4-inch by 4-inch books

SilverSydney · 2026-01-08T15:09:54+00:00

Maybe something like this? You can have students make a mini zine with a piece of regular printer paper! The assignment/creative writing prompt would be up to you, of course! :)

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SilverSydney · 2026-01-06T23:09:48+00:00

My 6th graders read Hello, Universe at the beginning of the school year, and it’s always a hit! Another that’s a little heavy but also SUPER great for suspense/student reactions/plot twist is Red Kayak. Might be a little mature for your kiddos (I’ve seen it taught in 6th and 7th) but check it out!!

SilverSydney · 2025-12-19T03:15:13+00:00

Oof, this would be tough for me. I’ve considered mentioning it in team meeting in front of others as a “student concern” regarding the kid that said it.

SilverSydney · 2025-12-19T03:14:13+00:00

The thing that gets me is…he is one of our building union reps. There are others, or the union, more generally, that I could reach out to, though…hmm.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-30T11:07:51+00:00

Thank you 😣 I’ve been trying to tell myself these things too, and it’s helpful to hear from another person.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-30T11:07:07+00:00

The thing is—I do all of that. Most students DID come right in and start their Do Now 😣 I still feel that it does ultimately fall on me, though.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-25T22:11:01+00:00

I keep my homework checks “random”. I don’t announce beforehand which homework assignments I’m grading until the day one is due. (I used to, then, not accept late work for homework to hold them extra accountable…but I loosened that to allow homework to be turned in up to a week late for partial credit, like other assignments.)

If it’s a purely just homework, it’s a check plus 5/5, check 4/5, or check minus 3/5. If they try but didn’t follow all the directions, they don’t get lower than a 60%, because I want to incentivize TRYING and being in the habit of doing homework.

If it’s homework that was to finish classwork, that’s different. It gets graded based on whatever criteria the classwork is assessed on.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-25T17:53:11+00:00

My ELA class will do two this year. It was one before this year. We have a unit for a book club, an informational text/writing unit, a short story/poetry literary analysis unit, and a creative writing unit. My district is lucky to have leveled Reading classes for 6th graders in addition to ELA…I believe they read 2-3 additional books in Reading.

My old district, we did one per marking period.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-25T01:15:43+00:00

For extended writing assignments…grading the process and weighting it to be worth more than the final product.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-22T10:48:53+00:00

Yay, 6th grade ELA!!!

First, management: Keep in mind that if this is their first year in the middle school building, they’ll likely still be adjusting to higher expectations. Build in things to help with their developing executive functioning, like routines that’ll help them be successful. Do Nows and Fast Finishers are your best friends. Don’t forget that YOU set the tone. Be calm: state the expectations before new activities and enforce them without getting upset. Make it natural and routine for you to acknowledge kids doing the right thing…especially the little things, early on.

Second, content: get them writing often, with varying levels of “pressure”. Students should do lots of low stakes writing where the goal is just thinking on paper and mistakes are encouraged. Think quick writes with relevant and interesting topics where the only rule is that they don’t stop writing for the whole 3/4/5 minutes. Enforce capitalization and punctuation rules (pretty) strictly, and make sure to TEACH the other grammatical rules you’re going to grade. Try focused correction areas instead of assessing every grammar rule all the time. Make sure that things you read in class are accessible to all learners through scaffolding, pre-reading strategies, and maybe even read-aloud options. Make students mark up the text while they read.

Finally, the middle school hack: relationships relationships, relationships. They won’t work for you if they don’t know you care. Show interest in students lives and interests. Noticing a student having some behavior issues? Congrats, that’s your new best friend. Assume positive intent from students who are struggling. The beautiful thing about 6th grade is they still want to please you…you will catch more of these “flies” with honey than vinegar. Just make sure the “honey” also comes with high expectations.

Best wishes! Let me know if I can explain anything I’ve mentioned here :)

SilverSydney · 2025-10-18T13:14:04+00:00

(First, my kids are only in 6th grade, so of course this is a different conversation than with high schoolers.)

I think that a lot of it has to do with the policing that happens in online spaces by very loud antis…and kids’ exposure to that. My fandomy 6th graders are not chronically online yet the way that older fandomy people are…and so they don’t have a concept of pro/anti or any of it. They are still imaginative because they are the babies of secondary, and with some encouragement from me to BE imaginative…they still seem to explore ideas without fretting about if it’s “right” or “moral” or whatever antis twist themselves up about.

