Language Arts and Writing Across the Curriculum
Featured Sites
Lightning Bug via kwout
Reading Comprehension Skills
"Get the Gist" lesson plan from Read-Write-Think
"Create a Magazine Cover" lesson plan from Read-Write-Think
Student Interactives from Read-Write-Think
Fact Fragment Frenzy from Read-Write-Think - one example of student interactive, includes a demo
Summarizing Lesson Plan from BBC Skillwise
Make Beliefs Comix - use with students to create a comic strip to summarize a story or article
Quia Interactive Find the Main Idea
Welcome to the Journalist Desk - old, out of service website but still operational includes short passages with the opportunity for students to pick the main idea
TV411 Summarize as you read interactive activity
TV311 Summarizing as you read lesson
General
Free-Reading - high quality, open source reading program for grades K-3
Cyberguides – linking with children's literature
Novel Links - index of reading strategies to correlate to trade books
Literactive
Into the Book - K-4, with rich activities, video reinforcement
AdLit.org - "AdLit.org is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to the parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers."
News Flash Five from PBS - An interactive news site with animated broadcasts and interactive activities are designed to provide users the means to understand how current events relate to and can affect their lives. Stories read aloud and comprehension activities
Reading Rockets
Dig It - Making Predictions
Lexipedia - Visual dictionary and thesaurus
Graphic Organizers for Pre-writing and Reading Comprehension
Houghton Miflfin Resources grade 3-5
Houghton Mifflin Resources grades 6-8
Education Place Graphic Organizers
Writing
Read Write Think - lesson plans, student materials are interactive activities
OneStopEnglish - "packed with resources for English teachers. All materials are written and edited by our expert team of teachers and authors and are organized into core subject areas such as Skills, Grammar and Vocabulary, Business and ESP, Exams and Young Learners, so you’ll always find what you’re looking for."
Structured Curriculum Handbook for Language Arts
Writing Fun - all kinds of writing, student fills out the graphic organizer
Thesis Builder - interactive website that walks the student through writing a strong these statement and developing an outline*
Read Write Think Word Matrix - This is a great activity to explore word choice. This lesson plan can be found here.
BBC RAW - Writing Stories
BBC Bitesize Revision - Writing
Web English Teacher
Online Writing Lab Handouts - rich resource with writing lessons and online handouts covering writing, research, and grammar, generally for high school or college. Look carefully at the process to adapt to middle school students.
Lightning Bug - site created by a teacher in Australia that helps students through the process of writing a story, check out the teacher resources page
LinkUp - Interactive activity that is customized with vocabulary
Word Magnets - Check out the backgrounds to find ways to use
Draft It - Cool writing tool that takes you through the writing process
Learning Resources - using current events with interactive activities to develop reading comprehension
World Tales - Welcome to World Tales. See folk tales, myths and legends from around the world, brought to life by twenty Australian animators.
Creating Rubrics - a step by step guide
Poetry
The Academy of American Poets
Poets.org
Instant Poems
Biography Websites
oldpoets.com
Children's Poetry Archive
Read Write Think Word Matrix - This is a great activity to explore word choice. This lesson plan can be found here.
Literature
Lesson Plan Archive - Shakespeare
Cyberguides – linking with children's literature
eThemes/eMints - search by book under L for Literature, find units and web resources to enhance unit planning
Schmoop Literature Study Guides
100 things to do with books - 100 cool ideas for activities to do when students are reading a book, not necessarily involving technology
Practice Grammar
Guide to Grammar and Writing Quiz List - Capital Community College
Grammar Ninja
Grammar Gorillas
Houghton Mifflin English
Power Proofreading
Big Dog Grammar - Lessons and Quizzes at the end of the lesson
On line Quizzes (City University of Hong Kong)
Online Writing Lab (OWL) Interactive Quizzes
Purdue OWL Grammar Exercises
Interactive Exercises (Chomp Chomp)
Self Study – English grammar (a4esl.org)
English – Skillwise (BBC)
Study Zone Grammar
Grammar Practice Park
Review Parts of Speech
They’re, their, and there
British Council Grammar Games
Verb Tenses Explained with Cartoons
6 + 1 Traits Writing Resources
Regional Educational Laboratory Lesson Plans - This is the "official" 6 Traits site. This link is for the lesson plans organized by trait.
Scoring Guides - Rubrics
Writing Prompts
Samples of student writing - organized by trait, grade level and score. Use to these to assess.
OWL (Online Writing Lab) - Great resource for lower grades! This is a great site that was developed by teachers to help their students
An "unofficial" site for teachers using 6 traits This site is a couple of years old, but has some good ideas
The Writing Fix - This is a cool website, although it's hard to navigate. Worth a look because of the interactive activities.
Read Write Think Word Matrix - This is a great activity to explore word choice. This lesson plan can be found here.
A Method for Grading Essays in Any Course
Write Source Student Models
Interactive Six Trait Writing Process - "The descriptors, rubrics and examples have been standard fare in many classrooms for years, but this site allows students to rate pieces of writing and make immediate comparisons with the ratings given by English teachers. "
South Dakota School District Resource
S Perkins Collection of 6 Traits Resources
6 Traits of Writing - Free PowerPoint Presentations
Practice Scoring - Interactive website that allows the user to view and score a sample essay. May be useful as a model in whole class instruction
Federal Way Public Schools in Washington state has a number of demonstration papers available online. They have adapted the Traits based scoring for their own purposes. Includes samples from all grade levels.
The Traits - scoring practice
Herb Budden - Consultant, see his wiki page with loads of writing resources and ideas
Graphic Organizers
Tools for Reading, Writing, and Thinking
Houghton Miflfin Resources grade 3-5
Houghton Mifflin Resources grades 6-8
Education Place Graphic Organizers
Reading Strategies
S.C.O.R.E. Graphic Organizers
Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers
Write Design Graphic Organizers
Education Oasis
Teacher Vision Printables
Resources for Writing Biographies
Interactive Biography Maker
Biography Maker
Meet Amazing Americans
Infoplease/People
Fact Monster
Kids Click Biography List
American History
Biography.com
PBS - Biographies
Academy of Achievement
Women
Distinguished Women of Past and Present
4000 Years of Women in Science
Women in Chemistry
Yahoo Kids - Biographies - History
Inventors Hall of Fame
Multimedia Biographies
Who2?
Time Magazine’s top 100 people
American Writers
Nobel Prize
Gale Cengage Learning- Women's History Month
Places to Find Quotation
Quoteland
Barteby
Quotations Page
Brainyquote
