Dakota Writing Project

by Sue Morrell, NBCT
Wagner Community School

http://www.artchive.com/index.html
This site allows students to see, literally, the connections between story and artwork. For example, students might look at various artistic renderings of the Greek myth of Icarus, and compare those to the poems and to the legend. The possibilities are endless. It is free (right now, at least), and it has a wide variety of material.

http://www.short-stories.co.uk/
An excellent resource for all kinds of stories – fiction and non-fiction. This site allows students to do online reading, shared reading inquiries, and searches for particular genres.

http://drama.eserver.org/plays
Need a different translation of a classic work? Want students to examine the format of a play? Here’s a great online resource for scripts available in the public domain.

http://ise.uvic.ca/index.html
Internet Shakespeare Editions provides access to a wide variety of Shakespeare text, including plays and poems, links to information about the playwright and his times, and other excellent resources.

http://wilearns.state.wi.us/apps/default.asp?cid=18
The Wisconsin Literary Association and Reading Network Source is a good resource for teachers of all content areas. There are links to strategies, home-school connections, and other valuable teaching resources.

http://www.literacymatters.org/about.htm
This site addresses teachers, parents and students concerned about improving literacy skills for middle school and secondary students who are struggling to succeed. Like the WiLearns site above, it provides ideas about strategies that may work with readers who struggle to make sense of fiction and nonfiction text, or who are not motivated to read.

http://en.openphoto.net/
The Open Photo site offers free images – non-copyrighted material. Students can use these to enhance their projects in a variety of ways.

http://www.edutopia.org/
Edutopia is the site associated with the George Lucas Educational Foundation. It’s a great source of creative ideas. The articles feature projects and programs that will not only blow apart your idea of what it is possible to teach and to learn, but will also inspire you with innovative educational strategies. Super professional reading site!

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
As long as you do not alter these handouts and aids, you are free to use them for classroom instruction. They are excellent! Why reinvent the wheel?

http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/tools.htm
This is an excellent, all-purpose site with many links to relevant resources for students and teachers alike. Consult it before you begin a digital storytelling assignment.

http://thisibelieve.org/index.php
My curriculum includes the teaching of essays, of course. To help students to understand how necessary it is to have passion about a topic, I have them link to this NPR site and listen to several of the 3-5 minute essays. The text of the essays is also included with the audio version, thus providing the ability to analyze structure. These become the models for my students to record their own “This I Believe” essays.

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/omag_ocut.jhtml
I discovered this by accident, but it’s an excellent resource to spark student interest in a topic or in an author. This woman talks to lots of important people. You can listen in on this site to her “cuts” from live interviews. I used it first to help students see and hear Elie Wiesel, the author of Night.

http://www.oscars.org/teachersguide/index.html
This is an invaluable site for teaching media/film literacy. Downloadable PDF documents provide guides to screenplays and script writing, animation, lighting and sound effects, etc.

http://english.uiowa.edu/nonfiction/readinglist.html
So, I went looking for a resource to help my students think about non-fiction reading. Sue William Silverman’s Contemporary Creative Nonfiction Reading List is comprehensive and intriguing. I’m handing it off to my senior College English students for their final research project.

http://www.liu.edu/cwis/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm
This is an MLA citation source. I like the colorful approach used by these site designers because they help students differentiate the pieces of the bibliographic entries.

http://www.oslis.org/secondary/
The Oregon School Library Information System contains both student- and teacher-friendly information, including scoring guides and rubrics for various kinds of written and oral projects, research strategies, a link to “Citation Maker,” and an evaluation of internet sites page.

http://www.scholarshiphelp.org/scholarship_essay.htm
This site is a must for teachers of seniors. It includes advice for getting recommendations, assessing skills and keeping a log of accomplishments, preparing applications, and writing scholarship essays.