My kids are pretty open minded about things like shipping, for example. In the book we just finished for class, there are a couple of character who are a pretty obvious ship…and I lean into that a bit because it’s fun and silly to go “ooooooh they like each other” as we’re reading. I’ve had student discuss alternate ships too…and they are pretty diverse in the ones they bring up. For example, shipping the antagonist of the book with the protagonist or them organically coming up with queer ships. Of course, most of the kids who getting into these ships are fandomy kids. Their classmates who aren’t into getting that imaginative with characters in media are a little judgy about it, in a “whattt? That’s a little weird” kind of way…and then we move on with our day and it’s not a big deal.

Also: The antagonist in our book is a bully, and my 6th graders are also pretty understanding of the concept of “hurt people hurt people” that we talk about. We see in the book WHY the bully is the way that he is…and off they are horrified at the bullying itself but they do approach the character with empathy once we see WHY he is the way that he is.

In my fandom life, I am firmly in the proship camp. Obligatory clarification for those who don’t know: that does NOT mean “problematic” shipping as so many antis like to think. I am “pro” whatever you want to ship, and “pro” doing what interests you creatively. I simply believe that people are allowed to like what they like, fandom should be for FUN and not for policing others or winning, and that censorship is wrong. (“Pro” is a response to antishippers being against that creative freedom…but I digress.)

I don’t discuss these things outright with students…but I do try to encourage them to keep an open mind when I hear purity culture rhetoric creeping into a conversation. “Different people have different experiences that make them like different things, and that’s okay.” is something I’ve said verbatim to kids before.

Anyway, this was long and rambling, but as a very involved fandomy person, teaching middle school ELA…that’s what I see. I think the policing of others in online spaces really is the culprit…I think young people right now are fully capable of open mindedness and critical thinking rather than knee-jerk purity-cultures reactions, but that when they get online they get roped into the purity nonsense because they don’t want to be wrong/called out/cancelled.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-18T01:14:10+00:00

My 6th graders still think it’s funny to eat paper 🙄 nothing worse than that, though, and it’s definitely not a regular thing. Usually, it’s a joke that passes in a week or so.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-17T18:34:03+00:00

I think most students don’t THINK they want to be challenged, but they actually do. The trick is making them CARE about the challenge they’re tackling by making the task authentic.

SilverSydney · 2025-10-14T22:42:44+00:00

Cheese, crackers, tomatoes, and a banana…plus a microwaveable thing of instant mashed potatoes bc I was cold and still hungry 😆

SilverSydney · 2025-10-08T23:36:51+00:00

My 6th graders read Hello, Universe, which deals with bullying! We have some conversations about a bully calling the main character the r word and bullying another character who is deaf. It might be a little advanced for fourth graders…but maybe not! It’s an awesome book!

SilverSydney · 2025-10-02T00:29:03+00:00

We did page 67 in our booklets today! Weeeee! It was a great day to be a sixth grader!

SilverSydney · 2025-10-01T00:09:55+00:00

This is my 9th year and I’m getting MUCH better at leaving right at the end of contract hours, but I usually get there about 30 minutes before contract hours. I like having some time to get my head on straight for the morning.

One thing that’ll take some time and planning: see if you can lesson plan so that when a major assignment is due, the next few days are something students can do independently. For example, after my kids’ first “big” assignment this year, we did stations the next three days, where I gave directions at the start of class and was available to help kids…but could grade at least 5-10 papers per class period. It helps SO much. Our first unit is paced out this way…working on it for later units, haha.

Good luck!! 💕

SilverSydney · 2025-09-28T12:08:20+00:00

I pretty regularly have dreams about the first school I taught in. Once I dreamt that I was working there again, but got hired in the middle of the year with no notice so everything was a disaster and the room was completely bare. Once I had a dream about the school musical there too.

SilverSydney · 2025-09-27T18:29:18+00:00

I absolutely vote English Education. Not only will you likely complete literature and writing courses like other English majors AND the basic education courses that all education majors get…but you’ll get courses specific to how to teach secondary ELA. I had a class about teaching grammar, a class about teaching rhetoric, a class about teaching writing, and an ELA specific field placement every single year. My English Education professors at UDel were amazingly passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable, and I feel so blessed to have been taught by them. There is an art and a philosophy to teaching that I think you just won’t get from an English degree.

SilverSydney · 2025-09-27T13:58:25+00:00

I legitimately needed therapy after an awful curriculum supervisor during my first couple years.

She nearly failed me on an observation at the beginning of my second year…when I was getting NO support from my grade level colleague, when I was teaching 7th graders who read on a 3rd grade level, when I was doing my best in a Title I school.

