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Helpful Web Sites for Language Arts Teachers
On December 9, 1968, computer scientist Douglas Engelbart walked onto the stage of a convention hall with a couple of interactive screens and a rudimentary computer mouse. He showed off his lab’s research project -- the world's first personal computer -- and turned the audience upside down. Until that evening, most people thought of computers as huge, number crunching machines that occupied two or three floors of big computer labs. They were for serious people, doing weighty tasks. Dr. Engelbart introduced the world to the PERSONAL COMPUTER. Suddenly, people envisioned a little machine that could hum away in offices and homes, completing everyday jobs.
Seven years later, IBM marketed its first portable computer, and the "personal computer age" began. Since then, computers have become familiar objects in homes and offices, where they create memos, organize files, produce documents, and facilitate communication. They have also found their way into schools, where teachers search for ways to turn them into educational tools. Today, using computer technology in the classroom is considered an essential teaching skill.
USING A PC IN THE LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOM
PCs have become welcome additons to the language arts classroom, where students use word processors to edit and publish documents. PCs also provide access to the Internet, where a number of excellent language arts web sites are available.
TWELVE WEB SITES THAT CAN BE USED EFFECTIVELY IN THE LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOM:
1. Guide to Grammar and Writing
This web site is sponsored by Capitol Community College Foundation. It provides information about 427 grammar and writing topics, including parts of speech, dependent clauses, parallel structure, punctuation marks, coherence, sentence variety, paragraph development, thesis statements, five paragraph essays, research papers, and subject-verb agreement. The site explains the writing process and even provides a link to the online edition of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. It is an excellent resource for students who have questions about the writing process.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
2. Wacky Web Tales
This web site reminds me of inexpensive books I bought as a child. The books were made of coloring book paper, and they gave me opportunities to create stories by filling in blanks with various parts of speech. I made lists of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, and then I plugged my words into narratives. My stories seldom made sense, but nonsensical stories were the point of the books. Wacky Web Tales offers the same opportunity to learn parts of speech by creating funny stories. It provides ninety-eight stories and instructs children to complete the stories by adding nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. As students fill in blanks, they have fun, and they learn parts of speech.
.http://www.eduplace.com/tales/
3. The Educator's Reference Desk
Educator's Reference Desk is an online collection of resources on a variety of educational issues, including technology, homeschooling, general education, and counseling. It provides 3,000 links to other educational web sites, and it offers more than 2,000 lesson plans. Subjects include vocational education, art, foreign language, religion, and numerous other educational categories. The web site has a section for language arts teachers, and the language arts section is divided into sixteen topics -- alphabet, grammar, journalism, literature, process skills, speech, story telling, whole language, debate, handwriting, listening comprehension, phonics, reading, spelling, vocabulary, and writing. Each topic provides dozens of teaching ideas. For example, the literature topic offers an introduction to Shakespeare, a "Romeo and Juliet Character Hunt," and thirty-two other lesson plans. The Educator's Reference Desk is overflowing with information; for the language arts teacher, it is an excellent resource.
http://www.eduref.org/
4. American Verse Project
The American Verse Project is a collaborative project between the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative and the University of Michigan Press. It is an electronic archive of American poetry written before 1920, and users can locate poems using single words, phrases, author, and title. For example, an author search for Bronson Alcott produces several sonnets and essays, including a description of the author Ralph Waldo Emerson. A search for American female poets produces dozens of poems by Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Anna Maria Wells, and numerous other American writers. This web site is an excellent resource for the language arts classroom.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/amverse/
5. Creative Writing for Teens
"Creative Writing for Teens" is part of the web site About.com, which features original information, advice, and guidance on a variety of subjects. "Creative Writing for Teens" is written by language arts teacher Ginny Wiehardt. It provides writing tips, ideas, and exercises for teens, and it focuses on fiction writing. A recent post, dated June 4, 2010, challenges young writers to have "artist dates" -- time off to observe the world around them, listen to other people's conversations, and interact with people they usually don't have contact with. Students are encouraged to walk to special places, go to museums, and plan other activities that spur creativity. Then they are encouraged to write about their experiences and submit their narratives to "Creative Writing for Teens." The web site explains the craft of writing and talks about plot, point of view, and characterization. It also provides weekly writing ideas. It is an excellent language arts resource for teachers and teens.
http://fictionwriting.about.com/
6. Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature
This database was created by Lisa Bartle, reference librarian at California State University. It catalogues hundreds of books that have won literary awards, and it allows teachers, librarians, and parents to create tailored reading lists of quality children's literature. For example, a user requests a list of books for children who are five to eight years old, and the user advises the web site that she wants the books to be set in contemporary America. The database creates a list of 119 award winning books that match the user's criteria. Anyone can use the web site, which helps parents, teachers, librarians, and children locate interesting, age-appropriate reading material.
http://www.dawcl.com/
7. Literary Resources on the Net
This site is maintained by Jack Lynch, English professor at Rutgers University. It provides hundreds of links to literary web sites and divides literature into fourteen categories. They are classical and biblical, medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth century, Romantic, Victorian, twentieth century British and Irish, American, theater and drama, theory, women's literature and feminism, ethnicities and nationalities, other national literatures, and hypertext, .The web site provides excellent support for language arts teachers.
