 15 minutes of engaging independently with the article, students then move about the room to talk with other students about their articles. In total, they speak with three other students. While moving around, students use their notes to explain the article to their peers, and then their peers use the notes they took to explain their articles. 
• For the notes, I encourage students to take bullet-point notes, jot down quotes, and even illustarte what they see in the articles. 
• At the end of the activity, I have students evaluate whether Germany had a healthy democracy during the pre-WWII era.
• Discussion Question: What made it possible for the Nazis to transform Germany into a Dictatorship?

Jigsaw Readings:

• Law and Disorder
• Attitudes Toward Life and Death
• The Myth of a Jewish Conspiracy
• Youth and Belonging in a Weimar Republic
• A New Economic Crisis
• Hard Times Return (I assigned this reading to every student)

Teaching Night 5-Week Night Unit

My five-week Night teaching unit includes a variety of activities and resources to help you implement teaching Night into your curriculum. This unit is designed to help students deeply engage with the memoir while developing essential analytical and comprehension skills. This 5-week unit plan provides pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities to ensure a well-rounded study of the text.

Key Features of the Night Unit

✔ Holocaust/Night Introductory Group Research Project – Establish historical and social context before reading.
✔ Bell Ringers – Thought-provoking prompts to spark discussions and critical thinking.
✔ Interactive Comprehension Bookmarks – Foldable bookmarks with comprehension questions, vocabulary, and space for notes.
✔ Comprehensive Assessments – Includes chapter quizzes, quick quizzes, and a final test (now available in Google Forms).
✔ 5-Week Pacing Guide – A structured plan to help guide instruction.

Teaching Night: End of Unit One-Pager Assignment

As my students wrap up their Night unit, I like to assign a Night One-Pager Assignment! This one-pager asks students to come up with big picture questions, identify and explain key quotes, include three illustrations and more! You can learn more about this assignment by reading this blog post: Night One Pager: Assigning a One-Pager Project as a Culminating Project.

Starting off the school year with teaching short stories is a great way to engage the learners in your classroom as soon as you are ready to start instruction -whether that be the very first day of school or one week into the school year after some ice-breaker and introductory activities.

I’ve taught sophomores for more years that I can count, and every single year, I like to begin the school year and teach short stories for my first unit. In my classroom, I use my Introduction to Short Stories Unit and my Literary Analysis Sticky Note Unit for short stories, and they work really well together.

This blog post will cover four reasons why it is a smart idea to start your middle school ELA or high school English class with a short story unit.

Consider this blog post your complete guide to your beginning of the year short story unit!

Here is why teaching short stories is ideal for the start of a new school year!

Beginning of School Schedule Changes

If your school is anything like mine, the few weeks of school can have a lot of movements. Between students being transferred out of class and having new students pop up on your roster daily, the first few weeks can be a bit messy. It is difficult to start a lengthy unit or begin long-form fiction, knowing that students will miss the beginning of the unit. Because of all of the roster movement that happens at the start of a new school year, especially at a larger high school, I prefer to begin my year with short stories.

Typically, I spend one week on each short story. I provide my students with brief direct instruction at the start of the week that covers important context about the author and the story. I also use that time to introduce my students to no more than three literary elements that we will focus on for that one story.

Then, we begin reading the story. Usually, we will spend the first two days of the story reading it and going over basic reading comprehension. Before we move on to literary analysis, I want to make sure that my students understand the story. From there, I like to spend Wednesday doing a collaborative brainstorming and analysis activity that will lead to the writing response. This is exactly how I’ve planned my short story close reading units.

Planning my short story units this way allows me to include any new students in my classroom quite easily. If a student comes in Monday through Wednesday, they hop right into that story. If they transfer in on Thursday or Friday, I have them work on my new student survey and a quick personal narrative to help me get to know them.

I’ve structured my short story unit like this for several years now, and I’ve found that this strategy is the one that works best for me when it comes to welcoming in new students and accomodating a class roster that changes daily during the first few weeks of school.

Cover Literary Elements

In addition to easily accomodating frequent schedule changes, teaching short stories at the beginning of the school year is beneficial because I can use this time to teach and review critical literary elements with my students before we dive into our first novel. By the time we get to our first novel unit in the second quarter, I am confident that my students have a firm grasp of literary elements, literary analysis, and how to write about fiction. Having that foundational understanding is so important because then I can focus on going into more depth and adding in more complexity throughout the year.

