Useful Internet Resources
Going online is an everyday practice, taking attendance on Power School, checking email, entering grades into Power Grade. It's all part of a daily routine. Reading online news to know the latest local, state, national and even world events. I use a variety of websites online that aid my instruction but which ones are the best and most useful in my profession now?
I teach 9th grade Reading and Writing as separate classes and have a vibrant group of students eager to read new and interesting literature. We are always reading rich stories and writing about our lives and topics that are connected to us. Having a library of supplementary resources to access and use immediately is really useful throughout each unit. These are the top three sites that I regularly to aid my instruction and planning:
1. Teen Ink
2. WritingFix
3. Slideshare
Here's why...
1. Teen Ink-- http://www.teenink.com
Teen Ink is a colorful and interactive site that allows teenage writers to begin publishing and reviewing a variety of writing. All genres of writing including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, persuasive are represented. Students can submit work to be published online and may also be featured in their publication. One of the peer- features I like about is that it allow students to participate in active responding and receive immediate feedback from readers across the nation. Teen Ink places them in an environment of talking about writing and publishing as young professionals. It’s also a great site to use for modeling and editing.
Anyone can access the site but in order to share and respond to published writing, one needs to set up an account with their email address and create a Teen Ink identity through a username. It is a fairly easy one step process.
In my classroom, I’ve used the site as a way to introduce professional online publishing and responding. Students submit their personal narratives, poetry, book and movie reviews, as well as, read and comment on others writing. At left, one of my student's personal narrative was published, and she shares her story of her "Uppi" (In Yup'ik, grandfather is translated in the word Apa). She calls her Apa, "Uppi".
The site has also encouraged young writers of literature and poetry to submit their work on a regular basis.
2. The Northern Nevada Writing Project and WritingFix-- http://writingfix.com
Generating fast-write prompts daily for my students is necessary in our writing classroom. WritingFix has an online prompt generator that is a quick and easy way to find a prompt for the day that may relate to the unit you are teaching. Not only does it offer a wide variety that appeals to all types of personalities, it offers fun and interactive 6+1 Trait resources for drafting and revision that teach the traits using online instruction and downloadable materials.
One of my f
avorite items that I’ve borrowed is the trait post-it notes that are can be used as a self-responding or peer-reviewing check-off (example at left). The students find it easy to respond to the checklist and students starts to communicate and generate new ideas. There are also lessons and websites posted by model teachers that correlate with writing units you may be teaching. The writing program itself is based out of Nevada but has spread to further audiences.3. Slideshare-- http://www.slideshare.net
Slideshare offers free viewing of many different content area lessons and provides teachers with guided presentations to help instruct and train you to deliver a great lesson. Many varieties of presentations are shared and a written script of the presentation is also published below the slideshow. The slideshow plays as a movie with a direct fast-forwarding feature to flip through slides.
ous authors and pieces of literature, Slideshare is useful to provide students with a visual method of learning by seeing images and reading important facts and information. You can upload your own presentations created on PowerPoint (or other presentation applications including even imovie) to also contribute to the sharing of presentations with people of many professional backgrounds. It is compatible with sharing document, PDFs and videos, making it a great resource for research, connecting with others and sharing ideas.One more notable site that I have to mention:
This I Believe-- http://thisibelieve.org
Based on the old 1950s NPR program "This I Believe", it was a radio show hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. During the sorrow of the Cold War and racial tension, the radio show encouraged essays that shared guiding life principles. Today, though the radio show no longer exists, this site houses all the archived essays and audio recordings. You can search by theme to find a related essay by people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Tony Hawk, and Muhammed Ali. These essays are a great resource that allows the students to experience a live reading from the author that heightens the normal reading experience.
