50+ Essential Web Sites for Literature Teachers
These are some of the sites I use over and over to help me in my teaching endeavors. If you know of more online resources, leave a comment and I’ll add them to the list.
Lesson Plans and Other Teaching Resources
The Great Books Foundation – Essential website for learning Shared Inquiry Discussion, the best way to get kids talking about books
ReadWriteThink – Fantastic database of lesson plans and student tools
ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life Through Literature – My ebook about how to read a book
Children’s Literature Web Guide – Mostly for K-6 teachers, but some valuable resources
Linda’s Links to Literature – General resources for teaching literature
Today in Literature – A good place to get literature trivia or to find some interesting tidbit for the beginning of class
Eduhound – Resources for teachers in all areas, not just literature
Reading Aloud to Children – Some helpful hints and suggestions
Quotiki – When you need a writing prompt or something inspirational for you bulletin board this is a great resource for finding and saving quotes
Professional Development:
TeacherClockHours.com – Every professional workshop and conference in one location. For teachers in Washington State, soon to expand into other states.
Making Meaning in Literature – Don’t miss this free online workshop for 6-8 teachers from Annenberg Media–you won’t believe the quality of these materials.
Conversations in Literature – An amazingly produced and developed free video workshop for 6-12 teachers from Annenberg, complete with hour-long video training sessions
Wikiversity: Education – Wikimedia’s online learning resources for educators and those interested in teaching
Wikiversity: Language and Literature – Wikimedia’s online learning resources for the study of the langage arts
Laura Robb’s Reading Workshop Resources
Nancy Patterson’s Literature Circle Lessons
Judy Lightfoot’s Teaching Page
Online books and poetry
Project Gutenberg – The king of all online book sites
How to Prepare a Gutenberg text for eReading – An easy way to format Gutenberg texts so they can be printed and read more easily
Online Books Page – Second only to Project Gutenberg in stature, but a bigger book database
Google Books – Searchable, readable books online with links to places you can borrow or buy them
Google Scholar – Search scholarly literature; includes full-text books
Wikibooks – Open-content textbooks
Librivox – Free audio book classics
The Poetry Archive – Recordings of famous poets reading and discussing their poems
Best Places to Get Free Books – A nice collection of links
MiddlewebCinderella Stories – from the Children’s Literature Web Guide
SurLaLune Annotated Fairy Tales
Book Lists
300+ Recommended Books for Junior High Students – The eighth grade reading list for my students is now available in .pdf format
Literary Testosterone: 30 Must-Read Classics for Teenage Boys
Mr. Senger’s Students Teen Book Reviews – My junior high students have been writing book recommendations for teens since 1990, and now I have over 400 recommendations on 3×5 cards that I am trying to enter into this database.
15 Mammoth Books for Teens – A .pdf reading list of long books for teenagers
Recommended Fantasy Author List – One of the best resources for fantasy fiction on the Internet for many years
Robert Teeter’s Great Book Lists – A comprehensive collection of recommended reading lists
Novel Guides – Lots of good resources for teaching individual books SCORE Cyberguides
Modern Library Reading Group Guides
Course Materials for the Study of Science Fiction
Instructor Guides from HarperAcademic
Reference SitesOnline Etymology Dictionary
Online Tools for Students
Gradefix – Students enter their homework and how much time each assignment will take, and Gradefix automatically calculates when to study and for how long. A great tool for procrastinators and their parents.
Stu.dicio.us – For students to keep notes, track grades, organize projects and homework, and collaborate with others
Yahoo Answers – Students and teachers can ask and answer questions on any topic
Research Tools
MyStickies – Put sticky notes on web pages to keep track of relevant information
i-Lighter – Allows students to highlight and write notes about web pages; great for Internet research
Easybib – Answer questions about your reference source and Easybib shows you how it should look in the bibliography
Ottobib – Enter the ISBN of any book and Ottobib gives you the bibliographic information you need for your research paper in MLA, APA, and other styles.
Cl1p.net – An Internet notepad that can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connectionYourdraft.com – Collaborative writing on the web
Thinkature.com – Collaborative brainstorming and mapping
Collaborative Mind Mapping – another collaborative brainstorming site
I would recommend http://mynoteit.com for student tools. It’s like a one-stop storage place for your school information
Thanks for pointing out MyNoteIt.com. It looks fantastic.
Don’t pay too much attention to Alex’s post of mynoteit.com – I’ve seen him posting it all over and it turns out he owns it. It’s just shameless and undisclosed self-promotion because he was upset he didn’t make the list…
These are helpful information for me as a Literature teacher. Thank you. If anyone needs help I do online teaching for Literature. https://preply.com/en/skype/literature-tutors
A useful YouTube channel fot students and teachers of literature: SOMMER’S WORLD LITERATURE TO GO (http://www.youtube.com/c/sommersworldliteraturetogo). The videos posted here are fun and concise summaries of works of literature done with Playmobil figures! Great to recapitulate the action of a drama or novel, to use as an ice breaker at the first encounter or simply to have fun.