Language Arts Resources
For Secondary Teachers

Annenberg Making Meaning in Literature: A Workshop for Teachers, Grades 6-8
"Making Meaning in Literature: A Workshop for Teachers, Grades 6-8 gives teachers like you — literature and language arts teachers working with middle grade students — two important opportunities. Its videos, Web site, and guide introduce the theory and practice of building active literary communities in your classroom. Together, these resources explain how effective readers engage in literature and how you can support your students as they become effective readers actively engaged in short stories, novels, poems, and drama. This Workshop also gives you a chance to think about what you are currently doing in your classroom, and examine principals and practices other teachers like yourself have adopted to see if they can enhance your work with students."

Annenberg Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for the Middle Grades
This video workshop introduces middle school teachers to ethnically diverse American writers and offers dynamic instructional strategies and resources to make works meaningful for students.

Annenberg Write in the Middle: A Workshop for Middle School Teachers
"In this eight-part workshop, classroom video and insightful discussion illustrate effective ways teachers can help their students become confident and proficient writers. Middle school teachers from across the country share specific strategies they use with their students, and extensive video from each of their classrooms gives viewers an opportunity to see those strategies in action. The workshop explores several common themes that underlie effective writing instruction at the middle school level—providing engaging prompts, allowing student choice, modeling good writing, and using innovative approaches like multigenre writing. Some workshop videos feature aspects of the writing process, such as revision and pre-writing, while others illustrate successful strategies for teaching specific writing forms such as poetry or persuasive essays."

CyberEnglish
This site is a collection of internet resources, assignments, and articles compiled by Ted Nellen during his experience as a teacher of a Cyber-English class. There is no particular order to the site, but it is plentiful in ideas, proposals, and resources on how to integrate technology effectively into the English classroom.

English Companion
This site is maintained by Jim Burke, an English teacher, to supplement his work as a teacher, consultant, and writer. It contains many tools and strategies for the instruction of literature and grammar. The essential tools link on the top right of the page contains numerous ideas and downloadable handouts for teachers. The column under What’s New @ English Companion also contains numerous useful tools for teachers.

English Language and Literature Resources
This site contains a collection of carefully selected links for high school English teachers. It is maintained by the Webmaster at Chico High School in California. The site is well-organized with categorized resources that are briefly described. There are also links to projects and resources created by the teachers at the school.

Fabulous Fiction
This award winning site, created by two 13-year-old boys, aims to inspire young people to read. Authors of various genres and their books are listed and described in a way that connects to teenage readers. Students are encouraged to pick one of the books, read it, and submit a review for the website.

The Grapes of Wrath
Through the auspices of the Alabama State Council of the Arts, this site is a humanities-based web site and interactive study guide annotating Steinbeck's novel. Included on the site are classroom discussion questions for teachers and students as they study the book.

High School Journalism
This site is described as the "go-to scholastic journalism site on the Web for students interested in the craft, their teachers/advisers, guidance counselors and professional journalists. Content includes skills-building exercises, lesson plans, a spotlight on high school newspapers across the country, interaction with pros, updates on scholastic press freedom issues, a database of journalism scholarships and links to university journalism programs."

In Search of Shakespeare
Lesson: "Shakespearean 'Conversations'"
Become more comfortable with the words of William Shakespeare and discover the beauty of the language by creating personal, original conversations with peers. Work with Elizabethan sentence structure, verb form and other mechanics of basic grammar. This lesson is part of a large project from PBS Online. The project includes numerous lessons, videos, technology ideas, professional development, and resource sites.

John F. Barber, Ph.D.
This site is the home to Dr. John Barber’s E-Z Guides, which are witty and interactive guides to effective and creative writing, research skills, and public speaking. They can be found under Projects on the left menu column. Do not miss “The English Paper” cartoon located under the Bored? link.

Language Arts: Middle & High School Teachers
This online database from Internet4Classrooms.com is an annotated collection of 80 websites for secondary language arts teachers.

LitFinder
LitFinder is a resource that provides quick and easy access to poems, stories, speeches, plays or essays that best suit the needs of students and teachers. There are more than 126,500 full-text poems included along with 850,000 more poem citations. In addition, LitFinder also contains 10,000 full-text plays, stories, essays and speeches. This resource can also be accessed through the Alabama Virtual Library.

Media Literacy Clearinghouse
This site is for teachers who want to learn more about media literacy and learn how to integrate it into classroom instruction. The site is organized into more than 50 subjects such as Advertising, Information Literacy, Media Criticism, Propaganda, and Politics in the Media. Each topic includes articles, websites, and other materials. The Other Resources for K-12 Educators table at the bottom of the page also contains many useful resources.

Meeting the Secondary Reading Challenge
This site provides reading strategies to assist teachers in incorporating literacy into the instruction of all subjects. Strategies include vocabulary building, graphic organizers, journals, note-taking, and activities for before and after reading.

The Moonlit Road
This is a collection of Southern ghost stories and folktales. The written and audio version for each story is available. Stories are accompanied by background information to provide insight into the culture of the American South.

National Council of Teachers of English
This is the website for The National Council of Teachers of English professional organization. This site consists of membership information, publications, news, standards, and teaching resource collections. The teaching resource collections provide excellent teaching strategies, professional readings, and other related resources for topics including Grammar, Poetry, English Language Learners, Reading and Writing on the Web, and many others.

National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
This site offers a free library service, NLS Talking Books, to help people of all ages whose low vision, blindness, or physical handicap makes it difficult for them to read a standard printed page. Books and magazines on cassettes and in braille, as well as audio equipment, are mailed to individuals at no cost.

Online Poety Classroom
This site from The Academy of American Poets provides “a wealth of resources, including Teacher Forums where teachers can share ideas and seek help from colleagues; Pedagogical & Critical Essays about poetry; extensive links to relevant websites; Curriculum Units & Lesson Plans; biographies of hundreds of poets; and nearly two-thousand poems housed.”

Outta Ray's Head
This site contains a large collection of lesson plans by Ray Saitz and contributing teachers. There are lessons in Literature, Poety, Writing, and Library Skills as well as links to other lesson plan sites. Each lesson contains original classroom handouts, which can be downloaded, printed, and used in the class. The lessons also have instructions and methods of evaluation.

Teaching That Makes Sense
The focus of this site is writing. It contains a collection of free downloadable books on the teaching of writing as well as numerous teaching strategies, examples of student writing, and assessment techniques.

Web English Teacher
This resource provides "the best of K-12 English/Language Arts teaching resources" including lesson plans, WebQuests, videos, biographies, e-texts, puzzles, and classroom activities. There are 22 categories with links and descriptions to each Web resource.