Middle School Teaching Units

Looking for a way to encourage your students’ interest in a topic?  Trade books can provide the needed spark.  Trade books, which are primarily designed to entertain and inform outside the classroom, can be used successfully in the classroom to heighten motivation in your students.  Trade books cover just about every topic under the sun, so you can probably find a book that will align with your curriculum objectives in such a way as to help your students see the applicability of the topic. Students may show a keener interest in the lively way a trade book presents material over the stilted writings in a textbook.  While textbooks cover a topic in a prescribed way, a trade book may introduce or expand upon a topic by including it in a fictional setting, or alternatively, a non-fiction account from real life.

Classroom activities can be built around the book’s topic, so in addition to the reading practice and vocabulary development, all types of offshoot activities can be developed.  Depending on the book, there may be several ways to explore the concepts presented in the story or account.  Possibilities for math, science, social studies, geography, history, economics, and more may exist using the book as a jumping off point.  Here are some ideas on how to use a trade book in the classroom.

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