Middle School Reading ELA CCSS Standards with Engaging Novels and the Socratic Seminar

Teach the Middle School Reading Literature and Informational CCSS Standards with Engaging Novels

I first wrote this blog post when I was heading into my second year of teaching fifth grade and only was making units for my fifth graders. Since then, I have made units for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade because that’s what I have been teaching for last four five years. I tend to get the most questions about my units because they are not your typical novel studies. These units are much more about using the novels and a Middle School Socratic Seminar format to teach the standards by having students think critically and discussion.

How Do These Reading Units Stay True to My Values?

I believe in teaching kids, NOT BOOKS. I use the books to teach the kids. Always. That’s really important to note if you are going to teach with my reading units. I am not creating novel studies. These are truly reading units.
My whole approach here is that I teach the standards, so I want to teach the standards with novels that I know my students will love. I want them to read as many books as humanly possible in the school year. They should go home and tell their parents about the books we are reading, and also about the books they are reading themselves.
They should love reading, and leave my classroom as readers, not as fifth graders who can read.
The goals are reading, discussions, and excitement and kids who can’t wait for the next book. The goal and the core values are helping kids become life long readers through the use of the middle school Socratic Seminar.

How are these units different?

You and your students will read and discuss 6-10 different novels from all different genres in one school year.
You start the year wit the literature unit with interactive notebook lessons so students have a strong foundation of literature terms like: theme, character traits, mood, tone, inferences, figurative language, etc.
Imagine how much this does for vocabulary, how much it develops a love of reading, and how much it can positively affect your classroom community. It also exposes them to books and genres that they might not have read on their own otherwise.
Your entire 5th grade reading curriculum is done for you.
You are digging deep into EVERY SINGLE reading and writing standard EVERY SINGLE week.
The flexibility to choose the novels you want to teach with. You and your students will NEVER be bored with all the different novels choices
You are teaching with ACTUAL NOVELS. Again though, the focus isn’t teaching the novels themselves. The focus is using the novels to teach the Kids.

What is the foundation of these units?

During my second year of teaching 5th grade, I had an absolutely wonderful teaching partner who introduced me to The Literacy Studio, and I have created resources, not products, that I 100% believe in.
I have never believed in anything more than I do using novels in the Literacy Studio with Socratic Seminars.
The Socratic Seminar, along with a focus on discussing the interpretive and guiding questions.

What does it look like in the classroom?

For our lessons, we read the reading unit book together, have a discussion (much like a large book club), and write our reading responses.
I felt my students were 100% ready for testing, but I never had to do test prep or stray away from what I believed in, because we were doing authentic reading, discussing, and writing every single day. And we still had 40-50 minutes of choice.
More than anything, my readers and “not-yet readers” were all exposed, and fell in love with all the books we read together. I selected tried and true books from all different genres. I picked books I loved so they could see how excited I was to read each and every single book, because I actually was. It encouraged them to try different books, form new book clubs, and some of my “not-yet readers” became readers…Mission accomplished.

What is the Daily Class Schedule Like?

I have an entire blog post on my Middle School ELA Classroom 50 minute class period daily and class period schedule.
This is a common question because everyone has a different schedule and a different amount of time. This was my daily schedule and then my reading block broken down.
We did have a longer day, but we did not have school on Fridays.

What Does a Daily Lesson Plan Look Like?

Are There Assessments?

Another thing I get a lot of questions about is how I assess my students. Some things to remember:

We are NOT teaching the novels. We are teaching the students. There are ABSOLUTELY NO summative assessments on the novels. I am not testing them on their abilities to remember what happened on page 58.
We are assessing students on their conceptual knowledge and understanding of the standards.
The goal is to assess students on their growth as critical thinkers and writers.
In order to do this, I use rubrics. Each unit contains 8 different rubrics, but in full disclosure here, I mostly use the first one which assesses them on a mix of literature or non-fiction, writing, and language standards.
I collect their notebooks every week or every other week and then use the rubrics to assess all 5-8 responses they have done int that timeframe.

Reading Responses

I have taught so many novels over the years and have so many reading responses from students, but I have taken pictures over the years. I don’t have pictures for every novel, but I did take pictures of responses that students wrote that are good examples.

These resources have gotten HUGE updates (August 2020) since creation in 2015:

Digital Interactive Google Slides Literature Notebooks Lessons
Teacher suggested answers for comprehension questions
Teacher suggested vocabulary words and definitions
PowerPoint and PDF Display slides for all Guiding and Interpretive Questions (JPEG images included to upload to Google Slides as well)
Digital Student Reading Response Notebooks
Editable PowerPoint Reading Response Rubrics
Editable Google Slides Reading Response Rubrics
Small group and individual conference teacher forms
Lesson plans and the Common Core standard alignments are their own file now so teachers can easily and quickly access the novel lessons.