Supporting inquiry-based research projects, the Animal Inquiry interactive invites elementary students to explore animal facts and habitats using writing prompts to guide and record their findings.
Animal Inquiry
Letter Poem Creator
The Letter Poem Creator provides an online model for the thought process involved in creating poems based upon a letter; then, students are invited to experiment with letter poems independently.
Line Break Explorer
The interactive explores the ways that poets choose line breaks in their writing. After viewing the demonstration, students are invited to experiment with line breaks themselves.
What's in the Bag?
What's in the Bag? invites primary students to play with vocabulary common to their environment.
Fact Fragment Frenzy
Fact Fragment Frenzy provides elementary students with an online model for finding facts in nonfiction text, then invites students to find facts in five sample passages.
Drama Map
Students analyzing a play can map out the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution for a variety purposes. This interactive is aimed at secondary students.
Literary Elements Map
Students can map out the key literary elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution as prewriting for their own fiction or as analysis of a text by another author in this secondary-level interactive.
Stapleless Book
The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!
Haiku Poem Interactive
Students can learn about and write haiku using this interactive that guides them through the writing process.
Venn Diagram
This interactive tool allows students to create Venn diagrams that contain two or three overlapping circles, enabling them to organize their information logically.
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.
Authentic Assessments for the English Classroom
Joanna Dolgin, Kim Kelly, and Sarvenaz Zelkha offer real-world examples, sample student work, step-by-step instructions, and handouts to help teachers incorporate authentic forms of assessment into the middle and high school curriculum.
Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading: Lessons for Teachers of Literature
Deborah Appleman dismantles the traditional divide between secondary teachers of literature and teachers of reading and offers a variety of practical ways to teach reading within the context of literature classrooms.
Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults
Dakin explores different methods for getting students engaged--and excited--about Shakespeare's plays as they learn to construct meaning from the texts' sixteenth-century language and connect it to their twenty-first-century lives.
What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practices
Through teacher-friendly language and classroom examples, Deborah Dean takes a close look at effective, research-based practices for writing instruction.
Reading for Learning: Using Discipline-Based Texts to Build Content Knowledge
Heather Lattimer provides practical, classroom-tested approaches to helping students access and critically respond to content-based texts.
What Is "College-Level" Writing? Volume 2: Assignments, Readings, and Student Writing Samples
Edited by Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg, and Sheridan Blau, this sequel to What Is "College-Level" Writing? (2006) highlights the practical aspects of teaching writing.
Teaching YA Lit through Differentiated Instruction
Authors Susan L. Groenke and Lisa Scherff offer suggestions for incorporating YA lit into the high school curriculum.