Well, having a feature corner is always a nice design element in any space. In our classrooms, we created a gallery wall to highlight that area of the classroom. Just google gallery walls to get inspiration and ideas. Here are a few places to get cheap materials to make your own gallery wall:

Showing videos in class is a great tool to assist students in understanding content at a deeper level. If you have purchased any of our literary response and analysis lessons from our Teachers Pay Teachers store, it may come as no surprise to you that we love using Flocabulary to amplify learning in our classrooms.

A back-to-back unit of study that we love to teach with our students is a unit that focuses on literary response and analysis for theme and symbolism. First, we read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry which is a classic story that reflects upon childhood, imagination and the inevitability of growing up. Perfect for middle school students!

Kids these days are so lucky! There so many great young adult (YA) books for them to choose from. Here are some of our favorites for adventure and fantasy/science fiction :

The New York Times is one of the most recognized publications in the world. It also is a treasure trove of free resources for educators. If you teach middle school or high school and have not yet checked out the New York Times resources, you are missing out on a valuable resource.

All teachers need to belong to ASCD (Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development). It is a community of educators who work together to improve education with administrators and teachers. While ASCD is mostly thought of as guides for people in educational leadership roles and administration, it is also very much geared toward improving classroom teachers. ASCD’s mission statement is “ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.”