Online Resources for English Teachers and their Students

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This page presents some of the many online resources freely available to students and educators that can be used to enhance the teaching and learning of English composition, literature, and creative writing.

Lesson Plans, Rubrics, and Other Tools for Teachers

  1. Teach-nology = Many resources, including lesson plans, rubrics, and educational games that teachers can create online and print for their students.
  2. Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators = Many lesson plans, rubrics, an online quiz creator (for registered users), and other resources for teachers.
  3. EDSITEment Literature and Language Arts Lesson Plans = Many lesson plans for a variety of grades levels.
  4. Education World = Quite a variety of resources for English teachers, including many lesson plans.
  5. Web English Teacher = Links to many good resources for English teachers. 
  6. Internet4Classrooms Middle and High School Language Arts = Links to many useful resources.

Online Books and Other Works of Literature

  1. The American Academy of Poets = Links to many poems, biographical information about poets, and readings by well-known poets.
  2. Illinois State Poetry Society = Includes links to many poems by Illinois writers, along with brief biographies.
  3. The Internet Public Library = Includes thousands of online texts and online newspapers from around the world.
  4. University of Adelaide's E-Books = Hundreds of classic works of literature, formatted to look like traditional books.
  5. Bartleby.com = Provides thousands of online texts, including many reference works. 

Study Guides and Other Literature Resources

  1. PinkMonkey.com = Free Barron's Book Notes and other study guides. Free registration required.
  2. FreeBookNotes.com = Links to many free book summaries and study guides.
  3. The American Collection's American Writing Gateway = Links to Web sites on American writers, evaluated and rated by educators.
  4. The American Collection's U.S. Literary Map Project = A collaborative project providing information submitted by students about American writers.
  5. Shakespeare Navigators = Excellent guides to many of Shakespeare's plays, along with the complete text of A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy.
  6. North Iredell High School's English Resources = Many links to good literature, writing, and grammar resources. ***

Grammar and Writing Guides

  1. Guide to Grammar & Writing = One of the best and most comprehensive online grammar and writing guides.
  2. Guide to Writing a Basic Essay =  A few simple steps to help students write an essay, with many links to additional resources.
  3. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. = The 1918 edition, but still a valuable guide.

Research and Research Paper Resources

  1. Robert Niles' "Finding Data on the Internet" = Many links to good sources of data on the Web.
  2. LibrarySpot = Many good links to information on the Web. 
  3. The Citation Machine = Students type in publication information for sources, and the citation machine puts that information in the proper MLA and APA formats.

Multimedia Literature on the Web

  1. HarperAudio! = Audio files of works by many famous writers, some read by the authors.
  2. Wired for Books = Many audio files of classic and contemporary works of literature, interviews with writers, and audio and video of several Shakespeare plays.
  3. WBUR's The Connection = Archive of an NPR program including discussions of writers and literature.
  4. Favorite Poem Project = Videos of 50 Americans reading and discussing their favorite poems.
  5. Digital Librarian's Audio, Video, Multimedia = Hundreds of links to Web sites with audio and video files.
  6. Writers FM = An online radio station "by writers, for writers."

Online Dictionaries and other Reference Works

  1. Dictionary.com = A good online dictionary and thesaurus, with definitions from Webster's and the American Heritage dictionaries. 
  2. Rhyming Dictionary = Search for rhyming words as well as definitions and many other options.
  3. Acronym Finder = Helps you figure out what all of those letters mean.
  4. Glossary of Poetic Terms = Definitions of many terms associated with poetry.
  5. AltaVista's Translation Site = Translate text or an entire web page into several different languages.

Online Inspiration for Writers

  1. Teen Ink = A magazine and Web site that accepts submissions by writers ages 13-19.
  2. Young Writers Society = An online community for young writers.
  3. Hatch's Plot Bank = Over 2300 plot scenarios for creative writers.
  4. Random Log-line Generator = More plot scenarios to inspire creative writers.
  5. The Imagination Prompt Generator = Randomly presents ideas that can be used as writing prompts.
  6. The Story Starter = Many random story-starter sentences.
  7. Creative Writing Prompts = Hundreds of creative prompts.
  8. CanTeach's Writing Prompts / Journal Topics = Many good topics for journal entries and essays.
  9. Ricliche = "Playfully modified" proverbs that could inspire creative writers.

Fun with Words

  1. Magnetic Poetry = Arrange the words to create poems, without standing in front of your refrigerator.
  2. Hangman = An online version of the word game.
  3. Dailywordsearch.com = A new interactive word-search gave every day.
  4. Live Search Club = A Web site from Microsoft that allows users to win prizes by playing word games.
  5. Shakespeare Insulter = Plenty of insults, Shakespearian style.
  6. Behind the Name: The Etymology and History of First Names = Gives the origin and meaning of many first names.
  7. Popular Baby Names = This resources from the Social Security Administration tracks the distribution and popularity of first names over the years.

Miscellaneous

  1. Book-a-Minute = Ultra-condensed books for when Cliff's Notes are just too long.
  2. Literary Locales = Links to over 1300 photographs of places in the lives and works of famous writers.
  3. Literary Traveler = An online journal with information about famous writers and the places they lived and traveled.
  4. 19th Century Schoolbooks = Presents digitized versions of 140 schoolbooks from the 1800s, many on grammar and writing.
  5. Find a Grave's Authors and Writers = Information about the burial sites of thousands of authors, including photographs of memorials.
  6. Etymologically Speaking = Explanations of the origins of many words.
  7. Brainy Quote = Searchable database of hundreds of quotations, organized by topic and author.

Free Programs with Educational Applications

  1. Word Web = A downloadable dictionary and thesaurus.
  2. PlagiarismDetect.com = A downloadable program for detecting plagiarism from the Web.
  3. Audacity = A downloadable program for recording online audio files.
  4. Bubbl.us = a program for brainstorming.

This page was last updated on March 10, 2009.