Macbeth PBS Study Guide

This 2010 version of Macbeth stars Patrick Stewart. It is a modernized version that is true to the text. This website includes clips of the movie as well as a study guide to accompany it. We also have the film in the library. I highly recommend it!

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/macbeth/educators-guide/1023/

Interactive Citation Guide

Kelly Johnson shared this wonderful website that provides a tutorial for MLA and APA citation. The site includes pages where students can test their understanding of the order of citations.

Here is the web address.
http://support.library.ewu.edu/reference/tutorial/flash/citation.html

Thanks Kelly!

Grammar Mini Lessons

This site from St. Cloud University provides grammar handouts that would be great for quick mini lessons.

How High Schools Become Exemplary

As many of you may have noticed, education is in the news a lot lately. I thought I would share a few articles I found about improving high schools.


This is an interesting article from The New York Times on a high school that integrated reading and writing across the curriculum and found success on standardized tests. What I find interesting is that this school was successful, but apparently not overnight; the article indicates that the program was initiated, and real, measurable success was observed ten years later.

Harvard University's Achievement Gap Initiative produced this report titled "How High Schools Become Exemplary." This report is almost 200 pages, so I am sure many of you will not want to read the entire report, but you may want to skim over the subheadings and look at some of the suggestions.

Uploading Documents Using Scribd

It is VERY easy to upload documents to share using www.scribd.com. Here are instructions.

BEFORE YOU CAN UPLOAD, you may need to sign up. This is very easy. Find the "Sign UP" button and follow the directions.

1. Save the document.
2. Go to www.scribd.com.
3. Click the UPLOAD button.
4. Browse and select the file you want to upload.
5. Choose whether you want the document to be public or private (I usually select private).
6. If you have a facebook account, Scribd may automatically detect your user name and may want to connect the document to your account. To avoid this, uncheck the box with the Facebook symbol next to the SAVE button.
7. Click SAVE. You will find a URL on this screen. Copy the URL.
8. Open up Blogger and make a new post. Paste the link in the Post using the world-link icon.

I am also working on instructions for using googledocs.

Grammar with Dear Abby

This lesson uses a "Dear Abby" column on grammar to discuss common grammar mistakes or "pet peeves." This could be a great filler assignment or opening activity.

And if you haven't looked at www.thinkfinity.org before, you may want to; it is great!

MLA Citation Guide online

A great source for MLA citation. This book is written by an English teacher and is a lot less wordy than some MLA citation sources.

http://www.yourenglishclass.com/mla-style-and-documentation/

Great Website for The Canterbury Tales

Elaine shared this with the senior teachers last week, and Trish used it in our senior class this week. Very cool! I thought others may enjoy. These are four raps of tales from the Canterbury pilgrims.

Banned Book Week

Next Week, September 25-October 1, is Banned Book Week. Here is a link to ten assignments you can use with banned books.

Just for Fun

Perhaps this will convince our students of the importance of English class.

More MLA and APA help

Diana Hacker provides citation samples for MLA and APA as well as sample papers with annotations that explain the requirements of these citation styles. Follow this link for educators:

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/writersref6e/Player/Pages/Main.aspx

MLA and APA Color-Coded Citation

This website http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm provides color-coded examples of Works Cited citations as well as formatting directions for the paper itself.

It also provides the same type of color-coding and directions for APA citation through this link: http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citapa.htm

National Punctuation Day

September 24th is National Punctuation Day. Perhaps next week's grammar mini-lessons should be in honor of puncutation marks.

Video Writing Prompts

This website provides short video clips and writing prompts for elementary, middle, and high school writers. I have used these as in-class writing prompts and found success in the response from my students. The prompts are relevant to a variety of content areas, which makes for good variety in weekly writing.

http://www.teachhub.com/video-writing-prompts/cat/24

Grammar Exercises and Literature

Stacey suggests this website as a way of teaching grammar using examples from literature. The website provides samples of material that can be ordered, but I think you will find that the sample exercises can be used as well for quick mini-lessons on conventions.

www.grammardog.com/samples/php

Wordle

Wordle is a useful tool for creating "word clouds." These "wordles" are great for introducing new units or novels. Once you create a wordle, it can be saved on the web and used by other teachers.

www.wordle.net

A great article on Writing and the English language

This article is written by a professor in Columbia University's International program and provides insight on writing...I think you will enjoy Zinser's discussion on "good writing." You will not want to miss his discussion of what he calls the "four principles of writing good English."

Writing English as a Second Language

A new dialouge...

Welcome fellow English teachers! I will be sending an email to each of you soon with instructions on how you can join the blog and begin sharing ideas, lessons, and strategies. I will be posting a few articles and websites that teachers have found useful. Happy blogging!

Oh and please, forgive me if I, the imperfect one, make a grammatical mistake in any of these posts!