English Language Arts Sites

Words of Humankind - a great site for an oratory unit or great speech unit. There are examples of actual oratory uses of hyperbole, simile, metaphor, etc.. besides full speeches from history's greatest orators.:

A&E Television Network’s Biography Web Site: They're all in here...
Just waiting to be found! Search the Biography.com database for over 25,000 of the greatest lives, past and present. A great resource for student writing or research projects.

Project Gutenberg ( www.gutenberg.org )has a collection of over 13,000 "e-books" produced by volunteers. And the Internet Public Library, ( www.ipl.org ) around since 1995, is" the first public library of and for the Internet Community."

The Internet is a rich source of information -- and a prolific dispenser of misinformation. Help your students learn to tell the difference

Complete texts of many Classic works by famous authors from Austin , Dickens to Hugo-

Probably the most extensive set of links to popular authors for K-12 students-

This site, reputed to be one of the most teacher friendly stops on the Net, offers a great list for “Read Aloud Resuscitation: Top Picks for Preteen Listeners.”

If you are teaching any of the classics and want to spice up your lesson- check this site out- for grades 7-12!

Part of the larger Penguin Putnam site, the resource section offers free teacher's and reader's guides to the classics.

Resources are listed in a topical index. Each resource has a hyperlinked table of contents.

Literature teachers will find this a valuable free resource. The teacher's guides include a synopsis of the work, teaching suggestions, and activities to be used before, during, and after the reading; extension ideas; and bibliographies. The 16 titles include such favorites as Romeo and Juliet, The Scarlet Letter, The Odyssey, and The Prince and the Pauper. Reader's Guides include "enlightening introductions that set the works within a historical and literary context." Each guide gives an overview, information about the author, discussion questions, and related titles. Ten titles are currently available, including Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, and The Age of Innocence. Included are links to the authors' Web sites and a brief biography of Shakespeare.

Sites to See:
William Shakespeare

If you're looking for ways to incorporate classical drama into your spring classroom and remember "the Bard" on the day of his birth, April 23, you're in luck! These sites are among the best on the Web for integrating Shakespeare into your curriculum!

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Simple and straightforward, this site is exactly what it purports to be: an archive of Shakespeare's work. Here users will find the comedies, tragedies, and histories. Select an entire play, which loads as one incredibly long scrolling page, or click on one scene at a time from the prologue to the conclusion. Either way, the plain text is mercifully quick loading and easy to print. The links for Shakespeare's poetry and the interactive forum and search engine are currently down as the site sponsor repairs some technical glitches, but the catalogue of actual texts is up and running.

General Shakespeare Sites
Amanda Mabillard of About.com presents three pages -- close to 60 sites in all -- of great links for Shakespeare studies, including chronologies, concordances, and multimedia presentations. Sift through such titles as Counting Down toward the Ides of March, Quirky Shakespearean Words, and Transformations of Shakespeare to supplement the materials you already have on hand. Surf through dozens of pages on the plays, actors, festivals, literary criticisms, and much, much more.

Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
This site states up-front that it strives to be the "complete annotated guide" to all things Shakespearean online. Along with a Shakespeare Timeline, look for a Shakespeare genealogy and biography quiz. The site also offers a selection of plays, poetry, and explanatory notes. Click on "Life and Times," which offers fascinating insights about Shakespeare. A total literary and historical experience.

Shakespeare's Globe Online
Any quality study of the Bard is going to include the Globe Theatre -- Shakespeare wrote his plays for the Globe. To understand the theater is to better understand the playwright. Founded by American actor/director Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare's Globe is a unique international resource dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare's work, and the playhouse for which he wrote, through the connected means of education and performance.

Shakespeare Illustrated
Include paintings from throughout the ages based on Shakespeare's plays, and see how visual learners respond to the study of Shakespeare. Shakespeare Illustrated brings these images together in one place so that teachers and students can make use of them. The paintings are organized by the plays they are based on or by the artists who painted them. Some of the links are temporarily broken while Emory University secures permission to include images of certain paintings on the site, but the treasure of art collected here is truly invaluable for instruction.

Shakespeare is Elementary
Crichton Park School in Nova Scotia sponsors this page on Shakespeare for elementary school teachers and students. It presents his work from the unique view of young children; students built the site for other students. There are links, recommended works, a timeline of Shakespeare's life, a great PowerPoint presentation made by the second and third graders, and a list of ideas for teachers at the elementary level. If you've ever wanted to incorporate classic drama into your curriculum but needed a conduit to make it accessible for elementary students, this is your opportunity.

