ENGLISH/LANGUAGE ARTS

  • PSD RESOURCES:

    • PHS Lit Crew Sign-up Sheet: A group of teacher-recommended, academically advanced, socially-adjusted juniors and seniors who work under the direction of David Zindler during their volunteer periods. Upon your request, Lit Crew members will come into your classroom to provide you with help by working with a group of students or an individual student advance his/her/their literacy skills .

  • Read the World: PSD 6-12 Disciplinary Literacy Presentation

  • Disciplinary Literacy Book Marks

YOUTUBE VIDEOS:

Apps for ELA (iOS)

  • Grammar Up: Selected by Apple for its “High School Survival Guide,” this iPhone and iPad app provides a quiz system with over 1,800 grammar questions in 20 difference categories. The quiz format and real-time error feedback provide students with the opportunity to improve their strategies for grammar success.

  • Writing Prompts: This writing prompt generator app uses pictures, colors, words, genres and different types of writing to provide creative inspiration for writers and writing students.

  • 50 iPad Apps to Assist Reading and Writing

Personalized Book Recommendations/Deals:

  • Goodreads Deals: Deals for ebooks on your Want to Read shelf or by authors you follow delivered straight to your inbox.

  • BookBub: Email recommendations for ebooks based on your preferences (genres, authors, etc.)

Level Up: Text. Head. Heart.

Literacy Posters

PSD Videos:

  • 2017 Summer Reading ("Read Thread")

WEBSITES:

  • LiteracyTA: Effective testing practices, engaging literacy routines and online, award winning tools for targeted instruction that when used consistently leads to 30% improvement in students’ abilities to read and write about informational and argumentative texts.

  • Quill: Web-based tool that provides personalized, interactive writing lessons for middle school and high school students.

  • NoRedInk: Practice and master grammar & writing skills.

  • Goodreads: "A large library that you can wander through and see everyone's bookshelves, their reviews, and their ratings. You can also post your own reviews and catalog what you have read, are currently reading, and plan to read in the future.

  • Newsela: Free leveled news, primary sources, and more, with standards-aligned formative assessments.

  • Three Teachers Talk: Mentors with Insights, Ideas, and Resources for Secondary Readers & Writers Workshop

  • Membean: Guided, engaging, multimodal vocabulary instruction while Adaptive Reinforcement Engine helps students retain learning.

  • Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab): Writing resources and instructional materials that teachers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

  • GrammarCheck: Online spelling and grammar checker

  • Literature Map: Tourist Map of Literature: A web of authors you might like based on authors that you already enjoy.

  • Periodic Table of Literary Villains (Norton Critical Edition)

  • Vocabulist: Enables students to upload a document and have it extract words and definitions from it. Once the list of words and definitions is set, students can download the list as a PDF or export it to Quizlet to be turned into a set of digital flashcards.

  • Great TED Talks for English Teachers

  • Google Lit Trips: Downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. Along the way, place marks with pop-up windows contain "just in time" resources including relevant media, thought-provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about "real world" references in that portion of the story.

  • Virtual Tour of the Globe Theatre

  • Poetry Foundation's Glossary of Poetry Terms for Students

  • Poets.org: A poem-a-day delivered to your email inbox

  • NBC Learn: Language Arts

  • Digital Magnetic Poetry (Using Google Drawing) - Template

DIGITAL VENUES FOR PUBLISHING STUDENT WRITING:

  • Canvas: Ages: 13-18 for fiction, poetry, plays, creative nonfiction, new media, cross-genre, art. Published four times a year and run by an all-student editorial board that publishes a variety of formats: online, pdf, ebooks, and print books. They also feature sound files of authors reading their work and some video interviews with authors.

  • Celebrating Art: Grades K-12 for any art that can be captured in a still digital image. “Devoted to the promotion of the arts, art appreciation and teaching,” Celebrating Art holds three contests per year, in April, August, and December — and publishes the winning pieces in a hardcover book. On their blog, selected winners get their own features. Students who make the top ten in their age category win $25 and a free copy of the book, which normally costs $29.95. And there’s an incentive for educators, too: Teachers who have five or more students whose work is published win a free copy of the book.

