Middle School English Language Arts Instructional Guide

Best Practices in ELA

Challenging Texts

Teachers plan instruction around texts that are at grade level, developmentally appropriate, and are culturally relevant in a broader context. ● Teachers provide daily opportunities to read from a variety of sources. ● Teachers provide daily opportunities to read texts of a variety of lengths. Teachers will plan to use texts actively. ● Texts should be read in digestible chunks, with tasks that make reading visible and support student comprehension and application of the texts. ● Annotation, discussion, and other active strategies should be employed. ● Teachers should avoid reading strategies that do not hold students accountable or make learning visible, e.g. SSR, pop-corn reading, and inactively listening to text being read to students. Teachers will develop lessons to encourage a close reading of text. ● Text should be short enough to be consumed multiple times in one class period (e.g. scene of a play, article, page of a novel, section of textbook). ● Teachers set purpose for each reading, moving through the progression of text-dependent questions. ● Teachers develop student understanding through discussions. ● A fnal application task fnishes a close read. Teachers will provide and explicitly teach vocabulary that is academic and domain specifc. ● Teachers will teach words and parts of words. ● Teach multi-meaning words and nuances in word meaning. ● Teach word-solving strategies.

Students engage in reading via annotation, discussion, writing and other strategies to support comprehension and application.

Useof Text

Students should actively read the text. ● Students use annotation strategies for the defned purpose. ● Students discuss understandings of the text, building on and learning from each other. ● Students re-engage with text building deep understanding.

Close Reading

Students should actively read the text. ● Students use annotation strategies, for the defned purpose. ● Students discuss understandings of the text, building on and learning from each other. ● Students re-engage with text multiple times for multiple purposes, building deep understanding. ● Students apply understanding of the text through a new task. Students will understand and be able to use word-solving strategies to determine meanings of words in context and interpret the meaning of texts.

Vocabulary

Last Updated June, 2023 Middle School ELA, Page 4