Launching a New Middle School ELA Course? Start With a Full Curriculum
If your school is adding middle school ELA for the first time, perhaps by opening new grade levels or splitting English into its own course, ELA Complete – Middle School gives you a written grades 6–8 course to launch with. It brings 100+ resources on literary and informational reading, three modes of writing, and language work, all ready to teach.
View the ELA curriculum →For a school launching a new middle school ELA course, ELA Complete – Middle School supplies a ready-to-teach curriculum for grades 6–8, starting at $149.90 for 100+ resources. It includes fiction and nonfiction texts, lessons on theme, conflict, point of view and text structure, and narrative, informative and argumentative writing taught as a process from planning to editing, with paragraph and essay structure and textual evidence.
The curriculum
ELA Complete – Middle School, Grades 6–8
Start with the full curriculum. The other resources below are optional add-ons. Open any cover for the full contents and price.
The real problem
What makes a brand-new ELA course hard to start
When ELA is new on a school's schedule, the teacher is often building more than lessons. There is no book room, no shared writing rubric, no agreement on what an eighth-grade essay should look like, and no record of what students learned before they arrived. A school that just added grade 6, for example, may be receiving students from several elementary schools with very different writing habits. Some have written five-paragraph essays, others have barely written a full paragraph. The first decision is what the course is for. Is it mainly literature, or does it carry the informational reading load for the whole school? Is argument writing introduced in grade 6 or saved for grade 8? Those choices shape every later year, and once a first cohort moves through, they are hard to undo. Then there is the practical side. A new course needs reading material immediately, before any book budget arrives. It needs a writing process students can learn once and reuse across grades. And it needs assessments that give you an honest baseline, because next year's planning depends on what this year's students could actually do.
Why it fits
What the curriculum gives a new course
Each feature answers a decision you would otherwise have to make from nothing in the first year.
- Built-in short stories, articles and speeches let the course start before a book budget exists.
- Separate reading strands for fiction and nonfiction settle how informational reading fits into ELA.
- Narrative, informative and argumentative writing give you three modes to distribute across grades 6–8.
- Paragraph and essay structure lessons set a shared writing standard from the first cohort onward.
- The planning-to-editing process gives students one writing routine they can carry into later grades.
- Answer keys and differentiated worksheets help you establish an honest baseline for incoming students.
Getting started
Building the course in its first term
A suggested route for the opening months. The curriculum does not set dates, so these steps are for you to schedule.
- Run a writing baselineIn the first days, assign a short paragraph task from the writing strand. Students arriving from different schools show you quickly where their paragraph structure and use of evidence stand.
- Decide the grade-level focusChoose which writing mode leads in each grade. One option is narrative in grade 6, informative in grade 7 and argumentative in grade 8, with all three practiced every year.
- Publish one writing processTeach planning, drafting, revising and editing as a named routine and post it in the room. A new course benefits from one shared process that every later teacher can rely on.
- Balance literature and informationAlternate units on stories and excerpts with articles and speeches. That settles early that the course covers both, which matters if other subjects expect help with nonfiction reading.
- Keep samples for next yearSave a few student essays at each grade from the first term. They become your local examples of what grade 6, 7 or 8 writing looks like when you plan year two.
Which version
The right version for a launch year
The base version at $149.90 includes all 100+ resources and gives a new course its full reading and writing content. Paying $189.90 adds Teach-Life-Balance, a digital time-saving course with planner, guides and templates. A launch year means extra meetings and decisions that do not exist in an established course, so the time-planning side may be worth it for you, though it contains no ELA lessons. If the same school is opening high school English soon, the two ELA products share one structure, and TEACHMORE15 gives 15% off when you buy both.
Honest limits
Limits to plan around
Full-length novels and class book sets are not part of it, so plan for those through your school if the course will include whole-book reading. It does not set your school's grading policy or course catalog wording; it gives you the content those are built on. Review the units against your state or district ELA requirements before the course description is published. If several teachers will share the course, message Teach Lessons first about team use. If it does not fit within 7 days of purchase, you can exchange it for store credit of equal value, not a cash payment.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Can our new course claim it meets state ELA standards?
The curriculum itself is not endorsed or adopted by any state or district and makes no Common Core claim. It is written for U.S. middle school classrooms and covers reading, writing and language. To make a claim about standards for your course, compare the units with your state's ELA standards yourself and record the connections you confirm.
We only have grade 6 this year. Should I still buy the grades 6–8 product?
It can make sense, because the units are designed to build across grades 6–8 and you will need grade 7 material next year. In the first year you teach the grade 6 pieces in depth and use the rest to plan where the course goes. Units work individually, so nothing forces you to cover all three grades now.
How much reading material is actually included?
The curriculum includes short stories, excerpts, articles, speeches and informational texts, enough to teach reading skills without an anthology. The exact contents are listed on the product page, so check there if you need to plan around specific texts. For whole novels, your school will need its own copies.
Does it include rubrics for essays?
The curriculum covers paragraph and essay structure and the full writing process, with answer keys for its tasks. Check the product page for exactly what assessment material is listed. Many teachers launching a course also write one short school-specific rubric so every grade uses the same language.
Can it support a separate reading course and writing course?
Yes, if your school splits ELA that way. Units can be used individually, so the reading comprehension and text analysis units can anchor one course and the narrative, informative and argumentative writing units the other. The language strand can go wherever it fits best, often alongside editing in the writing course.
What if the course is cancelled after one year?
The licence covers your own instructional use, so you can still use the materials in another ELA class you teach. If you realize within 7 days of purchase that it does not fit, you can exchange it for store credit of equal value and choose a different product.
Start the new course with a full plan
See the product page for the complete contents and pick the version that suits your first year.
View the ELA curriculum →