My Favorite Websites for Teaching High School English

I have a pinterest board dedicated to useful teaching websites.  Here is a list of my favorite ones to use with my English classes...

Poem Hunter will provide you with the poems from any number of poets.  I use it all the time.  Whenever I need to find a poem it is the first place I look.  It has short bios on a ton of well known poets along with online texts of their writings.  It is very handy.  The site is super user friendly and comprehensive.  

Prezi.com is a website that allows students to make cooler versions of power points.  It takes them a class period or so to play around with it and figure out how to use all of the tools, but once they know how, they love it.  They can add videos, pictures, objects, colors, themes and pretty much everything else that they can do with powerpoint.  But, the visual effects are unique and fun to play around with.  They can save them online and share them with anyone who has an email address.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Purdue Owl is a great resource with a wide variety of writing tips.  The material is most appropriate for  students in middle school through college age students.  I use it all the time as a reference for how to create bibliographies and citations using MLA formatting rules.  Once my students have shown me they know how to format their bibliographic entries, I let them cheat by using easybib.com.

6 + 1 Writing Traits  is a well known writing, teaching and assessment framework.  The title refers to the traits in writing that we want all of our students to develop over time: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  The common language is useful in aligning teachers across contents and grade levels to provide united expectations of students.

Writing Fix and English Companion are websites that have a ton of resources for teaching writing and reading.  They include strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  They have a wealth of information and are worth perusing.

Finally, Grammar Bytes  has a wealth of grammar activities to help reinforce grammar rules with yours students.  The sentences are fun and contemporary.

Summary of The Daily 5: 2nd Edition by Boushey and Moser

I just finished reading The Daily 5: Second Edition by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (2014) in preparation for my new job as an elementary school literacy coach.  The two sisters, as they refer to themselves, have been sharing their strategies with the rest of the world for awhile.  Their latest edition is a book worth reading, though, if you are an elementary school teacher who is familiar with their work but wants to hone your skills.  For teachers who are unfamiliar with the daily 5 framework, it is a must read.

This is the daily 5 in a nutshell: read to self, work on writing, listen to reading, word work and read to someone.  Each of those is just what it sounds like too.  It is not a curriculum, but rather a way to manage that time of day when students are working on reading and writing so that all students can engage in meaningful, independent skill building while the teacher confers with students individually.  Students are taught to read books, write and improve their vocabulary during self directed sessions, building their stamina throughout the year.

I am not going to summarize the whole book right here and now, but I will list ten reasons it grabbed and held my attention as I began to investigate what quality ELA instruction, especially at the elementary school level, looks like.  Here they are:

1) The daily 5 structure teaches routine and procedures so that students can learn to become independent.
2) The book is replete with references to the most prominent experts and latest research.
3) The structure engages students in meaningful, authentic reading and writing.
4) The book addresses the ever important issue of stamina and how to build it in students.
5) It addresses the latest research about the connection between time spent reading and reading scores and proposes a simple way to increase the number of minutes students spend reading each day.
6) It provides sample lessons and tips for getting started.
7) It addresses what to do with students who struggle to become independent and offers helpful tips.
8) It responds to high frequency concerns the sisters have heard as they've travelled around visiting other teachers.
9) It makes suggestions for how to differentiate.
10) It frees up teachers' time so that they are engaged in meaningful instruction rather then tedious work.

Check back in a couple days for a collection of freebies to help you get started using the daily 5!!

Book Review: "Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid"

Recently I read "Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid" by Gina Gallagher and Patricia Konjoian. If you are looking for an entertaining and enlightening book about children with disabilities and their parents, this is it.

"Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid" is written from the point of view of two parents, Patty and Gina, who are each raising children with special needs. Patty and Gina provide solutions for difficulties parents often encounter including meeting with teachers, friends and meeting strangers. They stress how frustrating it is to hear about the "perfect" kids of others. One of the funniest points in the book is a section in which Patty and Gina compare what parents of some students may say and compare that to what they might say about their special needs kid. For example, "They say - My kid got the perfect attendance award." "We say - I'm just happy Johnny went to school!"

Although this book is written mostly towards parents of special needs students, as a teacher, it also gave me some good ideas on ways to make parents of special needs students feel more comforted and assured when I talk to them and gave tips that I can pass along to parents in need. It also was interesting to read about conferences and IEP meetings from the point of view of a parent and had ways to make parents feel more comfortable at a meeting.

Some of the best tips from the book include to say meaningful positive things about your students. Susie may have a beautiful pencil case but think of a compliment that goes beyond the surface. Gina and Patty also stressed asking parents about their children since the parents are an expert! Include them as part of a team in meetings, not sitting with all the staff across from them at a table.

The humor in the book makes it an easy read but the YouTube videos will really explain their point of view. I highly recommend them. I shared these videos with our entire staff and the whole room was filled with laughter.!

Have you ever read this book? What did you think about it?