Tech+Int.-+Lang.+A-+English

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 * English Tech Integration Resources **
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//Twitter // @mrami2 @cherylrainfield @donalynbooks @thereadingzone @colbysharp @mrami2 @mrsalander @ckervina @budtheteacher @skajder @hickstro
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 * 1) engchat (focus on English teaching)
 * 2) elemchat (focus on elementary)

//Blogs //


 * Tech Integration Tools**
 * **Grade level** || **Purpose** || **Description** || **Link** ||
 * K-12 || Build and practice vocabulary/ word usage

(language arts, math, economics, science, history, (ANY) classroom) || [|Word Dynamo] makes learning new words a whole lot of fun. Here is how it works: 1. Answer 10 questions and [|Word Dynamo]will calculate how many words a student knows. This is your word score. The word score adjusts as you learn new words, [|Word Dynamo] helps give students study “shortcuts” to learn new words faster. 2. Word Challenge- in word challenge students are offered a custom 20-level game designed especially for their skill level. As students master meanings, they unlock the next threshold of difficulty. 3. The [|Word Dynamo]Library- here students can browse and search for things they need to learn. Students can choose to practice by schooling level, SAT prep, subject or popular word lists. 4. Play Games- students can practice vocabulary by matching terms and definitions, listening to the word and definition, spell a word out in a crossword puzzle, etc. New challenges are unlocked as students succeed! 5. Create a Word List- this a favorite. Students can create their own lists based on what they need to work on. || [] || Sharing of work || [|Moglue] is an interactive ebook builder that helps students create and share their stories on mobile devices as an app! || [] || How to use digital tools to optimize English Language Arts learning || Great website that matches traditional learning outcomes and activities in the English Language Arts classroom with technology tools which optimize the learning process YouTube explanation: [] || [|http://bit.ly/vX4XMq] ||
 * || Creative writing
 * ^  ||^   || [|Draw a Stickman] is a fun interactive site that uses student creations to tell a story. Students can complete the interactive on individual computers, iPads (the site works great!), interactive whiteboards, or classroom computers. ||   ||
 * 2-12 || TPACK