Shakespeare Magnet Poetry
This JAVA applet combines the idea of refrigerator magnets and the poetry of the greatest sonnet writer of all time. As the page loads, a scattered assortment of doths, thous, and dosts from Shakespeare's lexicon appears. Students can arrange words to accurately re-create a famous sonnet -- the first screen came up with Hamlet's famous lines -- or create their own poetry. Click Roll the Dice and generate a new collection of word magnets to begin again.

Shakespeare Navigators
ClickNotes offers a complete study guide for Romeo and Juliet and "test drives" of guides for Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Although these are free versions of a subscription product, they are full of information and highly useful for teachers and students wishing to analyze the works. For example, using the scene summaries, users can break down every scene by context, language, and plot. Through the character reviews, users can look up characters to learn more about them and see every instance in which they appear in the drama. Themes and motifs state specific themes in the work and back them up with citations from the play. There's a chronology of events, sonnets, and rhymes, and a word search allows users to look up any term or phrase in the text.

Teaching Shakespeare
The Folger Library teams up with the National Endowment for the Humanities to bring teachers this wonderful collection of support materials for teaching Shakespeare in the classroom. There are more than 100 archived lesson plans, and two or three new lessons are featured every month. Thrill to such lesson titles as It's Elementary!: Stomping and Romping with Shakespeare, "I Will Hear That Play": Using Sound to Enhance the Text, and A Boxful of Character. The Teachers' Lounge requires registration (gratis) and serves as a discussion board for educators to share ideas and resources. Links lead to additional resources, including the Folger Library itself.

This site was created for Harvard University students but provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in the works of Chaucer or the Middle Ages.

The simple, user-friendly layout uses dark backgrounds and colored text that work well together.

Navigation buttons link to each of the main areas and subsequent areas of the site. Pages have a link back to the home page, and a handy site index is also available.

Understanding Chaucer may not be so difficult with this site, created for students at Harvard University. It concentrates on the Canterbury Tales, but plans for expansion are in the works. Visitors will find a somewhat literal translation of the Canterbury Tales texts, a discussion of selected literary subjects, notes on Chaucer's language, and other pertinent linguistic information and general information on life in the Middle Ages as well as articles and selections from works of other authors. A section titled, Teach Yourself to Read Chaucer's Middle English provides ten lessons on Chaucer's grammar and vocabulary for those seeking to have a better understanding and enjoyment of Chaucer's works. Included is an extensive Bibliography for Chaucer and Middle English Literature.

The Charles Dickens Page offers information about this important author, his works and the London of the 19th century.

This site has a lot of text but uses appropriate font size and spacing. It is interspersed with small graphics that enhance the content.

Navigation is easy with the left-side menu of major areas of the site. The content text also has embedded links to subsequent areas of the site with more information on the topic and to outside sources.

This site is a great overview of the life and times of Charles Dickens. There is a lot of material here and it is covered very well. Visitors will find a biography, plot summaries for the novels, explanations of the characters, original illustrations, and a discussion of the artist who created them, time lines that place Dickens in historical context and much more. Information about 19th-century London is available along with an interactive map. Users can click on a location on the map to see how that particular place relates to Dickens's works. Included are a bibliography and a categorized list of links to more information on the Web. Be sure to check out the interesting sidebar information

This site hosts a collection of folktales with one or more from each of the 50 U.S. states.

This is a simple site with a few well-chosen graphics and an easy-to-read font size.

The folktales can be accessed from a drop-down list on the main page or by browsing six categories. Internal pages have a bottom navigation bar that makes movement between the sections easy.

Storytellers, teachers, folklore fans, and students looking for material on state folklore for school projects will enjoy this site. Visitors can browse the site by story title or category and read about famous characters such as Davy Crockett in Frozen Dawn or learn why you should never dance with the devil in The Dance. Other categories include: State Folktales, which includes at least one from each of the 50 states; Regional Folktales; Historical Folklore; Ethnic Folklore, which includes African American and Native American tales; and Tall Tales, which include ghost tales, holiday tales, and legends. This is a great resource for a storytelling unit.

Communication Skills Writing Program:

This is an excellent writing resource for students and teachers. The Students' Resources section is filled with information on plagiarism, use of quotations, and the style for citing resources. Each of these sections allows students to quiz themselves. Included in the student section is the Editor's Grammar and Mechanics page, which covers the basics of editing, including terminology, punctuation, and sentence management as well as a self-quiz. Teachers will find useful information for lesson planning in the On-Line Handbook, which can be reached from the Instructors Resources

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

Paradigm, created by Professor Chuck Guilford of Boise State University in Idaho, is a free interactive online writing guide and handbook.

This well-designed site is graphics free, with clever programming features that make it attractive and user friendly. Users need Flash Player to view the site.

