Useful Links
Categories: Useful Links, Ideas
English Examination Boards
Help with Set Texts and Literary Greats
Chaucer
A very useful site with translations and a concordance.
Luminarium Anthology of English Literature
Luminarium Encyclopaedia is a project begun in 2001 to provide historical contexts for the people, places, events and literature from the Medieval period through Chaucer, Tudor England, the Metaphysical poets to the Restoration. A lovely site.
Shakespeare
BBC 60 Second Shakespeare (clips)
A collection of clips of amateur productions of Shakespeare’s plays which last no more than 60 seconds, with guidance on how to create your own.
Royal Shakespeare Company (Explore)
‘Explore’ is a lovely page from the Royal Shakespeare Society site which explores all things Shakespeare. A link leads to further classroom resources.
A resource for all ages to all things Shakespeare.
Whilst this site has many other resources, the concordance is easy to use. Helpful if looking at themes and language within a text, or links between all the plays by language and theme.
Victorian
A must for anyone studying or teaching Victorian texts.
The Victorian Literary Archive Hyper-Concordance
A resource for exploring most Victorian texts by key words.
World War One
This site’s main focus in the poetry of WW1.
A multi-media history of World War One with links to literature; both prose and poetry.
Media Resources
BFI (British Film Institution)
To use their own words: BFI is the British Film Institute. Our world-renowned archive, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you. They have links to educational resources and the site is glossy, slick and useful.
Film Education is supported by the British film industry as a charity which promotes and supports the use of film in the curriculum. It provides educational resources which have become even more relevant to English teaching with changes in the GCSE requirements for some specifications.
A long-standing, well stocked resource site designed for GCSE and A level Media Studies, also useful for GCSE English and GCSE English Language media work at KS4 and KS3.
Government Sites
Some of these sites are no longer being added to and many will be reviewed following the last general election. Currently all the materials are still available, with the warning that they may not reflect current government policy.
This is the ‘old’ site, but currently still extent. It is a difficult site to negotiate, but there is a plethora of extremely useful material on the site, as well as it being a good source of information and resources for most of the current teaching initiatives. To help negotiate this useful, but frustrating site, a list of links to specifically useful materials is given below.
This is well worth a browse as it will lead to some useful resources, including improving the reading and writing of KS3 students. It is also useful for subject coordinators, or Departments writing schemes of work. To help find the most useful resources it can be better to browse the list of all publications, which can be found here: http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/search/secondary/results/nav:49967
The British Library Learning: Literature and Language
An invaluable resource for teachers of A Level Language, this site offers access to educational resources that will be a great help in exploring the Language Change and Accents and Dialect. Teachers of Literature will also find a link to facsimiles of great texts.
Another useful British Library site for both teachers of Literature and Language at A level is Treasures in Full: which offers access to complete editions over time of great texts.
KS3 Assessing Pupils’ Progress – Useful Pages on the Standards Site
KS3 and KS4 English Learning Objectives
This site links the objectives with relevant assessment focuses and levels.
KS3 – Assessing Pupil’s Progress Optional Tasks
A full set of the KS3 Optional Tests with Teacher’s guides. Everything you need to teach, set and grade them.
KS3 Writing Assessment Focuses
KS3 Reading Assessment Focuses
KS3 Speaking and Listening Assessment Focuses
KS3 – Assessing Pupil’s Progress Standard Files (exemplars)
KS3 - Improving the teaching of Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening
DFE (Department for Education)
The new site which is intended to replace the Standards Site (DFES) above. The gateway to all things educational legislated for by the Government in education. It is aimed at both parents and teachers. As yet it is not a particularly well developed site.
NCA (National Curriculum Website)
The site contains a limited number of teaching materials such as teaching modules for Shakespeare at KS3, and links to help you develop assessment, but its main function is a link to the KS3 and KS4 Programmes of Study and Level descriptors.
An under-used, but extremely useful Government sponsored site which has grown over the years to offer a lot to classroom teachers and Subject Leaders. It not only supplies short videos and resources to help raise your own skills, but some very useful teaching resources, including videos that can be used in the classroom. Come here for teaching resources by all means, but also information about new initiatives, new teaching methods and how to deal with many problems you may face in the classroom.
A Government maintained site of teaching resources and a plethora of resources and information about all the issues and concerns involved in teaching and being a teacher. Want to know about threshold payments? Need some ICT based resources for your subject? Try here.
Publishers
Publishers’ sites sometimes offer free teaching resources for both the Literature and non-fiction to accompany the text s that they produce. In some cases they are available to all; in others you will need to have registered the purchases of a set of texts.
Heinemann , Longman and BBC Active are now part of this publishing group.
