Language Arts, Literature
and Spelling Resources

Here are some collections of online resources for language arts, literature, and spelling that you can use with your students. They are organized by category; resources are alphabetized within each category.

• Language Arts and Literature
  These resources run the gamut from childhood literacy, to Shakespeare, to literary criticism.

• Spelling
  You'll find lots of spelling rules, tips and suggestions.

Language Arts and Literature

• American Book Fair
  This project provides a global audience for book reviews by students for students. Read student book reviews, organized alphabetically by author's last name, including reviews on Avi's Nothing But the Truth, Crichton's Congo, and Lowry's The Giver, or choose a favorite title of your own.
• Children's Literature Web Guide
  The Children's Literature Web Guide is an attempt to gather together and categorize the growing number of Internet resources related to books for Children and Young Adults.
• Codes Lesson Plan from Phoenix, Arizona
  This lesson is applicable for limited literacy students. It shows students various homes in the states of repair/disrepair. It links a number of Phoenix City Housing Codes to the pictures of the homes. The student practices grammar, language functions, writing, reading, and speaking skills at the four levels (pre-literacy, beginning, intermediate, and advanced) within the lesson and worksheet.
• Diary Project
  This project is essentially journal writing online. Its inspiration evolved from the book "Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo", in which Zlata Filipovic shares her thoughts and feelings as a young girl growing up in Sarajevo. Students are invited to "share their thoughts, hopes, dreams, questions, and ideas with other young people throughout the world via the Internet". Browse the diary by subject and explore areas such as drugs, tolerance, point of view, school, family, loss, racism, violence, stress, relationships, friends, and parents. Entries can be submitted anonymously or by name.
• Doucette Index to K-12 Teaching Ideas for Literature
  The Doucette Index provides access to books and websites that contain useful teaching suggestions related to books for children and young adults, and the creators of those books. The books indexed are those held by the Doucette Library of Teaching Resources, but many of these books will also be available in other libraries.
• Edhelper.com
  Contains lesson plans and worksheets for spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and a new phonics section with printables and worksheets.
• English/Language Arts Activities
  A nice collection of activities including reading lesson plans, writing assignments, spelling games, novel projects, and much more.
• Harnessing Technology to Serve Adult Literacy
  The Harnessing TechnologyWeb pages help adult literacy education (ABE/GED/ESL/ESOL) teachers and learners to use computers, television, audio and video cassettes, and other electronic technology to help solve learning and instructional problems.
• Huckleberry Finn
  Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn: Text, Illustrations, and Early Reviews. By Virginia Cope and the University of Virginia Library. Contains links to other works of Mark Twain.
• Internet Public Library Online Literary Criticism Collection
  The IPL Online Literary Criticism Collection contains critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period.
• Kindergarten Language Arts Resources
  From the Viking Treasure Chest of Technology Resources, this page contains resources appropriate for kindergarten and early literacy. It is aligned with the Ohio Content Standards and contains resources for phonemic awareness, word recognition, reading applications, and writing processes, to name a few. Check this site periodically as new resources are added.
• Library-in-the-Sky
  NWREL's Language Arts Department contains links to 24 Web sites with lesson plan materials for language arts.
• Literary History
  Developed by Jan Pridmore, the heart of this Web guide for readers, students, and Literaryhistory.com is a selective index to free scholarly and critical articles on the internet, covering the major English and American authors in 19th and 20th century, with over 7,000 screened citations. The site is edited by Jan Pridmore, M.A., and has been online since 1998.
• My Hero: an interactive writing project
  My hero is produced by the Fund for Innovative TV, in which real life heroes are honored and written about by students across the online world. Students can make submissions about their heroes, whether they be family members, teachers, friends, current public figures, or historical figures. Submissions can include text, audio, and graphics. Visit the Teacher Hero section for a refreshing look at how educators are serving as true role models for our students.
• National Council for Teachers of English
  This site is currently under construction, so the "Teaching Ideas" section is temporarily available. Content changes frequently. Check the American Literature Resources section for some good links. There are also some good articles in the online journal: CoverWeb Technology and the Face of Language Arts in the K-12 Classroom.
• The Online Books Page
  This page, maintained and frequently updated by John Ockerbloom of the University of Pennsylvania library, is nearly ten years old and contains a wealth of links to online books. The New Listings page lists the titles of online books that have recently been added to the index, or whose entries have been recently revised. Best of all, it may be viewed with ANY browser.
• OWL: Online Writing Lab
  If you are not quite sure where to place that comma, be sure to check out this site. Purdue University created the Online Writing Lab (OWL) to help students of all ages with their grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Each section or lesson on the site has both a printer-friendly version and a .pdf file to make it easy to create handouts for your students.
• Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg posts the complete texts of books that are in the public domain. This extensive, searchable online library consists of almost 10,000 titles.
• Seussville
  Dr. Seuss has helped generations of Americans learn how to read. The NEA has honored him by making the Cat in the Hat the official mascot for Read Across America. This Dr. Seuss Web site, which is free and open to kids at all ages, features interactive Shockwave games, a monthly Dr. Seuss trivia contest with prizes, a calendar of Seuss events, a catalog of books, videos, and CD-ROMs with all the familiar Seuss characters, and puzzles based on Dr. Seuss characters.
• Study Guides
  Developed by Joseph Landsberger and housed at the University of St. Thomas, this extensive site has sections for reading skills, vocabulary development, writing skills, oral presentation skills, preparing for tests, and many more valuable resources for students of all ages.
• Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus
  This is a basic, integrated English Dictionary and Thesaurus in electronic form.

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Spelling

• American English Spelling
  Tips and strategies from Joe Landsberger. This is part of a larger Web site titled Study Guides and Strategies, housed at the University of St. Thomas.
• Complete List of Spelling Rules for Nouns and Verbs
  By Susan Jones. At this Web site, you will find a list of rules for irregular plural formation of nouns, a list of irregular nouns showing singular and plural, and a list of rules for irregular spelling of verb inflections.
• Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation
  Some useful handouts from the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
• Spelling Rules
  • A Few Spelling Rules
  • English Irregular Plural Nouns
  • Four Basic Spelling Rules
  • the Present Progressive Spelling Changes
  • Spelling Rules

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