A top menu and submenus in the left frame make navigation quick and easy. There is an onsite search tool, and users can download a stand-alone version of the entire handbook.

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant is a useful writing guide for novices to experienced writers. The guide explores the process approach to writing and covers each step from choosing a topic to organizing, revising, editing, and documenting sources. Each section has activities to get users started, complete with instructions. Each of four different types of essays has a section for exploration: informal, thesis/support, argumentative, and exploratory. This site is a great resource for writing teachers or students who need a little guidance while writing essays

This award-winning Web site offers an "online teacher's workshop on implementing the writing process in the classroom!"

The site uses wide margins and photographs to make it attractive and easy to read.

A left-side navigation menu makes movement around the site simple. Users can also move through the site in a linear fashion by clicking on the arrows at the bottom of the pages.

If you are brand-new to writers' workshop or just looking for new ideas to add to your classroom, this is the place for you. This well-written workshop gives teachers everything they need to begin implementing a writing workshop in their classrooms. The site provides Ideas for leading students through the process of writing and publishing as well as ideas for mini lessons, prewriting exercises, tips and questions for improving the first draft, tips for revising and conferencing, and elementary, middle and high school checklists for editing. Teachers and use the rubric that is included to assess their own level on the continuum of implementation along with a holistic description of the various levels.

Reaching Out: The Evolution of Communication is a good resource for students who are researching the history of non-verbal and verbal communication. Written by kids for kids, this site offers a timeline on the development of communication as well as information on each, from hieroglyphics to the telegraph, television, and satellite-based systems. The site also explores the roles that these developments have played in changing the way people live. There is a wide variety of information on such topics as the brain and communication, alphabets, computer languages, mass media, and inventors and inventions. Included are a video gallery, audio files of different languages, and an interview with a mass media expert. If anything is missing from this site, it would be links to more resources for further study.

Timeless Hemingway:

This site will be of interest to literature teachers, students, or Hemingway fans. It focuses on the life and works of this important 20th-century writer. Visitors will find a Hemingway Quote Finder, a comprehensive Hemingway FAQ, a Family Tree, Hemingway Trivia, Hemingway Links, a message board, and an opportunity to chat with Hemingway's nephew, John E. Sanford. Additionally, the site has a gallery of photos depicting Hemingway's life, biographical information, a copy of his last will and testament, and much more.

A great web-site to make them at is www.puzzlemaker.com. The students absolutely love going to the site to make their word searches and crossword puzzles, or criss-cross puzzles as the site calls them. The directions for making each of the puzzles is clear and easy to follow. I use the same site for making word searches or crossword puzzles in other subject areas. At this site you can also make math puzzles, Cryptograms, Falling Phrases, Double Puzzles, and more. Check it out!

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/index.jsp

The Poetry Archive
More than a mere archive – a poetry playground.
http://www.educationworld.com/awards/2006/r0306-03.shtml

URL:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do

REVIEW: A+
Bring poetry to life in your classroom with the Poetry Archive. It includes readings from contemporary poets as well as poets from the past such as Robert Browning, Langston Hughes, and Rudyard Kipling. There is a section just for children that features readings from twenty-three poets that children will enjoy. In addition to the recordings, visitors will find a wealth of background information about the poets, filmed interviews with some of them, and tips for getting the most out of the archive. The "Lucky Dip" feature takes users to the work of a poet selected at random from the Archive. Resources for teachers include ready to use lesson plans and classroom activities that are built around recordings in the Archive, tips for creating a good listening atmosphere in the classroom, and ten-minute classroom activities to help students get inside the poem they've just heard. Included is also a list of other poetry resources on the Internet.

Poetry Foundation.org
From Assonance to Roundelay to, uh, Zagajewski: All about poetry!
http://www.educationworld.com/awards/2006/r0406-21.shtml

URL:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org

REVIEW: A+
The Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization that "exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience." At its web site visitors can learn all about the world of poetry. The main sections of the site are features, dispatches, publishing, and archive. A good starting point is the Archive, where thousands of poems can be searched by poet, title, theme, and occasion. The archive also features high-quality recordings of poems, interviews with poets, and documentaries as well as cartoons that address the subject of poetry. Included are list of lists such as most popular poets, most popular poems, poems to read to children, etc. The features section includes articles on poets, poetry, culture, guidebooks, and children. Visitors will also find poetry best sellers, book picks and links to poetry sites around the Web in the publishing section. Dispatches include recent news, a photo archive of poetry in the landscape, and a slide show of historically significant anthologies

Sites to See: William Shakespeare

Communication Skills Writing Program:

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

Timeless Hemingway:

Sites to See:
William Shakespeare