This site began in March 1998 by Janet Luch.
Email questions and comments to studyplans@yahoo.com.
Writing
COPS: use for any written assignment
Did they use Capital letters?
Is the Overall appearance neat?
Did they use correct Punctuation?
Are the words Spelled correctly?
Grammar and Spelling
Coffee Talk: Never End a Sentence With a Preposition! Oh, Really?
http://www.columbiaseminary.edu/coffeetalk/050.html
This Coffee Talk article from Dr. Rick Walston of Columbia Evangelical Seminary,
discusses where this rule originated, and quotes a handful of respected sources
who agree it's time to throw that rule out!
English
Grammar Quizzes: Prepositions: http://a4esl.org/a/g.html
Designed
specifically for ESL students, English Grammar Quizzes hosts hundreds of interactive
quizzes. The multiple-choice quizzes vary in length from ten questions to forty-one
questions.
English Page: Prepositions:
http://www.englishpage.com/prepositions/prepositions.html
This
page focuses entirely on phrasal verbs. "A phrasal verb is a verb plus a
preposition which creates a meaning different from the original verb. EXAMPLE:
I ran into my teacher at the movies last night." Another one designed for
ESL students, it has lots of examples, a dictionary of phrasal verbs, and twenty
interactive quizzes. With verbs that change their meaning based on a tiny preposition,
no wonder learning English as a second language is such a challenge.
Grammar and Research Hospital - with SOUND: http://www.grossmont.net/musgrave2/Grammar%20Hospital/index.asp
Interactive Quizzes: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/quiz_list.htm
Parapal Online - English Exercises: http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/
"...this site contains a variety of interactive exercises to improve your
English. They are designed to improve your listening, writing, reading, vocabulary
and grammar skills."
Prefix Game and Associated Worksheets: http://members.aol.com/twittwoo/grpdfs/prefixgame.pdf
A
Spelling Test: http://www.sentex.net/~mmcadams/spelling.html
Creative Writing Prompts
*Creative Writing Prompts: http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/
Creative Writing Prompts serves fresh ideas to get your pen to paper, or fingers
to keyboard. "Write a story about an empty glass." "Begin a story
with the line, 'The clock winked.'" In addition to the nearly daily online
prompts (which are archived back to June), the site offers a free download of
Write Sparks! Lite, a Windows program that delivers writing prompts right from
your desktop.
*After reading, the students start their response with any of the following
prompts: If, While, I think, Instead of, After, Throughout, I suppose, As a
result, Before, Whatever, I'm certain, An important, Although, I doubt, I'm
not sure, This reminds me, Since, I wonder, I'm surprised, In my opinion, Maybe,
I guess, Because of, I think, Perhaps, I believe, Just because, When, Unless,
I question, The problem, Despite.
*Elementary Writing Prompts: http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/prompts.html
"Would you like to be famous?" "What would you do if you found
a magic wand?" Written specifically for Canadian elementary teachers, but
appropriate for a much wider audience, this long
list of more than two hundred writing prompts is enough to keep anyone writing
for years. The prompts are organized into questions that ask "Who, what,
where, and when?" as well as "I
wish," "Describe" and "Miscellaneous."
Writing Prompts for Older People
What are the lessons that you've learned in life?
What are your biggest regrets?
What are your spiritual beliefs?
Who is the most important person in your life and what have you learned from
him or her?
Tools for Creative Writing
Adjective Exercise: http://www.miksike.com/activities/adjective.htm
CyberJournalist.net:
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/
from
the Media Center of the American Press Institute, combines a blog (links to useful
web sites, articles, interviews, upcoming conferences, and such), with a Great
Work Gallery, Tips & Tools, and a Resource List. The
Great Work Gallery illustrates how photos, documents, maps, audio and video combine
with traditional journalistic texts to illuminate both subject and readers; anyone
who wants to do online storytelling will learn a lot here. Among the great works
are a documentary on the life of
Strom Thurmond, an interactive guide to the
Tour de France, and panoramic photos of Iraq. The Tips &
Tools section includes links to such things as "Finding John Doe" (a
backgrounder on public records searching), an Affirmative Action backgrounder,
"How To Avoid Misquoting Google," "Tracking Iraq's Historic Treasures,"
and "A High Tech Way of Estimating Crowd Sizes" (weren't you always
just a bit suspicious of those numbers in news reports?). Anybody who teaches
information literacy should take a look at the Cyber Slip-Ups section, which has
good tips on how to verify information, and plenty of funny stories about embarrassing
goofs by reporters who should have known you can't believe everything you read
on the internet.
Diarist.net: http://diarist.net/
"Whether
you call us diarists, journalers, or bloggers, we've got everything you need to
know all about the people who tell all." Included are Spark writing prompts
(look for the link in the lower right-hand corner), the Diarist.net Guide (a how-to
for wannabees), and the collection of celebrity blogs. Keep in mind that not all
personal journals are appropriate for young kids.
Idioms
& Axioms currently used in America (Meanings and Origins):
http://www.pride-unlimited.com/probono/idioms1.html
The
JournoList: http://www.journolist.com/
A
British-based site that asks what kind of answers journalists are looking for,
and for each kind, tells them what kind of tool they need to use, and links them
to a set of such resources.
