If you’ve ever found yourself staring at your lesson plans, thinking, "I need something fresh," you’re not alone. Teaching ELA is a constant balancing act. Captivating students, meeting standards, nurturing strong writers and readers, and doing it all with limited time and energy is a lot.
The good news? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are incredible, student-centered resources that can help you bring engagement, rigor, and creativity into your classroom without adding hours to your workload.
Here is a look at some of our favorite ELA resources that really work!
- ELA Energizers and Brain Breaks - Reignite your students’ focus with 15 no-prep ELA activities that build critical thinking and creativity while giving your class a purposeful mental reset. These fun, high-energy challenges are perfect for middle and high school students who need a boost of engagement during longer lessons. Use them as warm-ups, transitions, or quick brain breaks that keep learning active and attitudes positive.
- Christmas Escape Room - BAH HUMBUG! Santa accidentally locked himself in the toy workshop and he needs your help to get him out! But, before he can be freed from the workshop, you will have to successfully complete a series of tasks and challenges.
- Interactive Poetry Activities & Bulletin Boards Bundle - Now is the perfect time to grab this amazing bundle of activities and bulletin boards that are guaranteed to engage your students and prove that poetry and Shakespeare are still relevant today! More sets will be added soon, so get it while it's at its lowest price.
- Sentence Structure Teaching Unit - Make teaching sentence structure fun, engaging, and hands-on! This sentence structure resource is a complete teaching unit with materials for direct instruction, student practice, and assessment. In this unit, students will learn about the four types of sentence structure: simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences.
- Who Destroyed the Snowman? Reading Mystery - This winter close reading inference mystery has students solving the case of who destroyed Mia and her dad’s giant snowman the night before the carnival. As they read the backstory and dig through clues, students use close reading and inference skills to piece together what really happened. Teams will collaborate and use critical thinking as they debate suspects, analyze evidence, and crack the mystery together.
- Seminar Stations - An AI Resistant Activity - Tired of unmotivated, unfocused students who use AI to do their thinking? This discussion activity will foster critical thinking skills as students use a process-based seminar approach to explore an engaging topic. It requires minimal prep and includes tips to help you manage and engage your students throughout the seminar.
- Ugly Christmas Sweater Activity - Imagine this: You or a character of your choosing, have just been invited to attend an ugly sweater Christmas party. You will now have the opportunity to evaluate and carefully select the sweater decor for this festive Christmas event. The activities included can be used as individual Christmas writing activities or as a complete unit, as they all go hand in hand, yet offer something different in each activity.
- 2026 New Year Activities - Be prepared when you come back from break with Tracee Orman's popular 2026 New Year Activities! Updated every year, it's always a favorite way to ease into the new year while still practicing writing, reading, and poetry analysis.
- Essay Writing Unit - Teach Your Students How to Write an Essay PRINT & DIGITAL - Teach your students how to write an essay! This comprehensive essay writing bundle includes teaching resources and lessons for every part of an essay. Plus, it includes digital resources! This resource covers every paragraph of the essay writing process!
- Escape the Snow Globe - This winter escape room is the perfect way to build classroom community while getting students up, moving, and working together. After reading a fun backstory about becoming trapped inside a magical snow globe, students rotate through six stations solving winter-themed puzzles and riddles to escape. It’s a highly engaging team-building activity that improves problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Although it works great as a Christmas escape room, it includes no direct Christmas references, so you can use it all winter long.