**__General English Resources __** 1.) [|TES English] provides and publishes printable and editable teaching resources, worksheets, lesson plans and schemes of work for teachers of English at secondary level. This is a British based website, so it will be good to use for British Literature. 2.) [|WordNet] is a large lexical database of English that provides nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms, each expressing a distinct concept. Think of it as a dictionary and thesaurus in one. 3.) [|My Vocabulary] provides Lesson Plans, Thematic Puzzles, Word Lists, and Test prep. You can also find literature and book activities as well. 4.) [|10 Technology Alternatives to the Standard Book Report] is a great list created by a fellow teacher and writing specialist in Colorado. Provide them as an option for your students. 5.) [|Skype an Author Network] is a website that provides information about authors who would be willing to Skype into the classroom and talk about the book with your class. 6.) [|Reading Games and Activities] is a site that provides various Literacy activities for students to participate in. It does take some navigation to find what you are looking for, but there seems to be a wealth of information available. These activities work great with an interactive whiteboard or Airliner. 7.) [|Figment] is a website where students can join a community where you can share your writing, connect with other readers, and discover new stories and authors. Whatever you're into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can find it all here. 8.) [|VocabSushi] is the premier Website for anyone looking to learn vocabulary and have fun doing it. It is ideal for students studying for standardized tests, and is also perfect for anyone looking to expand his or her vocabulary to communicate more precisely. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">9.) [|Lexipedia] is a site dedicated to giving words meaning. You type in a word and it provides an interesting graphic showing you the various aspects of a word. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">10.)[|Conjugation] is a site dedicated to learning all there is to know about Conjugated Verbs and providing information about how to conjugate a verb. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">11.)[|Word Games] provides various activities and games for students to play that relate to vocabulary. Help them find a game with vocabulary that is needed for your classes. You can find Word Search and Crossword Puzzles for your students as well as some other vocabulary enrichment games. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">12.)[|Wordia] is a site that intends to bring words to life by having people share a video defining the word and also showing an example of the definition in the video. You could take this very concept and use it in your classroom. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">13.)[|Author Website Listing] is a site that has links to an Authors website. So if you are reading a book and want to know more about the author, you can visit his or her website. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">14.)[|Lit2Go] is a website that makes it easy to download various pieces of literature into an MP3 file that can then be played on an audio device such as an iPod. You can browse by author, title, reading level, and subject matter. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">15.)[|Stories in Flight] takes text that students write and then finds images from Flickr to turn what they write into a story with pictures. Do be careful because some images on Flickr can be inappropriate and it might not show up on computers at school due to it being blocked, but I wanted to share it anyway. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">16.)[|From the Educator’s Reference Desk], are lesson plans for Language Arts and English. Worth investigating to see if there are any that you could use in your classroom. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">17.)[|60 Second Recap] is a great resource. The concept is it takes important parts of books and discusses them in videos for 60 seconds. Example books: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Beowulf, Fahrenheit 451, Hamlet, etc. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">18.)[|Common Errors in the English Language] is a great way to share with students what grammar is correct and incorrect. For example: accept and except. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">19.)[|Confusing Words] is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">20.)[|Grammar Bytes] is a site that provides definitions of Grammar, exercises, handouts, presentations, and quick tips for learning about grammar. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">21.)[|The Poetry Archive] exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience.You will find resources for teachers and students as well as valuable resources for teaching poetry. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">22.)[|Poetry 180] is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">23.)[|PoemHunter] is a website that provides a directory and search engine for poetry. A valuable resource to find and share poetry. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">24.)[|Write Rhymes] is a website that as you type provides available words that rhyme with the words that you type. Another valuable tool for writing poetry. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">25.)[|Phrays] is a site that provides a word-a-day and allows visitors to write a sentence using that word. Visitors to the site can then vote on the best sentence that was created. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">26.)[|Weboword] is a website that allows you to look at vocabulary visually. The provide images for tons of vocabulary words. Use the site to provide examples and then have students create their own. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">27.)[|Memidex] is a free online dictionary and thesaurus with a simple interface, complete inflections, auto-suggest, adult-filtering, frequent updates, a browsable index, support for mobile devices, and millions of external reference links for definitions, audio, and etymology. It's fast too. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">28.)[|Wordis] is a website where visitors can share their thoughts on any word. "Share your insight, your story, your vision…We give you words; everything else is after you." <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">29.)[|Synonym Finder]is a website designed to helps writers from using the same words over and over. You will also find antonyms and definitions as well, and examples of use in a sentence. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">30.)[|Capitonyms] are words that sometimes should be capitalized, while other times they should not be. This resource will help students in K-12 become for familiar with those words. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">31.)"[|The Favorite Poem Project]is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th [|Poet Laureate of the United States], founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997."

