.png "Middle School ELA Curriculum ideas for grades 6–8: see how I plan a year-long ELA curriculum with built-in differentiation and print and digital resources. Get my free pacing guide!")
After 30 years in the classroom, I’ve learned that teaching middle school ELA is anything but one-size-fits-all.
Every year, my students come in with wildly different needs. Some need to review sentence basics. Others are ready to debate the development of a theme across chapters. And I’m sure you know what it feels like to be the teacher trying to meet all of those needs—while grading essays and planning next week’s lessons.
That’s why I spent years refining my own year-long ELA curriculum. Not because I wanted it to be perfect, but because I needed it to be practical.
Why I Needed a Year-Long Plan
I can still picture my planning period that year—sticky notes everywhere:
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“Needs theme practice”
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“Struggles with citing evidence”
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“Ready for advanced writing structures”
I remember thinking, How do I teach all of this at once?
It wasn’t about having more lessons. It was about having the right structure to teach the standards in a way that worked for everyone.
I wanted a plan that:
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Covered the entire year
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Could be easily adjusted for 6th, 7th, or 8th grade
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Included built-in differentiation without hours of extra planning
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Worked for print and digital
How the Standards Guided Me
One thing that really shaped this approach was realizing how middle school ELA standards spiral.
For example:
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6th Grade Theme: Determine theme and support with details
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7th Grade: Analyze how theme develops
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8th Grade: Analyze theme in relation to characters, plot, setting
It’s the same core skill, but each year dives deeper.
So instead of writing three completely separate curriculums, I focused on building a flexible system: one that gives you the steps to teach the skill, but lets you choose the right level of text or complexity for your students.
What Differentiation Looks Like for Me
Differentiation has always been at the heart of how I teach.
I learned early on that if I didn’t scaffold carefully, I’d lose some students before the lesson even started. So in every reading and writing unit I created, I included:
✅ Editable lesson plans and teacher scripts
✅ My Pixanotes® system with four levels of scaffolding
✅ Print and digital versions so I could meet kids where they were
And honestly? That flexibility saved me. It made it so much easier to keep my advanced students engaged while also supporting those who needed more guidance.
A Look at My Year-Long Plan
Over time, I built a structure that let me feel prepared instead of scrambling:
✔️ 8 reading units covering skills like citing evidence, theme, character, text structure, and more
✔️ Essay writing units for both Informative and Argumentative writing
✔️ Bell-ringer activities for daily practice
✔️ Self-grading quizzes for accountability and feedback
✔️ Editable pacing guides to map out the whole year
Having everything in one place didn’t just save me time—it helped me feel confident I was hitting the standards in a meaningful way.
For Any Grade, Any Class
People sometimes ask me, “Is this just for 6th? Or 8th?”
My answer? It’s for all three.
Because the skills are the same—the standards just ask us to go deeper each year. That’s why I made sure every unit could be adjusted for complexity, with text choice and questions that scaffold naturally.
Want to See How I Plan My Year?
If you’re curious about what this looks like in practice, I’d love to share my free pacing guide with you.
It lays out how I organize the entire year and helps you see how you might adapt it for your own students.
✅ CLICK HERE TO GET MY FREE PACING GUIDE
I hope it gives you a head start on planning a year that works for all your learners—while giving you back some of your precious time.
✨ Thanks for being here. Teaching isn’t easy, but it matters so much. I’m so glad we’re in this together.
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