HC English Department

It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism. Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students - who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking - understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

Writing Fix's 6 Traits website.

A daily word, its definition, and an example of its usage in a recent Times article.

Wordnik's goal is to show you as much information as possible, as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.

We offer these resources on, and related to, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" hoping they might help your students appreciate Mr. Nobody from Nowhere and hear the money in Daisy's voice.

Texting, blogging, and online chat can build core literacy skills and confidence in writing abilities, according to this study. 

StageofLife.com thinks the answer to this phenomenon lies not in pushing against new social media, but rather embracing it: by encouraging high school students to blog. StageofLife.com is a website for the generation growing up with social media embedded into their daily lives to meet, share stories, and learn about those in their generation and other stages of life. It is an educational resource as well, offering lesson plans and contest ideas to educators. One of the most recent creative writing lesson plans is quite innovative: its goal is to break students out of the restrictive environment of 140-character word limits while at the same time promote the use of social media in the classroom. StageofLife.com believes that blogging and other social media is an integral part of the lives of current high school students, and should be incorporated into English classes around the country.

Wiki from Jeremy and Dan's Writing is Thinking ETTC course.

This guide is written for teachers and students who are studying Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The guide is written specifically for students in the UK, but I hope it may be helpful to users from other parts of the world. To Kill a Mockingbird is a set text for GCSE exams in English literature. It may also be studied for teacher-assessed coursework in English in Key Stages 3 and 4 (GCSE reading

This site contains a teacher's guide, reader's guide, and an audio discussion (featuring Horton Foote and Sandra Day O'Connor). It's from the National Endowment for the Arts

Audio testimonials about writing from teachers and famous writers.

NewsTrust has created a set of teacher guides that will help you teach your students the difference between good and bad journalism. These guides include interactive lesson plans for college and high school classes in journalism, civics, social studies, communications and more

An examination of the impact of digital tools on society 

The NY Times celebrates the 50th Anniversary with lesson plans and resources.

It's time to stop pretending that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated, as pristinely preserved in its pages as the dinosaur DNA in "Jurassic Park."

Without question, Tom Robinson would be better off today. In fact, Tom Robinson could live a life completely unimaginable and unrecognizable to the characters in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" - the groundbreaking book, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week.  No lynchings.  No all white male juries.  No presumption of guilt based on skin color.  No state-sanctioned discrimination. Yet, Tom would realize a sad, but undeniable truth -- that racism is still alive and all too well in contemporary America.  He would know it in the economic injustice that has left a disproportionate number of African-Americans -- 25 percent -- living in poverty.   He would see it in the criminal injustice that has left a disproportionate number of African-American men - 6 times the number of white, non-Hispanic men -- living in jails and prisons.  And he would feel it in the hate-filled, racist rhetoric that still defines too much of our political discourse - rhetoric that questions the Civil Rights Act, rhetoric that questions the birthplace of our President.

Arthur Levine has spent much of his career writing about how tough it is for poor minority kids to get into college. But rarely has this widely respected educator and former president of Teachers College at Columbia University written more urgently than in his latest book, Unequal Fortunes.It was a journey that took him back to his childhood in the South Bronx to figure out why he made it and why most kids living there now don't. "My hope is that this book shows this community is isolated not by choice but by circumstance, and I hope that it shows that the community is a dangerous one to live in. It's hard to blame them for conditions like that," Levine says.Unlike so many of Levine's books, Unequal Fortunes is not just about failed institutions and policies. It's more of a plea for readers to peer into poor children's harrowing lives and become advocates for what Levine calls a Schindler's List kind of change - maybe not to save all children but to rescue as many as possible.

Interesting story (wth pictures) about subway murals in Moscow that depict scenes from Crime and Punishment. 

Language Arts homepage of Greece (NY) Central School District.