Something I’ve always liked about middle and high school ELA is the freedom and flexibility to change things up, depending on the interests and learning styles of the students in your space. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use pop culture in the ELA classroom! A few twists and tweaks that incorporate popular music, celebrities, social media, or even broader trends, like Netflix, can make learning activities more engaging for middle and high schoolers!

Here are my top suggestions for using pop culture in the ELA classroom!

1. Celebrity grammar errors

At first, you might not think there’s much of a connection between grammar and celebrity culture. But here’s the twist: many celebrity social media posts are littered with grammar errors! This creates a unique learning opportunity for your students and a creative way to use pop culture in the ELA classroom. In Editing Celebrity Social Media Errors, students examine the text of social media posts written by the likes of Kevin Hart, Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg, and Justin Bieber!

I’ve broken down a few different ways you can use this activity below!

• Celebrity Social Media Error of the Week: Each week, share a celebrity’s social media status update with your class! In this low-prep activity, each student gets their own copy of the social media post, identifies any grammatical errors, and edits the text of the post. From here, students must re-write the post in a grammatically correct way!

• Celebrity Social Media Writing Centre: If writing centers are part of your regular routine, celebrity social media posts are an easy way to use pop culture in the ELA classroom. Social media posts can be a great writing center “station” – simply print a packet of posts. Students can choose which status update they want to work on and make the edits directly in their writing notebook!

• Pair Up: Editing Celebrity Social Media Posts: A third option is to have students pair up (or work in small groups) to examine a celebrity’s social media post together. Once edits and corrections have been made, each group can reveal the (grammatically incorrect) “before” and the (grammatically correct) “after” to the class!

Both Volume 1 and Volume 2 include 20 social media posts, so you should have plenty to go around! with grammar errors that students need to identify, correct, and explain. Also included is an answer key and slideshow with detailed explanations for easy class review. You might be surprised at the rich discussions sparked by these social media posts!

2. Music & Poetry

In my experience, poetry seems to “stick” a little better with middle schoolers when I can find ways to connect it with their own interests and passions. This is why music can be an effective way of using pop culture in the ELA classroom! Song lyrics are a type of poetry, after all. Whether you are teaching a lesson on figurative language, or simply looking for ways to jazz up your poetry unit, these two activities are worth a look!

LITERARY LYRICS:

In this engaging activity, use pop culture in the ELA classroom to help students connect with tricky figurative language concepts. As they read excerpts of popular song lyrics, students will learn to identify several different types of figurative language. By the end of the lesson, students should be able to label and recognize examples of metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, alliteration, pun, oxymoron, and more! 

MUSICAL POETRY:

If you’d like to infuse music into a larger poetry unit, the Musical Poetry Bundle has everything you need! This activity bundle features the Literary Lyrics lesson, as well as four more lessons and learning tasks to hook your middle school students on poetry!

3. Litflix Playlist

I love how versatile the Litflix Playlist activity is – it works with almost any novel or short story! In this character analysis task, students must imagine a personalized TV and movie “playlist” for the main character in their text. This is a fun way to use pop culture in middle school ELA and offer students lots of choice and voice in their responses! 

As they complete the task, students must offer reasons for the shows and movies they choose for their characters. In doing so, they use text evidence to show how each of their selections connects to the character’s personality, experiences, and motivations.

4. Soundtrack of My Life

Another way to effectively use pop culture in the ELA classroom is through the Soundtrack of My Life project! In this learning task, students consider which songs would be on the “soundtrack” of their lives and why. What I love best about this lesson is it begins with a hand-drawn animated introduction by John Spencer!

To begin, ask students to think of this assignment as a “mixtape” with ten songs on it. One tip I like to share is to imagine their life as a movie, with specific songs representing different years, phases, or places. Once they have narrowed down their playlist, the next step is for students to explain their choices in writing. Using a graphic organizer, students share why they selected each song and how it relates personally to their lives. 

You can even use this assignment to make a creative display in your classroom or hallway. When the mixes are complete, students can create album art for their soundtracks. The finished art and playlists can be posted on a bulletin board that showcases your students’ unique personalities.

You can also check out a poetry version of the Soundtrack of Your Life resource here.

5. Idioms in Music

Do your students struggle to understand idioms? I find that some students have a really hard time with this literary device, especially if their first language is not English. However, bringing pop culture into the ELA classroom can help!

Contemporary music is a great way to use pop culture in the ELA classroom, especially when teaching trickier concepts, such as identifying and understanding idioms. Whether your students love Taylor Swift, Drake, Eminem, Miley Cyrus, or Katy Perry, idioms are found across all musical genres! 

In this flexible activity, students are provided with cards featuring examples of idioms in songs by these artists – and many more! A second set of cards provides the meaning of each idiom. Working alone, in pairs, or in a small group, students must identify the meaning of each idiom and match it to the original lyric. Best of all, this low-prep resource is ready to print in color or black and white!

6. Social Media Nonfiction

Middle and high school students are often glued to their phones! If your class is obsessed with social media, hook them with a nonfiction activity that allows them to explore the power and influence of these platforms!

To begin, cue up the presentation slides, which guide students through the process of reading and analyzing a nonfiction article. Once they have finished their reading, a low-prep response assignment helps them hone their critical thinking, summarizing, and comprehension skills. In addition, students can also evaluate ideas, make inferences, and connect their reading to their personal lives, as well as the wider world.

Once they have finished this task, leverage students’ interest in social media by having them respond to provided prompts in the style of posts from popular platforms. Here, students can share their opinions on social media, technology, and influencers in a creative way!

I hope these six suggestions help you infuse a bit of pop culture into your ELA lessons! If you liked these ideas, you might want to consider checking out our musical poetry bundle, which includes some of the activities mentioned above and more!

Looking for more ways to hook students on poetry? Check out my post on Outside-the-Box Poetry Writing Assignments for Middle School ELA!