5 Ways to Add Adventure in ELA

From Hatchet in middle school ELA to Into the Wild in high school ELA, adventure books are always a crowd favorite. However, you don’t have to reserve this type of excitement for the outdoorsy texts. In fact, you can approach every ELA unit with a sense of adventure! Here to be our guide and share her unique approach to teaching English is adventure enthusiast Ainsley McClachrie. 

Ainsley McClachrie is a high school teacher living in Vermont. Before entering the classroom, she worked in outdoor education as a ropes course instructor and backpacking guide. Her first teaching position was at a ski academy, where she taught competitive skiers and snowboarders. Because of these experiences, she believes movement and engagement are essential in reaching high school ELA students.

5 Ways to Bring a Sense of Adventure into the ELA Classroom

When I begin a novel unit with my students, I like to think of it as an adventure we’re all taking together. We know what our destination is, but, standing on our safe shore at the beginning of our trip, we’re not quite sure what we’ll encounter along the way. Students are wondering: what’s this book about? What will be the summative assessment? Will there be a test? And I’m thinking, will my lessons work? Will they be engaged? How can I keep their attention?

When I’m not tricking my students into enjoying reading and writing, I’m a long-distance backpacker, peak bagger, and novice climber. I like to channel that in the way I structure my units in my classroom–the excitement of the unknown, the adaptability needed to respond to travails, and the curiosity and wonder of adventure. Here are some ways that you too can invite adventure into the ELA classroom.

encourage your ELA students to take risks

In the documentary 180 Degrees South, Yvon Chouinard, the American climber who founded Patagonia, says, “The word ‘adventure’ has just gotten overused. For me, adventure is when everything goes wrong. That’s when the adventure starts.” The mindset that adventure requires failure, setbacks, and challenges is a mindset we can easily translate to the classroom. In order for our students to really learn, they need to be challenged–and no challenge comes without the risk of failure. 

• Frame writing as a recursive process. In my class, students submit three drafts of every written assignment–the first draft they edit and revise themselves, the second draft on which I leave comments and feedback, and the final submitted draft. However, after submitting their work, students can still revise their work once within the grading period for full credit. Writing is a process. Encourage your students to take risks with their writing by allowing them to try new things that might fail. Emphasizing the recursive nature of the writing process allows students to take these risks while knowing they have a failsafe. If something isn’t working, they have the opportunity to fix it. You can read more about this mindset shift here: English teacher mindset shifts for prioritizing revision over grading essays
• Ban the phrase “I don’t know”. During the first week of classes, I let my students know that–sadly–the beloved phrase “I don’t know” isn’t allowed in my classroom. I want my students to be brave, I tell them, so I’d rather them take a guess and be wrong than take the safe way out. As a fun activity, I have my students write a goodbye letter to the phrase “I don’t know”, in which they mourn its loss. 
• Model a growth mindset. One of the most important things an educator can do is acknowledge their mistakes. Be humble and reflective in your teaching and it will encourage your students to do the same. We’re all still learning, after all! These nature-themed growth mindset posters are a great reminder!

Allow students to choose their adventure in ELA

Remember those choose-your-adventure Goosebumps books from the 1990’s? Truthfully, I feel like I’ll never again experience the serotonin rush I used to get from those. At several different points in the book, the narrative would diverge, giving the reader a choice on how to proceed. If you were anything like me, once you finished the book, you’d go right back to the beginning and read it through again, making other choices and seeing where that took you. Encouraging learner choice like this fosters a sense of ownership and engagement and is a necessary component of adventure, since all adventures require choices to be made.

I’ve turned several of my novel study units into games for my students. At the beginning of The Call of the Wild, for example, I have students choose a photograph of a real-life Klondike gold rusher from the University of Washington archives. Once students have chosen their character, they write a brief paragraph naming their character and describing who they are and what they do. Throughout the course of our study of The Call of the Wild, students will compete in a class-wide game as their character. Every day, they’ll be faced with a challenge I’ve written up based on the real-life challenges Klondike gold rushers faced. And, just like those Goosebumps books, each choice will lead the student to a different scenario (for example, students will win points according to how they’ve responded to the challenges–kind of like a Klondike version of the Oregon Trail game (except no one dies of typhoid!).

There are many other ways in which we can invite student choice into the ELA classroom. Having students choose independent reading books, giving students options for assignments, having student-led discussions, allowing students to choose research topics, and giving students time to free write are all ways to work student choice into a secondary English class.

Get students moving in ELA

Most of our students are sitting at their desks for hours and hours each day. Research has shown that moving while learning enhances an individual’s ability to make connections and lowers levels of anxiety and depression. And, of course, getting your students moving helps shake things up! Incorporate movement into your ELA classroom by using station activities, question trails, scavenger hunts, or grammar relay races. If you want more movement ideas, keep reading here: 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom

Add novelty to your novel studies

What keeps an adventure exciting? It’s the sense that anything can happen. To create that excitement in the secondary ELA classroom, you can:

• Set the scene. There are so many ways that you can give your students a more hands-on experience with what you’re reading. Classroom transformations, of course, are great–but if you don’t have the budget for that, you can simply find an ambient background video on YouTube that fits your unit of study and project that onto your whiteboard. I like to use a wax melter in my classroom and try to even match the scent of the wax to what we’re reading. Believe it or not, there are several different literary-inspired candle stores on Etsy where you can find wax melts scented like Pemberley Garden, Gatsby’s shorefront, and eleven forests!
• Use props. Again, this is a great way to give your students a hands-on experience with what you’re reading. When my juniors read Into Thin Air, I used to bring in my mountaineering equipment so they could see gear like what the climbers on Everest would have been wearing and using. In Keeping the Wonder: An Educator’s Guide to Magical, Engaging, and Joyful Learning, these are called flashbulb props and there’s tons of research on why they work!
• Foster your students’ curiosity. Peak your students’ curiosity by giving them hints about what lies ahead. Chapter scavenger hunts can be a great way to both measure how closely students are reading and get them interested and invested. Simply create a list of events, characters, or settings in the chapter and have students record the page number of each object they find.

Take ELA lessons outside 

When The Last Child in the Woods was published nearly twenty years ago, it sparked a nationwide conversation about our changing relationship with the natural world. Four years beforehand, in 2001, a study conducted by the EPA found that Americans spent less than 8 percent of their time outdoors. And all of this, of course, was before smartphones even came into the equation. 

Holding ELA classes outside helps keep things fresh and helps students develop an appreciation of the outdoors. If bringing your class outside isn’t possible–if your school is urban, school policy doesn’t allow it, or if, like me, you live in New England and the outdoors are a frigid moonscape for most of the year–you can bring nature into the classroom through the literature you choose to assign, essay topics you provide for students, or your classroom atmosphere (think plants, open blinds/curtains, and warm lighting!). Find inspiration here: Nature Themed Classroom Decor: A Calming and Plant Filled Classroom

Fostering a sense of adventure in the ELA classroom isn’t just important for engaging students but also for engaging us. Although I love being a teacher, teaching the same novels over and over and over again can begin to feel a little stale. When we reframe this as an adventure by getting students moving, getting outside, adding novelty to our lessons, giving students choice, and encouraging students to take academic risk, we invite not only our students’, but also our curiosity, wonder, excitement and adaptability. Happy trails!