A Couple of Useful Writing Resources

A Couple of Useful Writing Resources

As we head into Super Bowl weekend, I couldn't help noticing what they served for lunch at BHS today! Go Patriots!

I wanted to share a couple of writing resources that I learned about on Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers Blog:

The first resource is Common Lit, a collection of free texts for upper elementary and middle schools classrooms which are organized thematically. Here's an overview from the Common Litwebsite:

  • * Teachers identify texts that students love to discuss;
  • * We negotiate with the copyright holders;
  • * We identify the Lexile reading level;
  • * We organize the texts by theme so teachers can use them in their lessons;
  • * We put everything online for free.
  • * Teachers know their students best. That's why we created a flexible resource that works with whatever you're already teaching.

The second digital tool is Citebite a neat little tool that allows teachers to share excerpts from websites with their students through a direct link. The cool part about it is that the link will share the entire article with the excerpt chosen by the teacher highlighted.

For an example, Check out my Citebite from a great article on Edutopia's site discussing the value of a teacher's time by Jose Vilson.

cross-posted at www.patrickmlarkin.com

Patrick Larkin is the Assistant Superintendent for Learning of Burlington Public Schools in Burlington, MA and the former principal of Burlington High. He blogs about education at www.patrickmlarkin.com.