  • The Claremont Review: Ages: 13-19 for fiction, poetry, plays, interviews, art that can be presented in still digital image

  • Launch Pad: Ages 6-14 for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and illustrations by assignment

  • New Moon Girls: Girls only ages 8 and up for fiction, poetry, personal essays, how-to articles, art, comics, photography

  • Teen Ink: Ages 13-19 for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, reviews, art

  • Figment: Ages 13 and up for poetry, fiction, plays, nonfiction. Figment is an online community where students self-publish their writing. Contributors — or “Figs,” as they are nicknamed on the site — earn badges by reading and reviewing other Figs’ work and submitting their own. The site regularly runs contests, polls and quizzes, and provides space for public and private groups — even teachers can create class groups for sharing and discussing work.

  • Storybird: All ages for fiction and poetry. Writers explore a gallery of professionally created artwork until they find something that inspires them. Then they write stories and poems to go with those images, and publish the finished product — illustrations included — on Storybird. Students can create their own individual accounts, and teachers can create “classes” within the Storybird environment where they can give and grade assignments, and students can read and comment on each other’s work in a safe, private class library.

GOOGLE CHROME WEB APPS + EXTENSIONS:

Text to speech:

  • Read&Write for Google: Tools including word prediction, dictionary, picture dictionary, text to speech, screenshot reader, speech maker, screen mask, translator, highlighters, voice note, and more. Works on webpages, PDFs, Google Docs, and Google Slides. Note: There is a paid version with all the tools and a free version with a subset of the tools. Educators can get the paid version for a year at no cost by filling out this form.

  • Select and Speak: Reads any selected text on web pages or PDF’s that are opened in Chrome. Options that can be adjusted include speaking rate and choice of voice.

  • Announcify: Not only reads a webpage, but also removes distracting elements from the site. The only drawback is the inability to select specific text to read, as the entire page is read aloud.

  • Snap&Read Extension: Snap&Read Extension for Chrome™ reads both accessible and inaccessible text aloud from websites, Flash websites, images, Google Docs, eBook Readers, Kindle Cloud Reader, email, PDFs, web-based tests, and more. Snap&Read also adjusts complex text to be more readable, translates text into over 100 languages, and allows you to capture information and cite your sources for use in writings.

Speech to text:

  • Voice Recognition: Allows user to dictate the text of a document, then save the text to Google Drive or send as an email.

  • Speech Pad: Dictate the text of a document, then copy and paste the text to another application as needed

  • VoiceNote II: Dictate the text of a document, then copy and paste the text to another application as needed

Readability:

  • Mercury Reader: Creates a more readable version of a web page by removing all the ads, comments, and other extra distracting items. The user can also adjust the font size and color scheme of the new text.

  • OpenDyslexic: Overrides all fonts on webpages with the OpenDyslexic font, and formats pages to be more readable

  • BeeLine Reader: Creates a more readable version of a web page by removing all the ads, comments, and other extra distracting items. Then applies a color gradient to the page text guide your eye from one line to the next.

  • High Contrast: Changes colors to increase contrast, invert the colors, or switch to grayscale

  • ATBar: Change the colors, font size for a webpage, have text read aloud, use colored overlays, remove distracting elements from page

  • MagicScroll Web Reader: Turn web pages into a flippable e-book with easy clickable or keyboard control, as well as control over font size and page color as well.

  • Readline: Although designed as a speed reading tool, you can adjust the speed to the lowest setting and use this extension to easily read text one word at a time.

  • Visor: Overlay tool darkens out the page except for a horizontal band you can move up and down as you read, helping the student focus.

  • Color Enhancer: For people who are partially color-blind, this tool can help adjust and improve webpage colors.

Reading comprehension:

  • SummarizeThis: Copy and paste any text into the app to get a summarized version of the most important information.

  • Google Dictionary: Double-click any word on a web page to get a pop-up with the definition, synonyms, and audible pronunciation.

Leveled text resources:

Focus:

  • Simple Blocker: This tool helps students to stay focused on their work by blocking distracting websites. The user can choose the sites to block, how long to block them, and optional password protection.

  • Move It: For students who need a break, this extension can be set to periodically have them stop working and do something physical for a moment.