In considering resources that I would like to use as an English teacher, I found more material than I would have expected. Of course much of it was useless, but the following three resources provided specific and particularly helpful information that would support a secondary school English class.

One: "Guidelines for Teaching Middle and High Schools Students to Read and Write Well. Six Features of Effective Instruction" by Judith Langer with Elizabeth Close, Janet Angelis, and Paula Preller.

This guideline breaks teaching English to secondary students down into six features and then provides realistic classroom examples that show the applications of the feature.

1. This guideline demonstrates how I think people learn in its focus on providing students with various ways or means of learning a particular skill or acquiring understanding of a topic. The guideline advises presenting vocabulary in separated activities (outside of the reading itself, students work on vocabulary building with a class wiki-dictionary), simulated activities wherein students practice the vocabulary in short text pieces and integrated activities where students begin to apply what they have learned in activities that include the assigned novel. (Langer 4-5)

2. In similar ways, this guideline demonstrates how I think good teachers teach because the authors continually make the point that connections can be demonstrated and reiterated to the students across the unit and almost every day. Connections can be made to other classes (and this is interesting because we were talking in Professor Joshi's class the other day about making connections across classes as it gets the attention of the students when they hear about math in social studies and vice versa), as well as to earlier learning, other units and the students lives outside of the classroom. The other point the author made, one I had not previously considered as part of my qualifications of good teaching, was the idea of using intrusions or unexpected events as teaching opportunities that be connected back to understandings. (Langer 6-7)

3. This guideline demonstrates ways in which students develop competencies in English in that it espouses the benefits of critical thinking using differentiated instruction to reach students in many different ways. The guideline also encourages students to share their work and to work collaboratively to apply learning strategies to reading for the purposes of analysis, interpretation and considering different points of view in their writing. The authors provide ideas on how to scaffold students' development beyond acquisition to idea generation by looking at writing pieces through various lenses or points of view to understanding different ways of reading and writing. (Langer 1-15)

http://cela.albany.edu/publication/brochure/guidelines.pdf

Two: website: Spotlight on Voices and Visions

1. This website supports how I think people learn in that it allows students to explore the lives and works of various American poets, providing links to bios, poets of the same time period, and related articles. The website also has several poems that students can listen to while pictures of the poet are shown. In having the option to explore poetry through various mediums, students have options beyond poetry in books that may seem boring. Also, providing context to the poet's lives and the times in which they wrote allows students a higher understanding of influence and point of view.

2. This website supports how I think good teachers teach because it allows students to try on different poets and poems to have the option of listening to poetry instead of reading it. This allows for a multi-media interactive experience that would be difficult to duplicate with a more standard poetry lesson. The good teaching piece that I took away was allowing for some latitude in both the poetry experience and the choice of poetry as well.

3. The website demonstrates the ways in which students develop competencies in English in that it provides opportunities for students to read poetry, and investigate the life and issues related to the poet in a fully interactive way, providing a full understanding of the political, and social issues related to that poet. Further, the site provides links to information on poetic forms and poetry evaluation.

http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/

Three: A+ Research and Writing

1. This website demonstrates how I think people learn in that it breaks down researching and writing a research paper into manageable and simple steps. I believe that a large assignment like a research paper can be overwhelming to students and this site allows students to break the assignment down and be successful one step at a time. The site provides links to outside sites for convention rules, grammar and spelling tips and others.

2. This website demonstrates how good teachers teach because of the same basic principals. Good teachers should provide research paper writers with any and all tools that will help them become better writers. This scaffolding process provides the support for students to focus on their writing.

3. This site helps students develop the competencies to be effective writers. The site provides graphic organizers, lists of common errors and encourages students to seek outside editing help. All of this will aid students in developing effective writing through redrafting, using primary and secondary sources, citing works, etc.

http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/