Bio Cube is a useful summarizing tool that helps students identify and list key elements about a person for a biography or autobiography.
Bio Cube
Trading Card Creator
This tool provides a fun and useful way to explore a variety of topics such as a character in a book, a person or place from history, or even a physical object. An excellent tool to for summarizing or as a prewriting exercise for original stories.
Diamante Poems
This online tool enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.
Word Family Sort
This online activity helps students recognize word patterns by having them sort a series of words into short-vowel word families.
Acrostic Poems
This online tool enables students to learn about and write acrostic poems. Elements of the writing process are also included.
Theme Poems
Formerly known as Shape Poems, this online tool allows elementary students to write poems in various shapes.
Alphabet Organizer
Students use this online tool to create an alphabet chart or pages for an alphabet book.
Persuasion Map
The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.
Timeline
Students generate descriptive timelines and can include images in the description.
Letter Generator
The Letter Generator is a useful tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter and then compose and print letters for both styles of correspondence.
Picture Match
Picture Match is a matching game that reinforces the concept of beginning-letter and short- and long-vowel sounds.
Construct-a-Word
Using Construct-a-Word, students learn letter-sound correspondence by combining a beginning letter or blend to a word ending to create words.
360 Degrees of Text: Using Poetry to Teach Close Reading and Powerful Writing
Through Eileen Murphy Buckley's 360-degree approach to teaching critical literacy, students investigate texts through a full spectrum of learning modalities, harnessing the excitement of performance, imitation, creative writing, and argument/debate activities to become more powerful thinkers, readers, and writers.
Beyond Standardized Truth: Improving Teaching and Learning through Inquiry-Based Reading Assessment
Scott Filkins brings us into his and colleagues' classrooms to demonstrate how high school teachers across the disciplines can engage in inquiry-based reading assessment to support student learning. This book is part of the NCTE Principles in Practice imprint.
Sharing Stories and Developing Multiple Perspectives in Post-9/11 Classrooms
Sensitive to the increased importance of valuing diversity and diverse points of view since 9/11, this article describes activities through which ESL students contribute new knowledge to their classes while simultaneously improving their English language skills.
I-Search in the Age of Information
Middle school teacher Huntington Lyman takes a fresh look at the I-Search research method and shows how it can be modified to provide an effective project for middle school students.
Ethics as a Form of Critical and Rhetorical Inquiry in the Writing Classroom
What can improve students' engagement in persuasive writing? A strong ethical dilemma and strategies for developing intelligent responses.
The Great Gatsby in the Classroom: Searching for the American Dream
Veteran high school English teacher David Dowling demonstrates how teachers can help students connect The Great Gatsby to the value systems of the twenty-first century, offering active reading and thinking strategies designed to enhance higher-level thinking and personal responses to fiction.
To Kill a Mockingbird in the Classroom: Walking in Someone Else's Shoes
This book examines ways of engaging students as they study Harper Lee's novel. Included are collaborative learning, discussion, writing, and inquiry-based projects as well as activities related to the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Writing about Literature, 2nd ed., Revised and Updated
This book is intended to help middle and secondary school English language arts teachers integrate literature study and composition instruction.