Internet Resources

I joined the National Council for Teachers of English back in the first semester of school and I like it. It is filled with all types of information that is useful for a language arts teacher. It is a fairly easy to use web site that offers access to books, research, lesson plans and useful ideas. NCTE has research-based resources for English teachers that can be very helpful for teachers of Language Arts. This makes it a fruitful web site that helps me with student learning and achievement. The site offers an option where you can fill out information online and request consultation. I’m not sure exactly how this works, but I know it’s available and I’m sure to use it at some point in my career. I think that these kind of online resources are especially important for all of us in Alaska because of our physical separation from the rest of the country, good sites like this one offer access to issues and new ideas that affect the Language Arts world in education. And of course this site has easy access to very usable lesson plans. This is a very high quality resource.

I have also been using the Teacher Vision web site. This is a nice general site that has something for all teachers. Since I have been teaching a block History/ English class, I can go to Teacher Vision and find lesson plan ideas as well as strategies and general teaching plan ideas. I have found a lot of good lesson plan ideas. Many web sites that deal with teachers and teaching have a lot of unusable plans and ideas, at least for me, but this one has things that are useful and workable in the class room. I know because I have used some of them. Of course I usually just pick out what I think I can use, and leave the rest, like right now I am looking at some sections of a blues lesson plan that I can use as part of my to Kill A Mockingbird unit. I haven’t joined Teacher Vision yet, but I have been able to access a lot of information without joining. With a membership fee of about forty dollars a year, I might wait until I get a job.

Since History is the larger section of what I have been teaching, I have also been using the Digital History website. I like this site because it has loads of links. There are links to PBS as well the National Archives. The links are substantial and worthwhile; this site is mostly links, which I like because it takes you to what you are specifically looking for instead of having to search a specific item on a website. It also has a myriad of primary source documents which is invaluable for teaching History. There is a problem though; many of the links do not link to anything, which can be quite disappointing. But I really enjoy browsing around on this site. It’s fun to read Red Horse’s version of the Battle of Little Bighorn, or look at Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The site also has time lines to all different periods in history. I find these very helpful for students to get an idea of place in time, as well as historical chronology. I have used these by accessing them on my classroom computer, which is connected to an overhead projector, and then I just put it up on the big screen and go over with students. I usually have them copy it and keep it for a reference.