8th Grade ELA - Resource Room

I need some ideas to keep my 60 minute resource room going during my ELA time period - 8th grade. I run out of things to do and the students look disengaged. It doesn't help that they are well below grade level - probably 4th grade reading...anyway, any ideas or suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

 

What do you do now?

 

I observed a 5th/6th grade resource room once, they did 20 minutes of lecturing, 20 minutes independent practice (when they finished, independent reading), 20 minutes small group instruction.

 

5-10 Warm up/grammar/editing
5-10 Journal Writing
Remainder of time is on the lesson - for example they are working on plot right now so we read a story discussed the plot and did a plot diagram, they gave examples of a story/movie with a plot summary and discussed the beginning middle and end but we used exposition/climax/resolution.

I just think that the lesson part needs another piece to it or something but I'm not sure what.

 

That's A LOT of 'lecturing'

 

I'd try to keep the whole group stuff down to 15 minutes. If they learned that way, they'd be in gen ed.

I do mostly small group lessons in 6th/7th sped. Sometimes I change that to a partner activity or something that gets them talking/interacting. I love annotating, reader's theater, short media clips related to text, debate, interactive journaling, etc.

 

I found it odd too. The kids were usually tuned out by 10-15 minutes in, as she would pad the lessons to fit the 20 minutes.

 

Oh. It seemed you were recommending that schedule.:huh:

 

I like both of these books for lesson ideas:

http://www.heinemann.com/products/E04435.aspx

http://www.heinemann.com/products/E03087.aspx

They have high-interest reading passages (short, manageable) with a variety of strategies to use.

 

Oh no, I was just giving it as an example of one I have seen, offering no opinion either way.

 

Thanks for the links, I'll look into them!

 

Yes 20 minutes for the lesson (Lecturing part) is a lot for almost any age group in school and no way would I do that with my resource group. I was looking for more activities to break up the remaining time and what else someone did during their ela time with their class.

 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Paragraph-of-the-Week-404094


I am not the seller. This is on my wish list. I think this would be beneficial to you.

 

Thanks ecteach, I will check it out.