My rule #5 for teaching middle school is to pick and choose the most interesting content you can find, whenever possible — topics that are relevant to the age group you’re teaching, AND even topics that spark a passion in you. The beautiful thing about English Language Arts is that the curriculum is mostly skills-based versus content-based. ELA teachers signed up to teach students literacy skills — reading, writing, language, listening, and, viewing — not a certain set of facts (as would be done in the content areas). It’s beautiful because we basically have the freedom to pick and choose content, as long as it teaches the skills, is standards-based, and is inclusive. So, my friends, make it a rule to choose content kids will respond to.

I love the freedom and variety in ELA. We can have students read, write, and view content from every single subject area — science, math, social studies, psychology, current events, EVERYTHING — from multiple perspectives. That gives us so many possibilities for high-interest topics that we can base our literacy lessons on.

In this blog post, I provide you with a list of HIGH-INTEREST TOPICS I generated by asking a group of kids, ages 11-18, “What topics are you interested in learning about?” Straight from the mouths of students, they told me all about what they wish teachers would teach them more about.

The Goal is this, which is my Rule #5 for Teaching Middle School: Make Learning HIGH-INTEREST

I say, “When it comes to loans, high-interest is terrible! But, when it comes to the content in your classroom, high-interest is fantastic!”

Here’s One Option: you could do like I have done and pick a nice, safe, feel-good topic that almost everyone can relate to (and wouldn’t mind reading and writing about): For me, that topic was dogs! (For you, it can be anything you like). Once I discovered kids are very open to discussing, reading, and writing about dogs, I went crazy and made TONS OF FREE activities about dogs (and then I expanded to other animals!). I am willing to admit I went overboard. THESE ARE JUST A FEW EXAMPLES THAT MAY INSPIRE YOU TO FIND A TOPIC YOU LIKE AND THEN GO CRAZY WITH TOO! (For example, video games are a great topic!)

Another option is that you can literally ask your students what they’re interested in. Like this:

• “Hey kids, I’m interested in learning what you guys actually WANT to learn about . That way, I can look for reading and writing topics that you might like. So, tell me some topics, and I’ll jot them down.”

• “If you HAD to pick up a book and read it right now, what would you want it to be about?”

• “What is one thing you do, that when you do it, time goes by so fast?”

I took my own advice, and I asked a group of kids aged 11 to 18 the three questions above. These are the topics they told me they want to learn more about:

• Disasters! Natural disasters! Man-made disasters! What they told me is ANY AND ALL DISASTERS!

• Conspiracies that have taken place

• Unsolved mysteries

• Climate change

• Any of the TedEd topics, especially TedEd short videos

• Greek Mythology

• Pompeii and the Mt. Vesuvius volcano

• Animals. (Check out these mostly-free animal-related lessons in my store!)

• Animal behavior

• Historical drama and interesting historical legends

• Psychology Topics: Such as the signs of lying, and why we dream

• Dreams and what the heck is up with them

• Nightmares

• Dinosaurs (and the latest discoveries)

• Stonehenge

• Fossils

• Planets

• Space mysteries, such as What’s in Saturn’s rings?

• Space travel: Past events but also the latest updates

• The Mars Rover (landed on Mars in February 2021)

• The problem with zoos, and animal rights issues

• Moral issues people face

• Oceans, including the unknowns

• Crime Scene Investigations and True Crime

• Hoaxes that people actually fell for

• Amazing Sports Stories

• Aliens and UFOs

• Video Games, such as Minecraft, Fortnite, etc.

• Japanese culture

• How movies get made, written, filmed

• What the 80s were like, what the 70s were like, etc.

• Guinness and other world records

• How to become a millionaire or billionaire

• Music: songs, bands, lyrics, instruments, etc.

• Life without homework, banning homework

• Fantastical creatures

Trust me. When you give them high-interest topics, they’ll be happier, which will make you happier. When you provide your students with high-interest learning resources they feel are relevant to them and interesting in some way, they will actually behave better. They will get sucked into whatever you are trying to get them read, write, or do and forget about misbehaving.

So, that’s why I created these high-interest informational texts and tasks. I went out of my way to make the articles super interesting to middle schoolers by writing about things that interest them. And, guess what? It worked. I keep hearing from teachers how kids get so into these passages. They actually want to answer the questions. They even want to discuss the articles as a group.