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/
8. Multicultural Book Review Web Page
This site provides reading lists from African American, Asian American, Latino, Native American, and Jewish literature. Its purpose is to provide lists of high-quality multicultural literature to K-12 educators, and most reviews are written by teachers who have used the materials successfully in their classrooms. Mama Day by Gloria Naylor and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor get high marks on this web site, but dozens of other books are rated and described.
http://www.isomedia.com/homes/jmele/homepage.html
9. Project Gutenburg
This amazing web site allows students, teachers, and others to read hundreds of books online and to download them without charge. The books can be read on computers or smartphones. New books are posted daily. Most popular downloads include Kamasutra, Pride and Prejudice, and Ulysses.
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/recent/last1
10. E-Server's Fiction Collection
E-Server offers biographies, journals, criticism, novels, and short fiction. Most titles are in the public domain, but E-Server organizes them. It does not offer as many titles as Project Gutenberg, but it has large collections of novels and short fiction and is an excellent resoruce for high school language arts teachers.
http://fiction.eserver.org/
11. 91 Ways to Respond to Literature
The language arts teacher who wants to add a creative twist to a book report assignment will find plenty of ideas at this web site. Students are encouraged to write ta section of their book from a different point of view, write a character sketch of someone in the book, and write a parody of the book, among other things. This web site was recommended to me by a teacher who has been using it for several years.
http://www.angelfire.com/ok/freshenglish/bookreportideas.html
12. The Arts Literacy Project
The Arts Literacy Project is a fusion of education, literacy, and drama. It was developed by teachers in the education department of Brown University, and it is dedicated to developing literacy in youth through visual and performing arts. The web site's "Handbook" section offers dozens of teaching ideas. An example is "Chalk Talk." Students have a classroom discussion or brainstorming session, but they can only talk to one another by writing with chalk on the board. Another example is "Poetry Arc." Students are divided into small groups, and each group receives six lines of poetry. Students are required to perform their lines of poetry. All of the web site's teaching ideas fuse language and performing arts, and many can be used between classroom activities or when a few minutes remain at the end of class.
http://artslit.org/home.html
.
13.. Sites for Teachers
Sites for Teachers is a collection of 1,025 Web sites, arranged according to popularity, so it has dozens of resources for language arts teachers. Its most popular site is Free Printables for Teachers at http://www.resources-teachers.com/. Free Printables has twenty-six divisions, including a section called "Short Stories," which provides fifty-one literature passages for secondary students. Passages end with questions that can be used during writing exercises and classroom discussions. Authors include Henry David Thoreau (story 2), Nathaniel Hawthorne (story 43), Washington Irving (story 46), and Benjamin Franklin (story 48). The web site provides space for comments, and students can post comments as part of their language arts assignment.
Language arts teachers can download lesson plan templates at a Web site called Teacher Planet. The templates' URL is
http://www.teacherplanet.com/calendar/05-SPRING-10.php. A nice daily lesson plan template is located at url=http://www.lessonplans4teachers.com/PDF/hsenglish.PDF.
Teachers Social Network is at http://www.teachersn.com/, and it is described as "Facebook for educators." It is an interesting site for all teachers.
The URL for Sites for Teachers is http://www.sitesforteachers.com/index.html.
14. Great Source i Write
Great Source, publisher of Writers Inc, provides excellent language arts graphic organizers for narrative, persuasive, and expository writing assignments. it also provides graphic organizers for writing responses to literature and research.
http://www.greatsource.com/iwrite/students/s_lit_graph_org.html.
15. Freeology.com
Freeology is the "free school stuff directory," and it has a large selection of graphic organizers for language arts teachers. It also provides excellent journal writing prompts. My favorite section is "Quotes," which lists brief statement from famous historical figures. "Quotes" asks students to explain quotes and apply them to their lives.
http://freeology.com/
16. Teaching Poetry
a. Edsitement provides lesson plans for grades 9-12 and is an excellent site. For example, "Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy" is
a well designed poetry unit..
http://edsitement.neh.gov/tab_lesson.asp?subcategory=45&grade=9-12&Display=Display
b. ReadWriteThink provides numerous teaching ideas for language arts teachers who want to teach poetry. http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=17-20&resource_type_filtering=6-16-18-20-56-58-66-68-
94&resource_type=6&type=8&learning_objective=44&theme=7
c. Emints.org was developed by University of Missouri and offes numerous teaching ideas. http://ethemes.missouri.edu/grades#9
d. PoetryTeachers.com says that it is "the #1 site for poetry teachers on the web." It offers poetry ideas, writers' workshops, and lesson plans. Its web address
is http://www.fictionteachers.com/index.html.
e. Yale-New Haven Teachers' Institute provides teaching ideas at http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/4/81.04.08.x.html.
f. Teachers and students can access a list of literary terms at http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/index.html.
17. Web Quest Academy
Language arts teachers who want to learn how to create web quests will find valuable information at this web site, which also offers sample web quests.
http://warrensburg.k12.mo.us/webquest/#anchor2127666
