Resources: Language Arts/ Reading
A
free guide on Teaching Reading in K-2!
You can download a free 31-page teacher's guide filled with tips
on
how to teach fluency, comprehension, and other reading skills.
It's
from ReadingRockets.org, your source for practical, research-based
information on teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle.
WEEKLY "WRITING
BUG"
If you're looking for engaging writing prompts and have access
to a color printer, you'll find a nestful of "writing bugs"
at the Education World website (with writing hints included).
Here's a recent item: "A STRANGE THING - What if you woke
up to discover that you had been turned into a *thing* for one
day? What thing were you turned into? The thing must be an inanimate
object -- something that does not move. Describe what your day
was like as that thing."
RUBISTAR
While many teachers want to use rubrics or are experimenting with
writing rubrics, they can be quite time-consuming to develop.
RubiStar is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics
but does not have the time to develop them from scratch. RubiStar
provides generic rubrics that can simply be printed and used for
many typical projects and research assignments. The unique thing
about RubiStar, however, is that it provides these generic rubrics
in a format that can be customized. The teacher can change almost
all suggested text in the rubric to make it fit their own project.
Curriculum
Links
This resource page at the Kenton KY school district website is
elegant in its simplicity. Follow the content-area link to a new
page, and then click on the link for middle grades resources.
All pre-screened by your colleagues in Kentucky!
Reading
Rockets
Reading Rockets is pleased to announce a new, bilingual Web site
for Spanish-speaking parents! Called Colorín
Colorado, it provides information, activities, and advice
on helping children learn to read and succeed. (If you're a native
Spanish speaker, you know why the site is called Colorín
Colorado. If you're an English speaker, click on the homepage
to find out what it means!). The site is now in English and will
soon be translated into Spanish for its launch in September.
About.com
This website has an enormous collection of materials relating
to k-12 teaching including lesson plans, links and tips for all
disciplines and age levels. It is a very useful site for new teachers,
seasoned teachers, and even home school. Get tips on how to prepare
for your first day and classroom management strategies, find fun
games for students, and discover even more of those web sites
that make your job just a little bit easier! It is a bottomless
pit of information.
Knowing
Poe: The Literature, Life, and Times of Edgar Allan Poe
Through the activities on this site, you can introduce learners
(or, be introduced, yourself) to the literature, life, and times
of one of America's foremost writers. The rich classroom resources
on this site have been created especially for Maryland students
in middle and high school. In addition to these interactive experiences,
there are lesson plans created by Maryland teachers, primary source
documents, links for further research, and materials for fun family
activities related to Edgar Allan Poe.
Reading
a-z: A Complete Online Reading Program
A project of LearningPage.com, Reading a-z provides educators
with over 150 downloadable guided reading books to help children
become more proficient readers. The site also contains over 212
lessons plans, over 500 worksheets, and over 200 flash cards to
help teach alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, and sound/symbol
relationships. Although there is an annual subscription fee, viewers
currently have free access to 28 sample books, along with their
accompanying worksheets and lesson plans. Elementary teachers,
home schoolers, and parents may find this site useful.
EDSITEment
Created by a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the Council of the Great City Schools, the National Trust for
the Humanities, and the MCI WorldCom Foundation, is an award-winning
website designed to help teachers integrate peer-reviewed Internet
resources into their literature, history, art and culture, and
foreign language classes. The site gathers together 70 humanities
websites chosen for their outstanding intellectual quality, superior
design, and classroom impact. It also features a search engine,
lesson plans, and in-class and take-home activities.
AskOxford.com
Launched on July 12 in conjunction with the revised edition of
the Concise Oxford Dictionary, this site offers an array of resources
to help visitors make the best use of the English langauge. Features
include a word of the day, quote of the week, language and writing
tips, question and answer, word games, a jargon buster, and education
resources. Users may also email queries to the Oxford Word and
Language Service. A fun and educational site that should appeal
to anyone interested in language or writing.
