V. TEACHING IDEAS, LESSONS AND CURRICULUM MATERIALS
Literacy and the Language Arts
Recommended:
21st Century Literacies
Educators consider four new literacy skills – information, media, multicultural and visual – as vital to thriving in the digital age, and this website contains "Tools for Reading the World", a collection of resources and links relating to various types of literacy skills.
Web English Teacher
This site is a useful and extensive resource for innovative lesson plans on grammar and vocabulary and critical thinking. The site also includes jokes, puzzles, and all sorts of other classroom activities.
Project Gutenberg
This website contains millions of e-books, in over 40 languages. The copyright on these books has expired so they are freely available to those who wish to read them or use them for educational purposes.
Other Useful Sites:
Aaron Shepard’s Reader’s Theatre Page
Reader’s theatre is an effective way of generating interest in reading, especially among lower-age students. This page offers tips, scripts and general guidance for teachers.
The Art of Crime Detection
This is an engaging, downloadable activity that contrasts the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain, and the looks at the difference between visual and linguistic language systems.
Literacy Lesson Plans
This site is for years 3-7, and contains free resources for literacy classes in line with UK National Literacy Standards for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and play scripts.
Business Letter Writing
This site takes the student step by step through the stages of writing a business letter, taking in planning, structure, writing and editing. Topics fall into one of four categories: persuasion; request; complaint and response; and social business.
Discover Writing
This site offers imaginative lesson plans and archive links for writing classes, from poetry to literary appreciation to practical skills like job applications.
Revision: Cultivating a Critical Eye:
This site for students offers valuable advice on effective strategies for revising and editing written work, defining distinct stages in the process.
Literacy software
Teachers can download adult literacy-focused freeware for Macs from this page – includes a range of maths and language activities, as well as specific programmes such as multiple choice templates.
Educational downloads
Many useful downloads are listed here for a range of academic purposes: study skills, such as essay planning and help understanding plagiarism; bibliographies; software downloads; and other miscellaneous extras.