**__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Writing Resources __** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">1.) [|Paper Rater] is a site that allows students and teachers to copy and paste a document to the web. It will check spelling, grammar, word usage, and other aspects of the paper. It will then provide statistics for the paper as well. Another option is [|After the Deadline]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">2.) [|Future Me] is a site that can allow students to write a letter to their future self, or to the teacher. This might be a great opening semester activity to do with students about expectations for the class. The letter will be emailed to them on the date that they choose. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">3.) [|Writing Fun] is a site that provides text organizers that can be downloaded and printed and used in class with your students. The text organizers are broken down by the various parts of the writing process. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">4.) [|Folding Story] is a Group Story Telling Game. A student can start a story and then other students add parts to finish the story. Think of it like the game “telephone” but with writing the story instead of trying to repeat it. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">5.) [|Magnetic Poetry] is a site that provides words and phrases for creating poetry using virtual magnets. There are 9 subjects that students can choose and that will determine the types of words that are available. This is an interesting way to get students to write a poem. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">6.) [|PicLits] is a site that students can type over an image. If doing a poem, it needs to be limited to 12 lines to fit on the image. Students can also free write about the image as well. An account will need to be created for it to work. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">7.) [|StoryJoin.com] is a free website, that let’s your creative side out, by story telling. We’ve made it fun and easy to use. A unique concept, that allows you to create a story and have other members contribute to it. Once the story is complete, read it and be surprise. When you start your free account, pick any of the eight categories, from Mystery to Romance. You can begin your story, by writing one paragraph, to as many as you want and any uncompleted paragraph, will be completed by other members of StoryJoin.com. Make your story open to allow anyone to contribute, or make it private and you decide who will contribute. Click on [|How it Works], to view step by step instructions on how it works. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">8.) [|Wordcounter] ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Use this to see what words you overuse (is everything a "solution" for you?) or maybe just to find some keywords from a document. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">9.) [|The Poetry Foundation], publisher of //Poetry// magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. There are some resources that you can use for teaching poetry on this site. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">10.)[|Plagiarism Checker] is a site that does just what its title suggests. It searches Google to find similar text on the web to find if a student has copied and pasted any work. If you don’t like this option, you can also look into [|Doc Cop]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">11.)The [|NWP Digital Is] website is a collection of ideas, reflections, and stories about what it means to teach writing in our digital, interconnected world. Read, discuss, and share ideas about teaching writing today. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">12.)[|Write for Ten] is a writing project with one simple rule: write for 10 minutes about anything. Describe where you are. Ramble about your day. Imagine a scenario between two strangers. What you write doesn't have to be perfect nor complete. Just write it. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">13.)Provide these links to students so that they can get assistance with writing bibliographies and work cited pages. [|OttoBib] and [|EasyBib] make it easy for students to track and document soruces in various formats. Another option is [|KnightCite]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">14.) [|VocabGrabber] analyzes any text you're interested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context. Just copy text from a document and paste it into the box, and then click on the "Grab Vocabulary!" button. VocabGrabber will automatically create a list of vocabulary from your text, which you can then sort, filter, and save. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">15.)[|The English Room 30 Days of Poetry] is a website that provides 30 days of student activities for teaching poetry. Add these to the great lessons that you are already doing. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">16.)[|The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University] houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">17.)[|The Rhyming Dictionary] is a great resource for students to use when writing poetry. It provides synonyms, definitions, homophones, and same consonants. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">18.)[|Acrostic Poems] are a type of Poetry and here is a website interactive to help students prepare to write their own poem. [|Diamante Poems] are another type of Poetry that students might want to try and here is another website interactive to help them in their preparation. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">19.)[|Letter Generator] is a website interactive that teaches students the different parts of creating a general letter. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">20.)[|Wordfaire] is a "live" writing/blogging/publishing platform. The site advertises that as you write, it is published to the web. There is no waiting for the post to appear. The program is currently in beta, but if you are someone always looking for a new tool to try with your students, this might be worth looking into. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">21.)[|Random Logline Generator] will create a random sentence or topic that you can utilize in the classroom for students to write freely and creatively. It will provide students with a good starting thought point. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">22.)[|QuietWrite] removes the editors so that you can focus on writing. Create an account and it saves your writing, and it saves it automatically as you type. This would be a great way to create a blog as well. You can export to a WordPress blog and even edit the writings on an iPad. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">23.)[|Creative Writing Prompts] provides just what you think; prompts to help write stories, poems, blogs, etc. There are over 300 possible prompts...almost enough for every day of the year. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">24.)[|The National Writing Project] focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation's educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">25.)[|Daily Writing Tips] is a blog that provides visitors a daily tip for help with writing. You can search through the various categories as well as take some tests. This could easily be used for a daily assignment in English classrooms to practice various writing. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">26.)[|750 Words] is a website where the idea is to have students write 750 words, or the equivalent of 3 pages. It is a simple concept and to learn more just check out the website. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">27.)[|Exquisite Corpse] is a Poetry game where you can submit a sentence to a poem and then you provide how many lines in the poem there is and provide the 2nd persons name and email address for them to submit the second line. If you want to work in pairs or groups you can easily just supply each other emails and create a poem with each other. Collaborative Poetry. You can also view previous submissions by other people. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">28.)[|Current.im] is your free and private online journal. The difference is that each entry is limited to only 140 characters. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">29.)[|Idioms 4 You] is a website dedicated to providing several examples of English idioms. Not only can you read them, but you can also hear them. The author of the website has recorded the samples of idioms for visitors. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">30.)Here is an interesting concept. It is called [|Newspaper Blackout]. Students take a newspaper and black out all the words to create a story, poem, quote, or whatever. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">31.)[|The Basics of APA Style] is a web-based slide presentation that also includes voice over. It does a good job of explaining APA formatting. <span class="wiki_link_new">32. [|www.turnitin.com] Peer review essays (with customizable response questions for students to answer), plagiarism percentage, MYP rubric grading online. No more printing essays and/org rubrics! :) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> **__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Reading Resources __** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">1.) [|103 Things to Do Before, During, and After Reading] is a great list of ideas for classroom use. Lots of ideas here fir engaging students in reading. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">2.) [|The Reading Lady] has resources for Comprehension, Author Studies, Poetry, the Six Traits of Writing, Assessment, and Reader’s Theater. You can also click on the Documents link to get to printable resources as well. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">3.) [|CyberGuides] are supplementary, standards-based, web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Each CyberGuide contains a student and teacher edition, standards, a task and a process by which it may be completed, and teacher-selected web sites. Some links might be broken due to lack of funding. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">4.) [|Spreeder] is a website that can help students increase the speed at which they read. It is meant for use on the Internet, so if there is a document you want kids to read, you can use this site to see how quickly they can read. It will also help them with the words per minute they can read. Another option is [|ZAP Reader]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">5.) [|RepeatAfterUs] is an award-winning online library with the best collection of copyright-free English texts and scripted recordings. Our free audio clips provide an excellent resource for students and literature lovers of all ages. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">6.) [|The Online Books Page] has over 1 Million books available online for free. It might be worth investigating to see if a book your students are reading or that you would like for them to read is available. You might also check [|Books Should Be Free] which has audio editions available. Another option is [|Bartleby]. You might also want to look at [|Read Print]. If that is not enough you might try [|ManyBooks.net]. Still not having luck, one more resource you should investigate is [|Project Gutenberg]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">7.) [|BookLamp.org] matches readers to books through an analysis of writing styles. Do you like Stephen King’s “It,” but thought it was too long? BookLamp allows you to find books with a similar level of tone, tense, perspective, action, description, and dialog - while at the same time allowing you to specify details like... half the length. It’s impervious to outside influences - like advertising - that impact socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work. Take a look at the above video to see how we do it in detail. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">8.) [|50 Places to Find Free Books Online] is another list of sites where students and teachers can find books online. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">9.) [|18 Strategies for Struggling Readers] provides resources, lessons, and activities for assisting students in understanding what they read. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">10.)[|50 Great Ways to Use Graphic Novels in the Classroom]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">11.)[|Free Reading Worksheets] provides worksheets in various forms (RTF, PDF, HTM, and PPT) as well as interactive reading lessons in various forms as well (YouTube, Flash, HTM, and PPT). Created for 7th and 8th graders, they are still adaptable for grades 6-12.