Typically, I teach about five or six short stories in my short story unit, and with each short story, I teach and review one to three literary elements. By only focusing on a couple of literary elements with each short story, I can make sure that my students truly understand each element. By covering all of the essential literary elements at the start of the school year, I set my students up for success as we dive deeper into the curriculum. You can read more about my daily short story instruction in this blog post about teaching short stories with a close reading perspective.

Begin Writing Instruction

I’ve always found that the best type of writing instruction is the kind that seamlessly meshes with the curriculum. Starting a writing unit isn’t abrupt. Instead, it just kind of flows logically. When I teach short stories, I incorporate a writing assignment with every single short story we read. We read and brainstorm Mondays through Wednesdays, and we write on Thursdays and Fridays.

To ensure that my students learn how to write academically, I start with a short writing assignment of no more than three sentences. Yes, my sophomores only write three sentences of literary analysis at the start of the school year, but it works. You can read more about this strategy in this blog post. about three ways to boost writing instruction. This short story writing for students helps get them ready for lengthier writing later on in the school year.

By incorporating writing instruction with my short story unit, I make sure that my students are ready for more challenging academic writing later in the year. My students progress from a three-sentence response to an entire paragraph, and once they master that, they are then ready for longer essays.

Easy to Incorporate Nonfiction and Current Events

The final reason why I love teaching short stories at the start of the school year is because it is a great way to set the tone for the school year by also incorporating nonfiction and current events. The beauty of a short story unit is that there are so many different short stories to choose from. And with each short story you prefer, you can easily grab a nonfiction article or watch a current event news story that directly ties into the topic or theme of the story.

For example, one of my favorite short stories to teach is “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Murakami. It’s a longer story, and it can be a bit challenging for my sophomores, but because it centers around a typhoon, I can pull in articles and news stories about big storms, climate change, and mental health. The possibilities are endless when you make connections to the stories, and it helps open up the classroom for exciting and dynamic discussions.

Of of the most engaging and interactive ways to start the new school year is by facilitating a back-to-school station activity in your classroom. Using back-to-school stations as a classroom activity during the first week of school a great way to get your students up and interacting with each other. Furthermore, back-to-school stations are also great for getting to know your students and handing out important class information.

Here is a more in-depth look at the back-to-school station activity that I use in my classroom. You might also want to check out my other favorite back-to-school ideas and activities for middle school ELA and high school English.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL STATION 1

The first station is a student survey station. In this station, students complete a survey that helps me get to know my new students more. This survey includes carefully curated questions that provide me with useful information that I refer back to throughout the school year. I keep a binder all year long with these surveys organized alphabetically by class period. For the digital classroom, I also included a link to a Google form survey.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL STATION 2

The second station in my back-to-school station activity is a classroom technology account station. In the first week of school or so, I try to get all of my students signed up for all of the various class accounts we will use throughout the year. Providing them with a station to do this saves so much time. And then to help make things easier throughout the year, I post the class account set-up sheet in Canvas (used to be Google Classroom) and in my classroom so that I can easily refer new students to it.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL STATION 3

The third station is a course syllabus scavenger hunt station. Rather than read through the entire syllabus with my students on the first day of school, I have them work through a scavenger hunt to find, read, and write down all of the important things from my syllabus. And since it is likely that my important syllabus items might be slightly different than your important syllabus items, this station comes with a customizable recording sheet so that you can have students record the information that is most essential for your class.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL STATION 4

The fourth station is a book recommendation station. Since I teach English, I want my classroom to be a place that encourages a love of reading from the very first week of school. By having students think back and reflect on their favorite book and then recommend it to their peers, students start to are able to tell that my classroom values reading and reading for enjoyment.

Setting up the station activity for the first week of school does take a little bit of prep work. However, with each new back-to-school season, the prep work will be less and less. To help preserve your station cards and directions, I suggest printing the pages you plan to use year after year on cardstock to help it last.

Teacher praise for back-to-school stations

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Extremely Satisfied

“I used this in all my classes at the beginning of the year. The HS choir, drama and world history students loved the “ME” page, and the MS choirs enjoyed the syllabus scavenger hunt. I plan to continue using this resource each year. Thank you!”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Extremely Satisfied

“Time & time again this resource proves to be amazing! I feel confident as a teacher to have the stations with options to edit the instructions, etc. Thank you for a great resource!”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Extremely Satisfied

“Great beginning of the year stations to incorporate into the classroom! My students loved working through stations rather than sitting and listening.”

I sure wish my students inherently loved to read, and they all had wicked vocabulary skills, and I never had to convince them that a text was worthwhile of their time. If they did, that would make engaging reluctant readers much easier.

