Curated OER
Best Websites for English Teachers
Bookmark these grammar, writing, and literature websites to build your teaching arsenal, making life just a little bit easier.
Curated OER
On Target: Strategies to Help Readers Make Meaning through Inferences
Here's a resource that explicitly teaches, models, and provides readers with opportunities to practice the process of drawing inferences from text. Packed with strategies elementary, middle, and high school teachers can use, the resource...
Curated OER
Night: Annotated Bibliography
This annotated bibliography and list of websites are valuable resources for any study of the Holocaust and/or of Elie Wiesel's Night.
Scholastic
What’s the Good Word? Etymology Project Guidelines
Who named the shapes, or the days of the week? Should words be removed from the dictionary if they're no longer commonly used? Are there too many words in the English language? Language arts students explore these and additional...
Curated OER
Stonewall and Beyond: Gay and Lesbian Issues
Help learners understand their own biases and how their perspectives may have been influenced by biased media sources. They keep a journal while viewing videos, exploring websites, and engaging in class discussions related to gay and...
Curated OER
My Hero Story Scramble
Use websites to read stories about heroes. The "My Hero" website provides skills and reading materials to help your class analyze sequence and story parts. They put the events in order to show the correct sequence of events.
Curated OER
Decision Making: Who Was Right?
Help your class explore the question "Is it ever right to disobey a law?" With a strong base of knowledge about the Civil War, anti-slavery movement, and Underground Railroad, your class explores civil disobedience in Marshall, Michigan...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6
Make the move toward incorporating more technology in your classroom and help to prepare your class for the professional world. Here is a resource that describes the Common Core standard while incorporating technology and English...
Curated OER
High School Literary Paragraph Development
You can cover literary elements, writing organization, and proofreading skills in this SMART board lesson plan. Using student paragraphs from a previous assignment, the class reviews the best examples of writing. A SMART board activity...
Bright Hub Education
Use Pictures or Artwork to Spark Creative Writing
Art in one form can inspire art in another. Use images to inspire writing in your English class. The lesson described here is not detailed; however, the idea is strong. An engaging way to get class members interested in writing, the...
Curated OER
Grade K-2 Conjunctions
Young writers work with the conjunctions "and," "but," and "or." They choose the proper conjunction to complete five sentences by circling the one that fits the sentence best.
Scholastic
Myths, Folktales, & Fairy Tales for Grades 7-9
Here is a must-have resource for studying fairy tales, myths, and folktales with your class! It includes instructional ideas, activities, and materials to support a month-long review of these three unique genres of writing.
Curated OER
Research Skills: Evaluating Information and Sources
While this focuses on Ancient Rome, the objectives are improved research and information evaluation skills. In one class period, class members narrow their topic, research it, select the best information, log useful sources, and discuss...
Beauty and Joy of Computing
Search Engines
Which search engine is best? The last lab in a unit of five leads the class to investigate search engines. Working in groups, individuals read and discuss articles related to searching the Internet. Pupils develop suggestions that would...
Curated OER
Active and Passive Voice: Finding Examples Online
Incorporate technological fluency with a search for examples of active and passive voice in online resources. Discuss how use of active or passive voice influences mood or tone and contributes to author's purpose. List of...
Curated OER
Browns Player Helps Kids
Students read the brief news stories about Michael Lehan and his involvement in the program Adopt Cuyahoga's Kids. Students then write a reaction paper on the topic: "What is the best way to help parentless teens?"
Curated OER
Using the Internet - Art and Design
An interesting resource that might work best in an upper level art course, this handout provides a list of nine websites where young artists can read and study about all forms of art. These online resources range from a dictionary of...
Curated OER
The Great Debate
Groups of learners investigate the persuasive genre of writing as they research and present on an issue. They research the Internet (possible websites are included) for a topic and locate information to present to the opposing team. In...
Curated OER
Making Predictions:
Pupils of all ages practice making predictions about what will happen next in a fairy tale as the teacher reads it aloud. They demonstrate how to support their predictions with information and facts from the story.
Curated OER
Privacy and Online Life: Protect Yourself
Help your class protect privacy, security, and their online profiles with this examination of social media, especially Facebook, and who can see what about each of us. Resource contains useful links for learners to conduct their own...
Poetry4kids
How to Create Book Spine Poetry
Can you create a poem without writing a word! With found poetry, you can! Practice one version of found poetry with a lesson on book spine poems. Learners create poems by stacking books and reading the lines created by their spine titles.
Curated OER
Solve a Mystery
Fourth graders use text clues to solve mysteries. For this text clue/mystery solving lesson, 4th graders access a teacher assigned web site, Cyberkids.com, where they solve a mystery. They read chapters of, Encyclopedia Brown, and work...
Curated OER
Treatments for Characters' Problems
Students research treatments for problems associated with specific characters. In this online research lesson, students use kid-friendly search engines to find information that will help a character from Charlie and the Chocolate...
Curated OER
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Third graders read Beverly Cleary's book "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" and then complete a series of extension activities. Students explore cause and effect, sequencing, related websites, grammar lessons and comparison skills.