Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Common Core Galore: Language Arts Fun in the Classroom!: 30 Activities for Middle School ELA is an educational text written by Garrett M. Carter. It contains a number of projects and activities for students that provide training in the English Language Arts Standards, which have been adopted by a majority of the states. The author includes a table that shows which standards are being addressed in each of the activities. There are activities designed to increase vocabulary skills, speaking and listening skills, language and reading. Some activities are game-based and have elements of chance incorporated. Others require that the student get into the mind of a particular character in a story and formulate decisions for that character. Carter also includes a bonus section that presents an activity from each of the two preceding books in his Middle School Language Arts series.

Garrett M. Carter's educational text, Common Core Galore: Language Arts Fun in the Classroom!: 30 Activities for Middle School ELA, is filled with projects and activities designed to get kids motivated and enthusiastic about learning while fulfilling the Common Core standards at the same time. I wish this book was around while I was a middle school student! Carter incorporates coloring, art, chance and even a bit of tech in challenging and entertaining projects that are a huge improvement over memorization and rehashing someone else's take on literature. I especially like the Author Report Card, the Character T-Shirt and the Character Autobiography activities, but I'd be hard pressed not to include in this list a lot more of the activities presented. This is one of those very rare educational texts that are filled with activities to make the reader smile and think about doing them themselves. Common Core Galore: Language Arts Fun in the Classroom!: 30 Activities for Middle School ELA is most highly recommended.