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Language Arts Ideas
A Wide Variety of Language Arts Resources
Dr. Scott McLeod, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) has compiled these eclectic, creative, and interesting links and resources related to language arts. Lesson plans, links to magazines and publications, and other educational tools are all included here.
A Smattering of Writing Resources
Dr. Scott McLeod, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) has compiled these links and resources related to writing. Lesson plans, links to magazines and publications, news, comics, student blogs, and other educational tools are all included here.
American Association of School Librarians (AASL)
These "Top 25" websites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. Websites are broken down into: Media Sharing, Digital Storytelling, Manage and Organize, Social Networking and Communication, Content Collaboration, Curriculum Sharing, and Content Resources: Lesson Plans and More.
This site allows students to create videos. The students upload photos and music, or they can choose some from the site. It also has the option to add your own video clips. Teachers at Eminence Middle and High School (Eminence, KY) use Animoto for a variety of lessons. Language Arts teachers have students retell a story using all the elements of plot. The work is done as a group. High school English teachers have students create poems through video. Some make a video as a book project instead of writing a book report. The school librarian has students create video book reviews, which are available for all students to view. The reading teacher has students act out vocabulary from a book that was read in class.
The Annenberg Learner, from the Annenberg Foundation, is a collection of classroom resources sortable by discipline and by grade. From step-by-step lesson plans on a variety of topics from the Wild West to neuroscience to literature to multimedia resources, there is something here for all types of teaching and learning styles. Some of the resources here are free; to access complete programs, purchase is necessary.
Blogging Random Acts of Kindness
A Eminence Middle School (Eminence, KY) language arts teacher used a blog to have her students do random acts of kindness and blog about the experience. Blogging is a great way for students to learn to reflect about topics and to have academic dialogue with other students by replying to blog postings.
Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies
The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies produces a comprehensive list of the Top Tools for 2011.
Interested in having your students start their own blogs or starting one class blog to share your students’ achievements? This list has a number of links to class blogs with a variety of focuses.
A wide variety of blogs from education teachers are on this list. From individual content areas to musings about teaching in general, this list is full of ideas and inspirations for the classroom.
Even More Online Language Arts Resources
A great list of resources that encompass literature, grammar, spelling, integrating technology into the curriculum, and a number of other interesting topics for English language arts educators.
Florida Virtual School® Literacy Instructional Support Center
This center boasts a number of resources, including support for English language learners, Web 2.0 tools, literacy links, literacy connections, the ABCs of literacy, and more. The site also includes a virtual library open to the public that contains the Classroom Cache, a repository of hundreds of graphic organizers for use in the classroom.
Florida Virtual School® Student Literacy Resource Center
This resource center includes sections on virtual reader support, vocabulary for success, note taking made easy, a guide to Jings and videos, and PowerPoint presentations. It also contains a list of best practices for students to follow while reading. This website is student friendly and easily navigated.
Glogster is an online animated poster. Students can be creative by upload music, pictures, and videos along with adding graphics and text. Students can even add links to the pictures and videos. At Eminence Middle and High School (Eminence, KY) reading students introduce themselves at the beginning of the year by creating a glog about themselves. A middle school student had to write a report on a country in Europe. Instead of a handwritten report, he created a glog. The student had to use prewriting to plan the components that needed to be in the glog. He also had to write some parts that were uploaded. Links to certain websites about that country were included. He also downloaded the country's national anthem to play. It was also used in a middle school math class. He created two survey questions for his class. He collected the data and created charts and graphs from the data, then he analyzed and recorded the data. Everything was uploaded to the site and graphics were added.
“Inanimate Alice” is a multimedia, interactive narrative following the life of Alice, a developing video game designer. Through text, sound, images, music, and games, the story of Alice unfolds. Each of the episodes becomes increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice’s own developing skills as a game designer and animator. The story is available in five languages and is fully supported by lessons in a teacher education pack that can be downloaded for free.
Landmark Websites for Teaching and Learning (AASL)
This effort by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) recognizes excellent content resources, lesson plans, and more.
Literacy, ELL, and Digital Storytelling
Life Academy High School/Bay Area Writing Project (Oakland, CA) is highlighted in this video that documents a semester-long, project-based learning unit focused on immigration led by National Writing Project high school teachers Cliff Lee and Yumi Matsui. As part of this project, students created digital stories portraying the immigration experience of a family member or friend. The video shows the project from the beginning stages to the end, when students show their work at an Exhibition Night in front of families and peers.
The New York Times and the Common Core Standards: Reading Strategies for ‘Informational Text’
This blog post lists ten easy ways to weave The New York Times into the classroom. It also has short segments on different reading strategies to share with students. All of these tips and techniques are designed to help students to better absorb informational text. Strategies are broken down into “Before,” “During,” and “After” reading.
Readwritethink.org (IRA, NCTE)
Along with lesson plans and information for teachers, this site has many interactive graphic organizers and tools for students to use.
Virtual labs are used as a center in a chemistry class at Eminence High School (Eminence, KY). Half of the students use Dell netbooks in groups of 2-3 while the other half is doing the actual lab with the teacher. The students will have academic dialogue in groups and whole class comparing and contrasting both kinds of labs. The lesson can be found at the teacher's website.
Voicethread allows students to post pictures or video clips while commenting and/or annotating on each slide. Some lessons that were used at Eminence Independent Schools (Eminence, KY) include the following:
- Students post pictures that represent their poem. They record their voice reciting and reflecting on the poem. Some middle school students wrote haikus and illustrated a picture with it. They were scanned into Voicethread, and the students’ recitation and reflection on their haikus were recorded.
- An art teacher took pictures of African pillows that were made by her students. The students were recorded describing why they created their designs.
- A math student created a math project of real world examples of the real number system. His voice was recorded explaining each example.
- A biography student used Voicethread for a report. Instead of recording his voice, he used a webcam to describe the pictures.
- A math student taught a math lesson to the rest of the class using Voicethread. Because he was shy, he did not have to stand in front of the class. His voice was recorded explaining all the steps.
The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies produces this for the Top Tools 2011.
Multiple teachers use wikis for students to post work and collaborate. The link above is from a high school math teacher at Eminence High School (Eminence, KY). Her students use flip video camera to create math lessons for others to view. Sometimes the students create math songs and they are videotaped. On the wiki, the teacher can post a question or reflection for the students to comment on. You can see other sample lessons on her web page.
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