Teaching Literature - Resources
The Children's Literature site at the University of Calgary is simply the best available literature environment on the Web so far...
Links
Linda's Links to Literature contains the largest number of 2 sentence summaries and, in some cases, interesting lesson plans. (Some are too obvious even to read!)This site is useful for teaching stories for the first time and for substitute teachers given an unfamiliar assignment with too little time to prepare.
Carol Hurst's site, in addition to book reviews, integrates books with themes, including math and science, and provides links for professional development.
The home page of this English literature teacher, Mr. Barsant, displays links to the original works taught and interesting examples of student HTML projects. For instance, various phrases in the poetry of T.S. Elliot are linked to explanatory sites on the Web. It also illustrates the outcomes of an online search in the humanities.
The San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) Language Arts Resources page includes many links the Web to enrich the study of literature.
For an introduction to online poetry try Poetry Portal. In the spirit of the Web this site aims to stimulate the growth of a community, dedicated to poetry from all over the world and throughout time. Poetry review 'zines are accessible, too. Poets' Org contains a listening room as well as biographies and links. This site is more representative of American poetry than others and is a good research launchpad.
Awesome Library-Language Arts is a collection of hundreds of lesson plans, some better than others.
American Writers, developed by CSPAN, offers many resources, especially in the modern period, but new technologies, such as streaming video of interactions among celebrities, for instance, and lengthy excerpts of authors' key works, are strengths of this site.
Book Adventure serves as a children's librarian--book recommendations, other references, tips for parents and so on. It will be especially helpful for professionals in schools without updated libraries.
MITTEN at the University of Michigan-Dearborn integrates technology to focus on characterization in literature and build electronic portfolios.
For integration of literature and social studies into Websites look at Web English Teacher.
English language and literature resources are offered by Chico High School for teachers. The Web links are grouped into book reviews, drama, mythology, folklore, medieval and classical literature, poetry and Shakespeare. Poetry in particular is a good pointer.
Outta Ray's Head contains 250 very interesting lesson plans; in addition to Ray, lessons were developed and tested in classrooms. The literature and poetry sections are very good.
StudyGuide was created by Mrs. Adams, a teacher in Birmingham, Alabama. Lessons include how to write a research paper, note-taking, and examples from different genres.
Online Poetry Classroom is a rich source of poetry with linked standards. The student body would be mostly in high school. Integrating poetry into social studies enhances the power of both topics.See Open Wide, Look Inside.
Annotation
The Barsant site can serve as a creative exemplar of the integration of the Web into high school poetry. As a site of an individual teacher, a particular personality shines.
Many publishers include appealing resources for teachers and parents to encourage them to purchase products. These sites contain some of the higher quality inducements.