**__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">British Literature __** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">1.) [|Luminarium] is an Anthology of English Literature. It provides resources for Medieval, Renaissance, 17th Century, and the Restoration time periods. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">2.) [|Romeo and Juliet - An Interactive Folio] is a great way to study this classic. I don’t know how to explain it, but if you teach this, use this site! <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">3.) [|Shakespeare Animated] is a YouTube Channel that has animated versions of several of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and stories. Scroll down past the gray area to see the list of videos. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">4.) [|Shakespearean Insults] is an interesting site. It provides you the ability to insult someone using Shakespearean language. Kind of funny. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">5.) [|Cummings Study Guides] provides various study guides for Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and various other types of literature. There is a vast index worth checking out.

**__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">American Literature __** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">1.) [|Poe in the Pit] is an interactive comic that provides videos and other resources related to the poem “The Pit and the Pendulum.” The site takes advantage of social media and mobile technology to explain the works of Poe. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">2.) From the New York Times comes "[|Teaching 'The Great Gatsby' with the New York Times]" <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">3.) [|Google Lit Trips] is a great way to incorporate [|Google Earth] into the English curriculum. Have students travel the globe as characters in famous pieces of literature did....for example, [|The Grapes of Wrath]. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">4.) [|Knowing Poe] is an interactive website designed to share about Poe the Person, Poe the Write, and Poe's Library.