BACK TO SCHOOL ELA grades 5-8 FUN ACTIVITIES

This Back to School ELA Middle School 30% off 190 page no-prep bundle provides weeks of engaging speaking and writing activities. Your grades 5-8 students will have fun, yet be challenged too by rigorous use of their critical thinking skills. There's plenty of variety. Speaking in pairs, speaking (very briefly) to the class, using inferential and close reading skills to solve mysteries and then writing a mystery story- phew! At the end of these exciting activities, your class will be energized for an amazing ELA year. The first weeks of the year are exhausting for teachers: this packet will provide some relief. All this, and more than $7 off!
Possible order of activities
1. The Back to School Brain Teaser resource will re-activate the critical thinking skills that probably got rusty over the summer.
2 & 3. Students will talk about their vacations in two different ways using the Back to School Impromptu Topics and the Fun Story Telling resource. They will 1) speak very briefly to the whole class and then 2) narrate their summer stories in more detail in pairs.

4. 15 Brain Teaser Mini-Mysteries - either used as class read-alouds or for individual reading - can be followed by the students' own writing of a mystery story.

5. A long reading MYSTERY comprehension story and questions, set during a summer vacation- Mystery of the Campfire Thief- will intrigue them and rev up their analytical skills.
6. ELA Brain Teaser Bellringers will give your students daily fun for the first week and the rest of the term.

Back to School Fun Story Telling and Getting to Know You Activities
Both of these fun back to school story telling oral activities can be used as getting to know you icebreakers, OR with students who know each other well already. None of the speaking prompts require just ‘yes’ or no responses. Students will really need to communicate together to be able to narrate each other’s stories to the rest of the class. The first exercise focuses on summer stories, such as the day from the holidays that the student would most like to repeat. This activity is best performed on the first day or two of the new term. Just photocopy a one page fill-in-the-blanks story guidance handout for each student, and you are ready to go!

The second exercise is a more general getting-to-know-you activity. It has only a couple of summer questions and therefore can be done at any time during the first few weeks of term. In this rapidly moving exercise, circulate around the room in speed dating style. Interviewers do not ask for stories of events, but ask for feedback to a question about the other student’s tastes and interests. Each of the 15 questions reveals a lot about the type of person the other student is. It helps tell the story of the student themselves, not just the events that happened to them. Unlike the first purely oral exercise, this activity culminates in a short piece of writing. Detailed instructions for both teachers and students are included.

Back to School Impromptu Speaking Topics
These 32 speech topics are real crowd pleasers for the first day or any time within the first week back. Speaking for a minute on these fun impromptu topics about their holiday will introduce the idea to students that they need to be active contributors in your class! A small peer feedback handout is included – ‘Two terrifics and a tweak’ – so that students can give each other both positive feedback and one suggestion for any future public speaking opportunities.

Back to School Brain Teaser Stories, Puzzles & Riddles
This fun, no-prep back to school brain teaser resource for grades 5-8 students will help them sharpen essential skills that might have dwindled during the summer. The stories, riddles and puzzles in this resource will furnish Middle School students with smiles at the end of a tiring back to school day, while still exercising their brain cells.

The easiest way to use many of the activities, like the mysteries, writing races and memory games, is to show them on your screen. The answers to the brain teaser stories are on separate pages to avoid spoilers that would reduce the excitement. Most of the writing activities can be completed on scraps of paper from the recycling bin, or on devices if you choose.

The mix and match riddles, scrambled words, crack the code words and the maze need to be photocopied. To promote classroom spirit and to save on photocopying, these activities could be completed in pairs. Putting all of the answer keys up on your screen will also cut down on photocopying.

The Internet is not required for any of the games.

Brain Teaser Mini Mysteries
Mini-mysteries are not only fun brain teasers, but also practice listening and inferential skills. The most obvious methods of using these 15 tales are to read each one out loud or to show them on your screen. The students then guess the solutions. If you want them to work a bit harder, they could record and explain their guesses on the included worksheet, and write their own story, using the guidelines. The solutions are on a different page from the story and its question, so that students cannot see them accidentally; that would really spoil the fun! A few stories are ‘one offs,’ but some characters like riddlers Matt and Sophie, and Mr and Mrs Orange and their twins Pip and Peel, appear in more than one tale.

Included in the resource:

15 vividly illustrated mini mysteries.

An optional tips page, explaining the most common mystery/ riddle clue types.

An optional working page, so students can write down their guesses, and keep a tally of how many mysteries they got right.

A mini-mystery writing advice sheet, to guide students in writing one of their own.

A simple teacher rubric to mark the students’ own mini-mysteries.

Back to School Brain Teaser Mystery- inferential skills practice
Want your students to practice inferential skills and deductive reasoning? This fun brain teaser mystery will entertain your students and give them inferential tasks to deduce the identity of the thief. To track down the thief they will have to unscramble the answers to jokes and riddles told by riddler Sophie to her friend Matt. They will also work out clues using a numbers-to-alphabet code. A further slice of challenging fun is rooting out the writer’s ‘mistake’- an event in the story that really could not have happened. Students will enjoy the humorous, rapid-fire interaction between Matt and Sophie. He fears he isn’t as speedy at working things out as his clever friend is, but he manages to wow her in this story- and discover who stole her phone!

To complete the activity, students have to complete two short fun writing tasks and a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ style drawing to find the missing phone. This resource will delight both entire classes and early finishing individuals.

A question sheet is included, and an answer key. Each student will need their own question sheet. For read-aloud fun (and paper saving), you could put the story and answers up on your screen. Alternatively, you can photocopy the story, questions and answers, and give them to pairs or individuals.

Brain Teaser ELA Bellringers: 12 Weeks of Mystery Stories, Riddles and Puzzles

Daily morning work, warm-ups, bell ringers- whatever you call them, what better way is there for a Middle School student to start your class than with a fun brainteaser? The only thing that beats it is having a brainteaser bell ringer every class for an entire term AND getting a completion mark for their bell ringer journal at the end of term! A simple rubric to mark it is included. Your grades 5-8 students will dash to your class; no-one will want to be late for the fun - and sometimes competitive - start to the lesson. Of course, these 3-5 minute DAILY brainteasers could be used as exit tickets to keep students focused right through to the last minute of a block, or even as fun activities for early finishers. They could also be high interest homework on most days (except for Team Time Tuesdays) for students who typically grumble about homework. The Internet is not required for any of the bell ringers. The only supplies required (beyond the photocopied journal) are some scraps of paper from the recycling bin. The answers can be displayed by using the included fun PowerPoint.

Here's how the week unfolds!
Mix It Up Mondays On Mondays, students will never know what is going to await them. Riddles? Speed writing? Finishing off a humorous tale? They will have to race to your room to find out!

Team Time Tuesday Tuesday is the time of the week when the bell ringer is a team effort with at least one or two others.
Word play Wednesday Word play -such as fun puns- abound!
Brainteaser Tale Thursday A brain teaser short story will entertain your students - and have them pulling out their hair to work out the answer.
Funny Friday Chuckles are always on the menu on Friday! Jokes, riddles and general silliness will put a smile on your students’ faces.

If your students enjoy these activities, a lot more fun awaits in

ELA Games grades 5-8.
If you want a mystery resource that demands writing from your students, try Reading Comprehension Mysteries & Questions
If your students enjoy the mini-mysteries in this bundle, volume 2 will provide further fun, and another mystery writing assignment: BRAIN TEASER MINI MYSTERIES VOL#2

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this product - or any other product in my store - please write to me at brilliantlylit@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!

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