Why novels? How I blended my textbook and novel studies to create a meaningful ELA curriculum

I teach 5th-8th grade ELA and during my second year in my current position, I changed all of my instructional practices. The curriculum that I was using was DULL. The textbook did not include engaging literature but instead featured flimsy stories that were checking items of a pre-determined checklist. Even my most engaged students were bored with the stories and I was secretly bored as well. After a particularly painful unit, I decided to hunt down some novels in my school. This was a little challenging, but I pieced together sets for each of my reading groups. I only used novels that I knew were worthy of our time and didn’t have time to build anything from scratch. I bought a few novel studies and kicked off the novels right before Thanksgiving. 

My entire class changed. The students were engaged and challenged. We weren’t cruising through the textbook at the pace recommended by the curriculum guide. We were reading, digesting, and enjoying the materials. At the end of the first set of novel studies, my students tested significantly higher than they tested on the curriculum. Better yet, I knew they understood the concepts that we covered because we went at our own pace and really thought about the text. 

After Christmas, I was scheduled to return to the textbook, but I dreaded it. I was hanging on because in ELA I am responsible for teaching comprehension, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. Regardless of how meaningless, the curriculum wove all of these skills together which seemed to be something that I could not do. I took some time to map out our standards and decided on the following practices:

-Comprehension and Fluency- Novel Study/Progress Monitoring

-Vocabulary- Novel Study

-Grammar- Curriculum

-Spelling- Curriculum

-Writing- Curriculum/Novel Study if applicable

This struck a great balance in our daily classroom routines. The pressure was not solely on my shoulders to develop curriculum and instruction for all of these facets. Rather, I kept the useful parts of the curriculum and integrated literature to create a meaningful combination. I already ordered our novel studies for next year and cannot wait to continue reading with my students! 

I have been in ELA classrooms where the textbook is strictly followed. I have also been in ELA classrooms where the textbook is not used at all. In both types of classrooms, standards can be missed, and students can become bored. ELA teachers have a heavy responsibility that spans several skills, so it is important that we strike an appropriate balance.