E-texts for Older Literature
Probably the most comprehensive collection of online texts of all types, and audio books. However, the format of texts means they cannot be searched.
University of Pennsylvania’s Online Book Page
A bland page, but type in a text author or name and find a copy of what you need.
This site offers the welcome ability to join texts in the middle of a chapter, rather than trawling the whole text looking for the part you need.
Small but select collection. Easy to navigate and not just literature.
Not every poem you will want is on here, but nonetheless, quite a few will be.
Links to more than just e-texts. Well worth a browse when teaching poetry.
The English Association Poetry Portal
More than just a place to find poems.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Each text is nicely broken down into scenes for easy searching.
The World Wide Web Virtual Library
Links to all things theatrical on the Web, including e-texts.
With careful selection, KS3 drama schemes can be enlivened with the study of short plays. The one act play based upon Macbeth and Hamlet can work as a model for students to create their own. What might they decide is significant to include?
Other
English Language SFX by Dan Clayton
An excellent blog for English Language A Level students.
Lancaster University’s list of A English Language websites.
A free, long-standing, proven revision site for GCSE and A Level students of both Literature, Language, and Media. Comes highly recommended.
eMagazine is a quarterly subscription magazine, with website for A Level students of English subjects.
GCSE 2010, English and Media Centre Blog
A useful site which explains and compares the requirements of the new GCSE specifications.
Grammar Knowledge For Teachers
Created by Richard Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London, this is an extremely useful site for all English teachers who need to refresh their knowledge of grammar.
A very useful site, in English, of links which was created for advanced Swiss English language learners who are studying Modern Literature written in the English Language. The links lead to varied and useful background materials which help place the texts in their cultural, historical or social context (AO4). Some of the modern Literature texts listed on current UK Specifications are covered on this accessible and user-friendly site.
A vibrant, useful resource aimed at bringing poetry into children’s’ lives and schools that no teacher who loves poetry should ignore, especially at KS3.
The site which showcases the current children’s laureate. It varies from year to year, depending on who the current Laureate is, but worth looking at for KS3 teachers as it links to all the previous Laureate’s, some of whom are ideal for KS3 teachers.
This site is a MUST for KS3 teachers of poetry. Michael Rosen has created an exceptional resource with video tips for poetry writing, a site for students to upload their poems onto, and much, much more. A star site!
Useful for A level Language and language studies at KS3.
You can subscribe to various parts of this resource for free, but the online dictionary is subscription only. Do not despair though – most libraries have access to this for members, so as long as your students have a current library card, they will be able to access the dictionary through their Library site. Make it a requirement that your students join their library and away you go! Library members also have access to a variety of other online reference material which may help their homework.
Language students can sign up for a daily email which sends them a word a day, or use this as a research tool when studying lexis and semantics.
An excellent, free tool for teachers and students. Put a text extract into it and it collapses the texts and sorts it in several useful ways. Very helpful if planning a close study of the vocabulary in a Literary extract, or studying sentence types.
Useful for A level Literature as it provides links to many modern and classic authors. Also a good site to recommend to students who are genuinely interested in modern literature.
Resources and support for English Language teachers.
Teachers TV - English (Secondary)
Through engaging videos, practical resources and an active online community, Teachers TV is a channel and website which supports the professional development of anyone working in school, enabling them to widen their skills, develop their practice, and connect with others in the field.
THE BBC
The gateway to a plethora of resources and advice.
The gateway to interactive and useful online sites. Follow the link Class Clips to some wonderful short video clips for use in the classroom.
Better suited to middle and upper band students, this is a revision site which offers guidance, notes and work closely targeted at the examinations for KS3, GCSE and A Level Literature and Language.
Extremely useful and engaging media resources to help with context for texts from different periods.
Whilst no longer updated, this an excellent site for teachers of Language Change and Accents and Dialects for A Level Language with links to useful resources.
The sound recordings and dialect map for British Accent and Dialects may be accessed here: The Voices Recordings.
Functional Skills
The DFES’s resources and information regarding functional skills. This page will eventually be replaced by the new DFE site.
Adult Basic Skills Resource Centre
With the introduction of functional Skills, this well stocked private resource from a teacher at Abingdon and Witney College, will provide useful ideas and resources for the students entered at Level 1.
KS3 SEN
The United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) is a registered charity, which has as its sole object the advancement of education in literacy.
Resources and ideas to help with your lowest ability class.
Free interactive primary resources that are excellent for KS3 SEN students. It has 206 free educational interactive resources, 30 free to use fun games and 120 plus links to free interactive, image and software resources. Superb.
A private website of resources targeted at spelling weaknesses with a plethora of resources. It looks amateurish, but the resources are definitely not!