Morning Mystery: pick an object students are unfamiliar with and ask them to look at it, then write what they think it is in their journals.
Multi-Genre Writing: http://www.mrsjustersvirtualclassroom.com/Am%20Htg%20Writing%20MG.htm
One-Look
Reverse Dictionary: http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml
Type
in your meaning and it will sort through its thousands of dictionaries to produce
a range of possibly matching words. You can also use it to generate a list of
words in a category, e.g., ball games), explore related concepts (e.g., orange),
and answer identification questions (e.g., capital of Montana).
Online
Magnetic Poetry: http://www.magneticpoetry.com/magnet/
Just
as much fun as refrigerator poetry, with multiple thematic kits to choose from.
Power
Reporting: http://www.powerreporting.com/
In
partnership with the Columbia Journalism Review, this site offers "Thousands
of free research tools for journalists." Includes a Newsroom Treasure Hunt,
its Top 100 web sites, and a tutorial on web searching.
Teaching
Creative Writing in the Elementary School: http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/ieo/digests/d109.html
This
site illustrates the necessity of creative writing and tells you why creative
writing is necessary for student development and suggest reason why it is important
to write stories. It also gives the teacher some strategies for teachers’
on how they can achieve these goals, suggesting teaching methods, lesson plans
using both oral and written communication. There are also examples of written
text books that are available. The site also give the teacher an insight into
how the difficult task of assessing the creative writing of children, focusing
on skills like description, organization and punctuation rather than the teachers
general impression.
Tri-fold of a
personal hero
Students pick a person they know well as their hero. The person
has to be a least four years older then them and have at least three of the attributes
of a hero, which have been determined by the class. They pick moms, dads, grandparents,
and other special people in their lives. They write a poem, a escriptive essay
on why this person is a hero, and a narrative of a special memory they have of
this person. They bring in pictures and produce a tri-fold. This tri-fold is then
sent to their hero as a present.
Write
a mystery story, then create the story on PowerPoint, using the buttons. Students
have a title slide, a couple of background slides about the crime, then a button
that leads to suspect files, a button that leads to clues, etc. Finally as you
progress they have a solution button where you can find out who did it and why.
In
powerpoint all you have to do is go to tools and insert buttons and then link
the button to whatever number slide you want. It's best to create all slides,
then to go back and insert the buttons. Finally you
need to go to slide transitions
and click the check off of "move on mouse" so the buttons only will
operate your movement through the story.
Students can find pictures of celebrities
as their suspects, clip art, and forensic or CSI type of websites for actual pictures
of thumbprints, shoe prints, etc.
Writer's
Workshop
*Use 3 things for organization of student work.
First, a writer's notebook. This is kind of like a scrapbook of ideas. Students
list ideas they have for writing. They may do journal writing to a prompt, free
writing, with the option of later turning it into a story. Also they might just
copy a poem they like, draw and label a picture, or cut and paste a cartoon. Basically
anything can go in it that might inspire them to write.
The second thing is
a writing folder where they keep handouts, revision and editing checklists, examples
of certain types of writing, and their current writing project.
The third
thing is the portfolio. Published pieces of writing end up here. A 3 ring binders
can be used for this.
For the teacher's organization,
have a pocket chart to keep up with status of the class. The stages of writing
are listed and student names are placed out beside the stage they are in.
"Status
of the Class" lets the teacher know each day how each student is progressing.
Instead of taking the time for each student to report where they are in the writing
process, make markers that are about the size of bookmarks and have a stack for
each step in the writing process. When students come into class they pick up the
marker that matches where they are in the writing process and put it on the top
of their desk. The teacher can do a mini lesson and then when the students go
to work, the teacher can walk around the room and check off where the students
are in the process and pick up the marker. The teacher can then have a short conference
if the student hasn't moved on in the process or if they need some help.
Also,
to document conferences keep a binder, divided into sections for each child. Anytime
there is a conference, make a few notes about what the child was working on, how
he's doing, and what he's having trouble with.
*Use 3
subject notebooks. Students can usually use them the whole year and it's nice
to see the progression all in one place. Glue any very important papers they will
use right inside of the cover or dividers.
In addition
to the notebooks, try to get old wallpaper books...the kids use the paper to make
unique
covers for the books that they publish. Also numerous different kinds
of themed paper (the printer kind you get at Staples, office Max, etc.) and blank
paper books from Scholastic and Really Good Stuff. To get the kids started they
have to motivated and all the "cool" ways they can publish helps. Cut
lots of paper in different sizes so they can make big books, mini-books, etc.
*A
typical 60 minute writing workshop class might be structured like this:
10
min. mini-lesson
1-2 min decide what to work on/transition
30-40 min writing
time/practice/ you are conferencing
5 min share/reflect
A
Young Writers' Round Table via the Web: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/technology/circuits/14peer.html
Many
young students struggle with writing but online technology is helping students
improve skills by offering them an audience for their work.
Bibliography
BibBuilder
1.3 (Free MLA-Style Bibliography Builder): http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/academic/bib_builder/index.html
This
site began in March 1998 by Janet Luch.
Email questions and comments to studyplans@yahoo.com.