Weber English

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.

St. Columba's College English department's transition year extended essay assignment is a great project.

Held annually during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools. Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week -- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having "the freedom to read."

With Digication, students can easily publish their work online. A Digication e-Portfolio can be created in less than 5 minutes. Instead of spending time building and managing complex websites, students (and their teachers!) can focus on learning and reflection.

"Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet on Facebook? With social networking the hot topic of the day, a computer science grad student, his advisor and a literature professor teamed up to analyze social interactions in 19th century British novels."

Great lesson plan to coordinate Tu B'Shevat, Arbor Day, environmentalism, and American poetry. Kudos, Kathleen Harsy.

Build your objectives using Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.

"Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We'll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we'll hear from Andrew Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip-hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory."

Great tutorial handouts from Bucks County Community College.

Anglo-Saxon poems translated and read out loud by folks like Seamus Heaney and Billy Collins.

This chart includes Web 2.0 tools to be used with each level of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and hyperlinked to the the tools' websites.

A variety of graphic organizers for various subjects.

Make review games for your interactive white board with Stu's Quiz Boxes.

Paste compiles a list of some of literature's biggest jerks. You know you love to hate them.