from ELA Content Hub
A FREE FOUR-DAY VIRTUAL EVENT · OCTOBER 15 TO 18 · GRADES 6 TO 8
Engagement isn't a personality trait
You don't have to be the loudest teacher in the hallway.
Over four days, middle school ELA teachers will bring their best engagement strategies into the arena and show you how to use them.
You’ll find ideas that fit your classroom, vote for favorites, and help decide who walks away a Victor.
Costume optional.
Every session is pre-recorded and sent straight to your inbox. No account to create. Nothing to attend live.
Save my seat
“Just make it more engaging.” As if you haven’t thought of that.
You want students involved in the lesson. You want them thinking, asking questions, and giving the work a chance.
But getting there can feel like an uphill battle when…
✦ “Is this for a grade?” comes before they’ve even looked at the assignment.
✦ The same few students carry the conversation while you coax everyone else to contribute.
✦ Side conversations and interruptions keep pulling you away from the lesson you’re trying to teach.
✦ You’re competing with the pull of a screen, and another digital activity doesn’t feel like the answer.
✦ You go looking for fresh ideas, only to find elaborate room transformations, complicated games, and activities that look like they require a shopping trip and your entire Sunday.
When did engagement start looking like a full-time production?
Somewhere between the classroom apathy and the spectacular lessons filling your feed, “make it engaging” started to sound like “do more.” Be more entertaining. Plan something bigger. Find a way to top whatever held their attention yesterday.
You’re willing to try something new. But with limited planning time and a classroom full of different needs, it’s frustrating when the ideas you find feel out of reach.
You’re looking for ways to get your students more involved, and finding them has become one more thing on your plate.
Engagement can be something every teacher does.
Engagement can start with a question students want to discuss, a challenge they want to figure out, or a classroom game that gets them working with the content in a different way.
Those moments can fit into the lessons you already teach. They can work with a quieter teaching style or a bigger personality. There’s room to make them your own.
You don’t have to become a different kind of teacher to give students a different way to participate.
That’s the idea behind the Engagement Games. We’re bringing together middle school ELA teachers to share strategies and classroom games, explain how they use them, and give you fresh possibilities for your own classroom, all in one place.
You might find a new twist on something you already do or an idea you’re excited to try for the first time. You get to choose what fits your students, your teaching style, and your time.
One strategy won’t make apathy disappear. But sharing ideas gives us more ways to reach the students in front of us—and a chance to tackle the challenge together.
Professional development with a little competitive spirit.
The Middle School ELA Engagement Games is a free online event happening October 15–18, 2026.
Each presenter enters the arena with one engagement strategy to share.
Their mission? Show you how it works and help you picture it in your own classroom.
Your mission? Watch, collect ideas worth trying, and vote for your favorites.
Sessions are about 15–20 minutes each, so you can explore one strategy without committing your entire evening.
And yes, your host will be dressed for the occasion.
Subtlety was never really a Capitol strength.
Save my seatCome looking for ideas. Leave with a next step.
The goal is to help you finish a session thinking:
“I know where I could use that.”
Inside the Games, you’ll explore strategies with these classroom goals in mind:
✦ Invite more students into the thinking. Give participation a place beyond the same few volunteers.
✦ Make meaningful work easier to enter. Look for ways to help hesitant learners take that first step.
✦ Bring fresh energy to familiar lessons. Consider how a strategy could fit the reading, writing, or language work already on your calendar.
✦ Keep the learning at the center. Think beyond whether an activity looks fun to what students are actually doing with the content.
✦ Find approaches that fit you. Choose ideas that make sense for your students, your teaching style, and your available prep time.
You don’t have to implement everything.
One useful strategy is a worthwhile place to start.
How the Games Run
Every day of the Games, a new session from me. Behind that, the full tribute roster, open from day one and votable every day until the arena closes.
The Daily Drops
DAY ONE · OCTOBER 15
Opening Ceremonies
Dress the Part: Using Costumes to Create Instant Classroom Buy-In - Simple ways to use costumes, props, and themed lessons without spending hours transforming your classroom.
DAY TWO · OCTOBER 16
Doodle Notes That Actually Make Students Think - How to turn note-taking into an active learning experience instead of a copying exercise.
DAY THREE · OCTOBER 17
Stop Reviewing. Start Playing - How to turn grammar, vocabulary, and reading review into games students genuinely want to play.
The Five-Minute Routine That Gets Everyone Participating -A repeatable warm-up or Daily Language Review routine that gets students reading, writing, correcting, and discussing immediately.
DAY FOUR · OCTOBER 18
Give Them a Mission, Not an Assignment - How to reframe ordinary ELA tasks as challenges, mysteries, investigations, or creative missions.
Engagement Without the Chaos: Making Choice Work in Middle School ELA - How to give students meaningful choices while keeping everyone focused on the same skill or standard.
Closing Ceremonies
✦
Meet The Tributes
Every tribute session is open from day one and stays open all four days. Watch them in whatever order suits your week. Vote every day, right up until the arena closes.
Why I Built This
I’m Alisha, your host. And yes, I take student engagement seriously enough to dress like someone from the Capitol.
With more than 10 years of classroom experience, including teaching classes with a high proportion of students with IEPs, I know how much thought goes into helping students access challenging work.
I also know the frustration of preparing a lesson with care and watching students struggle to connect with it.
I created the Engagement Games to bring educators together around a useful question:
What can we do to help middle schoolers participate more fully in their learning?
Every presenter brings a strategy to that conversation.
I’ll bring the arena energy.
You bring your teacher brain and permission to choose what works for you.
Questions?
Is it actually free?
What’s the difference between free registration and the Arena Pass?
What’s included with my Arena Pass?
Do the sessions all come out at once?
Can I start free and upgrade later?
Do I have to show up live?
Do I have to create an account?
What's the voting about?
Will the PD certificate count toward my school’s requirements?
Take Your Seat
MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR. BUT MOSTLY, HAVE FUN WITH THIS.
THE FREE PASS
FREE
THE ARENA PASS
$19
$29 starting October 15.
Everything in the free pass, plus:
✦ Every session for a full year, not just event week. Rewatch in February, which is when you will actually need them.
✦ 5-Hour Professional Development Certificate
✦ The Ultimate Strategy Index. 100 engagement strategies for middle school ELA, tagged so you can find the right one in 20 seconds.
✦ The "When the Lesson Is Flopping" Emergency Kit. A one-page diagnostic for the days a lesson comes apart, plus the exact words to say when it does.
✦ Scouting Reports. Watch the Games without scrambling to take notes. You’ll get a one-page report for each speaker with the key takeaways already written down
