Links, Resources and Downloads for HCPS Teachers
Some fun poems pointing out the insanity of the English language. There’ a lot more like the portion below.
When the English tongue we speak.
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Will you tell me why it’s true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of the verse,
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard
english ESL poetry
Poetry Webcasts (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress is proud to offer two valuable series that explore the art of poetry with some of our nation’s finest poets: Poet Vision and The Poet and the Poem.
english podcast poetry
altered books
The Idea
Cut the bindings off of books found at a used book store. Find poems in the pages by the process of obliteration. Put pages in the mail and send them all around the world. Lather, rinse, repeat.
A really cool idea and a fun way to work with found poetry.
I got the link and idea from Borderland which is written by a teacher from the state of Alaska.
art english hook poetry project
A really fun writing prompt idea that I found at a teacher blog called The Competitive Voice. I really liked this idea but found the whole project to be a really interesting and exciting way to engage students. It also really focuses on key writing, image analysis and critical thinking skills.
The project began with kids doing some Flicktion. If you don’t know about this, it’s the intersection of Flickr images and fiction (see the Flicktion images I have selected on my Flickr page at JOL). People post a starter sentence in the comments window of a Flickr image, and others continue the story through the addition of more comments. We didn’t do that, we simply showed this image (if you can’t get it at school, be sure to look at home-it’s heart-wrenching and one of the comments indicates that this person may have been a teacher) and had kids develop a story about the image. We did this to help them understand how to interpret a digital image to tell a story, a skill that will serve them well in the next part of the project. And we got great stuff.
A word of warning- don’t let your students wander around flickr freely. Like Google images if you look for it long enough you can find it. It being just about anything. flickr is a great and powerful resource but with the power comes the need for guidance and control. I think Yoda said that.
analysis critical thinking digital lit english fiction flickr images Other writing prompt
A night view of Earth. It’d be an interesting way to start a conversation on any number of topics. Off the top of my head-
english History images maps population satelite science
Letterfu - Letter-writing without envelopes, cutting or glue
A cool hook to get students writing letters. This site has templates that you print on the back of the letter that will let you fold the letter itself to create an envelope out of the letter. Starting the assignment off by giving the students the assignment guidelines in one the envelope/letters might increase interest- or if you have a life and don’t want to spend all night folding letters having an example or two to pass around would be nice.
english letter writing
A basic graphic organizer for the who, what, when, where, why questions. Available in AppleWorks (with text boxes provided) and in PDF format.
Screenshot below
appleworks download english graphic organizer History Other pdf science writing
Actual Civil War love letters are available at this site. It might be a good way to make the war a little more real. You’ve got the option of having students write their own love letters. They could write letters from specific battles or time periods including relevant SOL facts as a combination exercise with an English class or own your own.
There are images of the letters included.
civil war english History letter primary source writing
BBC - KS2 Revisewise - Homepage
The main review site for the BBC focusing on English, Math and Science. It has some very nice interactive features.
all subjects english Math review science