But that’s hardly ever the case, and more often than not, I have varying degrees of reluctant readers in my classroom. So the question becomes, How do I engage my reluctant readers? By the time students are in high school, they usually have a long history of not enjoying the reading requirements in school. And honestly, every student will probably be a reluctant reader at some time because they all have their own interests, experiences, and abilities. So what is a teacher to do?

Why are students reluctant?

Your strategies won’t get you far if you don’t get to the principle problem. Unless you happen to hit on the issue, spending your time looking up tips isn’t going to help your students long term. Look for any reason so you can personalize your solutions. Are there specific reading skills the student is struggling with? Is this a topic that is hard to identify with? Are there tasks associated with the reading that is keeping them disinterested? Perhaps the assignments themselves create a stress for students, such as requiring the class to read aloud. Is the text chosen something above their reading level?

Once you key in on the main issue, you’ll be better prepared to plan how to motivate your students.

9 Strategies for Engaging Reluctant Readers

Always Plan on Differentiating

If you haven’t planned for a potential problem, it is much harder to solve “in the moment.” This is why we, as teachers, spend a lot of time working on differentiating. You might be used to doing this with activities and writing expectations, but what about the text itself? Spend time looking at the text you’ll be reading and preemptively make plans to make it work with your students’ varying needs.

Keep It Short

Do your students need to read the whole text? Oftentimes you can flip through a textbook and see short snippets of longer works so students just “taste” the text before diving into the discussion. Interested students can dive deeper by reading a whole text, or you can offer enrichment activities for students who want to read more.

But if you can, pull the most meaningful excerpts and have the class work with those. Bite-size pieces are easier to work with, and students may feel more motivated seeing a shorter section of text rather than a novel.

Give Them Different Tasks

I don’t believe all my students need to do the exact same assignment to do the same work. It doesn’t make sense for my advanced students to breeze through an activity that takes some struggling students twice as long with twice as much work to complete. I have no issue grouping my students and, occasionally, giving them different assignments to work on.

A really great way to encourage reluctant readers is not to have them read the book at all. That’s right. Create a “Special Task Force” of students who will be working on the extra supplemental material for the class. Rather than the whole class reading an article accompanying the text, have your special group read ahead and present the material for everyone. This can be particularly helpful with period pieces with unfamiliar vocabulary or works with complex plots and discussions your reluctant readers may not be ready for. If you make this part of your reading groups the whole year, you can swap which students are in this particular group as you get to texts of varying levels.

Create Cheat Sheets

I’m not saying rely on Spark Notes. However, we know students refer to it, so use the concept to your advantage.

Students that can’t understand the material aren’t going to get far with any reading or assignments. I like to create Cheat Sheets (which can benefit all my students). These might include important vocabulary, especially if students need to understand period or subject-related vocab. You can also include fast facts about characters, relationships, or major plot points.

Make them cute and cut to fit the book so students can tuck it into it and refer to it as they read.

Find Something Similar

Oftentimes I don’t think it’s necessarily about reading this book title. It’s about the concepts, the characters, the lessons learned. So if we can read a more modern work and get the same things out of it, why not? I really don’t see a problem with having students read adaptations, modern retellings, and other period pieces that are easier to read when it comes to my reluctant readers. Even my advanced students might enjoy the change of pace. I also find that modern works tend to have a faster pace, which usually automatically gives me more engagement.

Don’t Overlook the Book

The way your books and text look is going to make a difference. If you clonk a big, dusty novel on the desk of your reluctant readers, how well do you think they’ll listen? Flip through your text and look at the layout. Is the font really crowded? Is it printed too small? What kind of distractions are there (footnotes, images, copied notes from years gone by)? Is it broken up effectively?

I had a teacher in high school who liked having us take notes on the pages. So she would make copies of these articles but they were printed very small so that we had margins around the text to write. It was a great activity in theory, but even an avid reader like myself dreaded getting the packets of tiny words.

Read for Fun

Teaching your students that reading can be enjoyable is really the lifelong skill we want to see. If you work on a particularly long or difficult novel, let students work in literature circles with some choice reads. Find a set of contemporary novels that fit in with the unit’s theme. Or, establish a set “free read” day that your students look forward to. For many years, that was Friday in my classroom. We loved taking a break and heading to the library as a class, or just having a quiet hour in the classroom to read whatever we wanted. I was able to establish a really good relationship with students as they gave me suggestions on what to read, and I made sure to read their suggestions and give them my honest review. It’s a great way to model reading different genres and how to have a real discussion about what you read.

