Return To W. Vande Kopple's Home Page

Useful Websites For Student Teachers

All of these sites are not equally useful, and only some of them appear here with commentary. Those that do appear here, however, do so because at one point or another a Calvin College student found them useful in his or her work and recommended them to others.


AUTHORS AND SUBJECT MATTERS

Chinua Achebe

The Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
A national forum for discussing the teaching of grammar

Electronic Beowulf
A guide to studies of Beowulf

The Lewis Carroll Homepage

Chaucer Metapage
Help with Chaucer resources on the WWW

Chiasmus.com
Care to invite your students to try their hands at this interesting figure of speech?

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
Promoting racial tolerance

The Dickens Project of the University of California
A premier center for Dickens studies in the world

Ralph Ellison

Funster
Some word games

Grammar Bytes
Index of terms, exercises, handouts, and rules

Grammar Gorillas
Games involving parts of speech

Heart of Darkness
R. Rozema's web quest on the novel

Ernest Hemingway

Jack London's Ranch Album

Magnetic Poetry
Move the "magnetic tiles" and create your own version of famous poems.

Medieval Resources
Links to sources of information about the Medieval Period

Medieval Studies in the Schools

Misheard Lyrics
Can you find ways to have some fun with mondegreens?

Modern American Poetry
Information on at least 161 modern American poets

Online Poetry Classroom
Unit plans and lesson plans on poetry

The Poem Machine
Help in creating poems

Poetry Teachers.com
To help inspire a love of poetry in students

Postcolonial Studies
A website from Emory University on postcolonial studies

Chaim Potok

The Harry Potter Lexicon
Steve Vander Ark's very frequently visited site, devoted to Harry Potter

Puzzlemaker
An excellent resource for making word searches, crossword puzzles, and other kinds of puzzles

Reformation and Renaissance Studies

William Shakespeare

John Steinbeck

Mark Twain
Peter Salwen's Mark Twain Page

Word Search Factory
Help in making word searches

Wordsmith.org
To build your vocabulary


Curricular and Pedagogical Materials

 

The Bridge
Possibilities for publishing by students

BritLit
A British Council project aimed to help secondary-school teachers use British literature.

Class Act
Various tools for teachers of English

Developing Educational Standards
Educational standards for English and the language arts

Discipline.help
Advice about challenges with discipline and management

Edsitement
A guide from NEH to the humanities

Educator Resources
Many resources in the language arts provided by McRel

English Units
Teaching units classed by educational units

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English and Communication
Educational materials for all those interested in the language arts

ESLOOP
Lessons for ESL settings

The Gateway to Educational Materials
Access to lesson plans and curriculum units

High School Hub
A reference collection and subject guides

Homework Central
A large site for help with online research

Inkspot
A resource for writers of all ages and levels of experience

Michigan Council of Teachers of English

MiddleWeb
Resources for middle schools

The National Council of Teachers of English
Information about books, journals, conventions, and teaching ideas for teachers of English and the language arts

North American Christian Foreign Language Association

Poetry Society of America
Many different resources from the PSA

Professional Links
Many links of interest to English educators

The Reading Matrix
Online resources about reading

Recommended Literature
Recommendations, K-12, from the California Department of Education

Spark Notes
Study guides and reference tools

Web66
Includes an international registry of schools on the Web

Words Can Heal
Should your students learn about this initiative?

Young Learners
EFL/ESL resources for young learners


ENGLISH EDUCATORS

Chad Engbers's Homepage
My colleague Chad Engbers has very useful material on prosody.

English Companion
Jim Burke, the author of The English Companion, provides links to many sites of interest to English teachers

Suzanne Linder's Hompage
Descriptions of her courses at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School and many additional interesting links.

Rhetoricians' Homepages
A list of hompages for several well-known rhetoricians

Robert Rozema's "English Ed. on the Web"
Ideas for using web-based technology in language-arts classrooms

Karl Swedberg's Homepage
Karl has spoken to our seminar for student teachers on several occasions, and his homepage includes links to many sites useful to teachers of English

Leah Zuidema
Leah is compiling a bibliography of Christian apporaches to rhetoric and composition.


REFERENCE

Amazing Picture Machine
Pictures, maps, and other visual resources

American Library Association
See especially the challenged and banned books.

Bibliomania
On-line texts of classic works, along with study guides

Biographical Dictionary
Information on more than 28,000 people.

The CCCC Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric, 1984-1999

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature

Cinemachine
The Movie Review Search Engine

FindSame.com
A tool for detecting plagerism

Glossary of Literary Terms
Perhaps of use in preparation for Calvin's screening exam

Glossary of Literary Terms and a Handbook of Rhetorical Devices
Allows you to search for definitions of terms that you are not clear about

Glossary of Poetic Terms
Several different kinds of help for the study of poetry

Library of Congress

NewsDirectory.com
Links to thousands of newspapers

Project Gutenberg
Books online

Refdesk.com
A gateway to hundreds of reference works

SchoolStaff.com
Job openings in education

Statistics Every Writer Should Know
Help with all sorts of statistics

YourDictionary.com
Links to online dictionaries

RDN Virtual Training Site
Tutorials for the internet

WebMuseum
Collections of artworks