Hi, I’m Katie, and I really do Love Language Arts!

Hello there! I have always loved language arts, ever since I was a kid. And, as far as getting others to love it, well I taught middle school ELA (plus social studies and other subjects) for 10 years. Since then, I’ve worked as a contracted writer for various Ed-Tech learning companies creating learning content and assessments. But what I enjoy the most is running my online store Loving Language Arts. I sometimes fantasize about going on Shark Tank to pitch them an ELA business idea that’s brewing in my head (actually that sounds frightening lol). I have three daughters, and substitute teach as well (should I say I love those the most? Oopsie…) I do love my family though; here we are.

My Philosophy about Learning Resources

My philosophy is that students need to be interested in what they’re learning about in order to get engaged, pay attention, and to care in general. As a teacher, I got sick of the boring content in a lot of the textbooks and assessments. I noticed that whenever students were bored, or if the reading was too long or beyond their range, they started acting up. They had all this time on their hands now that they weren’t paying attention to their books!

I also noticed that when they were really interested in the content, they paid more attention, acted up less, and were generally just on board with whatever I asked them to do. So, since then, it’s been my mission to write content that appeals to students by selecting subject matter that actually interests them or that they can relate to! And, that’s what I sell in my store!

 For example, I hear day after day about how kids LOVE the reading passages and activities in these High-Interest Informational Text Passages & Tasks (Aligned to EVERY core reading standard). One reason kids like them is because the passages are one page long. The other reason is I chose topics they enjoy reading about:

High-interest text passages & ela tasks

Here Are a Couple One-Pagers You Can Try FREE!

My Experience in Writing Assessments

When I first started as a content writer, the Common Core State Standards had recently come out and I worked hard aligning learning materials to them. I learned the ins and outs of making online learning modules and K-12 assessments. There’s been many a time I worked on ONE test question for over an hour!

Anyway, I learned how the major test developers such as PARCC (The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) make their standardized tests that align to the College-and-Career-Ready Standards (a.k.a. Common Core). That being said, I have also written test items for states such as Texas that do not use CCSS. (All the standards I’ve seen from EVERY state are essentially the same standards in a different order with slightly different wording).

As of right now, 41 states (plus D.C. and territories) have adopted (and most have renamed and slightly tweaked) the Common Core State Standards. Most states used to administer PARCC and SBAC tests, but recently many states have developed their own tests which are very similar. Today, about 1/3 of the states use PARCC and SBAC, and about 2/3 use their own tests.

And now I make my own tests! Yay! I have been working hard aligning useful practice test items to EVERY SINGLE GRADE-SPECIFIC READING INFORMATIONAL TEXT STANDARD (and altogether over 25 grade-specific standards in reading, literacy in science, literacy in social studies, language, speaking & listening AND text-based writing, including argument). They are currently available for grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. 11th and 12th grades are coming soon!

Here’s a few One-Pagers You Can Try FREE!

And These tests below are interactive, online, self-grading Full practice tests with 20-30 Standards-based ela questions(free)