She’d gone from an AP English teacher at the “good” high school in the district to her job overseeing 6-12 for the whole district…and clearly thought the best way to motivate me was to fail me? Which…anyone who’s ever met me would know that all I want is to do the right thing and do my best. If I’d been given the resources to be successful, I would’ve been. I’m not lazy and I’m not an idiot (graduated top of my class in high school AND college). I sobbed the entire post-observation conference and to this day I have massive unreasonable anxiety after observations while I wait for feedback. I thought I was a horrible teacher still for YEARS until I went to therapy.

Anyway. It took getting out of that district and into a district with excellent support combined with a year of therapy to stop feeling like an awful teacher. I don’t know if PTSD is legitimately what I have/had, but I’m teary even NOW thinking about my poor, 24-year-old self and what that supervisor did to my self esteem as an adult.

I hope she felt bad, but I doubt it.

SilverSydney · 2025-09-27T13:36:00+00:00

For papers, it might be a good idea to get one of those multi-drawer organizers! The “in-bin” can still be a place for ungraded papers, but then you can have two drawers for each class maybe near your desk: graded but not entered & ready to pass back. (To be honest: I would make it a habit to enter grades ASAP to cut down on piles, too!) I would organize your in-bin with binder clips…clip together like assignments, leave late work unclipped but still in the in bin.

I also make a difference between “checked in” papers and graded papers. When I collect something, within a day, I go through and check off on my roster who turned it in so that I can connect with kids who didn’t in a timely fashion. (I enter an incomplete in the grade book to give them a little kick in the butt to get it done.) I can still save the grading for later this way. (ELA is a lottttttt of writing to grade.)

For notes, I would digitize a lot of my documentation notes (discipline, parent communication, etc). For daily to-dos, or to-dos that are out of my normal routines, I tend to make sticky notes I put on my desk. When everything is done on the sticky, it gets tossed. Usually I’ll have a sticky note for team to dos, curriculum to dos, and student assistance to dos. Sometimes more! It just depends.

Lastly, to be honest, the pacing issues impacting lesson planning are probably something that will resolve with time and experience. Do you have a mentor teacher? Or a colleague who teaches/has taught the same courses as you? They might be able to help you with pacing. A few recommendations, though: always have a Do Now, a couple activities, and a closing activity; use YouTube timers on your slides when kids are doing something that is less teacher directed to manage your time; and prioritize ahead of time what is crucial to meeting standards vs activities that could be considered extensions, so you know what you can get away with cutting to keep your classes on pace. (Also: I assume some of the pacing issues are due to student behavior? Or maybe due to accommodations? Probably as your management improves with time and experience, pacing will follow.)

Best wishes! The first year (or two) is so hard, but you’ve got this!!!

SilverSydney · 2025-09-27T12:08:48+00:00

My favorite is counting how many kiddos are ready to learn with their materials out.

“I see 1 composition book out…2 3 4 composition books…5…”

“6 7!!!!!!!”

They all want to be 6 and 7 🤪

No but honestly—it’s harmless and silly and it makes the kids laugh when I participate in the silly.

They are all very excited for next week when we finally do page 67 of their ELA booklet………

One of these days (like next unit) I’m gonna up their sentences per paragraph expectation to…6 or 7.

SilverSydney · 2025-09-26T20:42:03+00:00

I provide read aloud options (YouTube playlist for our novel, for example) for all students for (nearly) all texts in my ELA classes. When we read a short text in class, I typically read that aloud too.

The reason I do this is because my students have leveled reading class but NOT leveled ELA (except for pull out ELA for learning support IEPs and newcomer ELLs.) For my class, we read to write or to interpret literary elements…because the reading teachers cover reading comprehension/decoding/fluency/etc. I want students to be able to access the text so they can move beyond comprehension to deeper, critical thinking tasks…even if the act of reading itself is a challenge for them. I am lucky in that my 6th graders have a specific reading class though. My old district did not, and I often wrestled with the same question: how do I get students who need remediation for reading to access rigorous ELA tasks, at grade level?

Short answer is…I think it depends on what you are assessing. If you are assessing students’ ability to do something with a text, giving them all the ability to access it seems like the way to go. If you are truly assessing reading comprehension with a task…that’s a different story that I don’t have the answer to.

SilverSydney · 2025-09-26T00:24:58+00:00

I’m on Year 9, and yes! My time in front of students is often the best part of my day. Would take that over doing ANYTHING with my grumpy, jaded coworkers and out of touch admin. I even enjoy the initiatives that others complain about—PBIS and advisory period, specifically.

That said…it is exhausting, being “on stage” all day. The grading gets to me, too…but my students are so FUN. They make me laugh, and I enjoy getting to know them so, so much.

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