It’s important to note as well that free reading doesn’t have to mean novels. I often saw my reluctant readers bring in magazines on interesting topics, and I was completely fine with that. Reading is reading. I’ve even had a student come in with a stack of cookbooks looking to build a meal for an upcoming Home Ec assignment.

Get Social

Have students work on social sharing what they read. Give students ownership of the information they know. It doesn’t always have to be you as the teacher leading instruction, discussion, and lecture. Let peers lead the way. Your more advanced students might lead a discussion topic in groups while a reluctant reader helps take the notes (so they can listen and write the information as well as participate without feeling on the spot with answering). Groups with varying reading levels create a valuable experience for all students.

Make It Mobile

Reading is mostly a passive activity – so what can you do to provide movement? Download an audiobook and have students walk laps outside or down the hallways. Do you have flexible seating options so students can move around wherever they are most comfortable? Do you have a box of fidgets students can grab as they read? All of these are great ways to get some movement with reading.

What are the best activities you’ve found for encouraging your reluctant readers? Have you tried any from this list? I love outside-the-box ideas and adding to my own toolbox of things to use in my classroom. Share your best suggestions here or over on Facebook and Instagram.

My Favorite Book for Reluctant Readers

My absolute favorite book to teach in a class filled with reluctant readers is Jason Reynolds’ novel Long Way Down. Every single time I teach this novel, students who claim they hate books and hate reading absolutely love it. They are completely engaged in the story.

You can check out my unit for teaching Long Way Down here. Also, be sure to check out my blog post about 25 ideas for teaching Long Way Down!

This blog post will help provide you with tools and strategies for engaging struggling readers and writers in your classroom. As a high school English teacher, I teach students how to read literature and write essays. In fact, reading and writing form half of the four major pillars of ELA instruction: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

And while it is essential to engage of the learners in our classrooms, those who need help with reading and writing might be less willing to engage in classroom discussions.

With targeted approaches and support, struggling readers and writers can improve their skills and gain confidence in the high school English classroom.

Here are 5 tips for engaging struggling readers and writers in your classroom:

Engaging Struggling Readers: Create a welcoming and inclusive classroom environment

Struggling readers and writers can often feel discouraged and frustrated, impacting their motivation to learn. By creating a positive and welcoming environment in your classroom can go a long way in making these students feel comfortable and supported.

One way I do this in my own classroom is to check in on students to see if they have the correct answer before calling on volunteers. By checking in with my struggling students and reassuring them that their answer is correct before asking for volunteers, my struggling students are more likely to participate.

Engaging Struggling Writers: Use a variety of teaching methods

It’s important to recognize that every student learns differently, and using various teaching methods can help struggling readers and writers engage with the material. I like to incorporate various activities including group work, individual projects, and multimedia presentations in my instruction.

For further reading, I recommend reading this blog post: 8 Ways to Get Students Moving in the Classroom.

Engaging Struggling Writers: Provide frequent and constructive feedback

Students who struggle with reading and writing often need more frequent feedback to understand how to improve their skills. Providing constructive feedback and praise when they show progress can help boost their confidence and encourage them to continue to improve.

One big misconception about teacher feedback is that it must be time-consuming and arduous. That simply isn’t true. When my students have a formal essay, I give them class time to work. During the class, I walk around the room and ask students which one paragraph they would like me to read. Right then and there, I can quickly provide one-on-one feedback to my students.

Use graphic organizers

Graphic organizers, such as mind maps or Venn diagrams, can help struggling readers and writers organize their thoughts and ideas. These tools can also make the writing process feel less overwhelming.

I have a graphic organizer for my students whenever we read or write. Something as simple as a KWL chart is effective and engaging for reading. With graphic organizers, it is best to keep it simple and not try to overcomplicate things.

If you are teaching struggling writers, I love using this guided essay outline. It is formatted like a graphic organizer, and it helps students organize their ideas. Each section of the guided essay organizer provides suggestions to students with what to include. Plus, it is also 100% editable and includes a digital component!

Engaging Struggling Readers: Encourage reading for pleasure

Encouraging students to read for pleasure can help struggling readers build confidence and improve their reading skills. Consider incorporating independent reading time into your class or recommending books that may interest struggling readers.

One way to do this is to start the class with 5-10 minutes of independent reading. Another way could be to dedicate Fridays to independent reading.

If you are trying to find ways to help bring students up to speed and review key concepts with them, I recommend looking at my five-week ELA review program. Designed with specific grade-level standards in mind, each of these review resources focused on key standards from the prior grade.

These Essential ELA Review units are great for the beginning of the school year.