Helpful+links

Here are links to Web sites I discussed in class that students can use as educational aides.

Common Core State Standards - The Common Core State Standards were created by the National Governors Association (NGA) for Best Practices and are maintained by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Despite what you may have heard, the CCSS were actually a state initiative instead of a federal one. The goal of the CCSS is to improve the education of America students and make them college and career ready. The CCSS will require students to come to class prepared to work with homework assignments. Learning will be more project based. Multiple-choice, true/false, and matching are going away. One presenter I have worked with makes this analogy: "We have been waterskiing on the surface, and now we are going to scuba dive." CCSS will require students to dig deeper, think critically, think analytically, and support their thoughts with evidence from the text. CCSS is task driven instead of test driven. Therefore, most of our grades will be activity based. Students will be expected to collaborate with their peers. They must be willing to talk to one another. Socratic Seminars will be worth a 100 point grade, and if a student comes in without notes (which are required) it is an automatic F because they did not come prepared. Without notes a student will not be allowed to participate. If a student has notes, but does not talk, the highest grade they can receive will be a D per the rubric. Sometimes they will work alone, but they will be working in pairs, small groups, or as the whole class more often. Therefore, it is incredibly important that they read anything that is assigned and annotate it before they arrive at class. We will be working with the texts in class. This is a fundamental part of being prepared, and it is just as important as coming to class with a pen, paper, the English II binder, and our textbook.

ACT Aspire - Starting in 2015-2016, students began taking the ACT Aspire, which replaces the Benchmark and PARCC Exams. This link provides resources to help prepare for the ACT Aspire and the ACT. We will also be using ACT Aspire materials for formative assessments (a.k.a. Target Testing) this year instead of TLI, which we used in the past.

Essays are required on the exams. Students may not bullet point or use four square or any other strategies the Benchmark allowed. ACT Aspire wants to see the students compose essay responses. The required writing will be either narrative, narrative with dialogue, or argumentative. Students need to realize argumentative means that a claim supported by evidence is required, and the essay should also include a deconstruction of the counterclaim (the opposing view) supported by evidence. This evidence must be cited properly. We will be working with citation of sources all year long. I will be introducing MLA citation early in the year. The Purdue OWL site (farther down this list) will provide resources to help students with learning this important skill.

The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) - The Purdue University Online Writing Lab offers help on a variety of grammar issues, writing MLA and APA (methods for citing information in text) papers, and strategies to avoid plagiarism.

Citation Machine is a site for help with MLA Citations and Works Cited.

Easybib is another site that can be used to create MLA format documents.

eSchool HAC - eSchool Home Access Center is where parents can login to view student grades and notes from teachers. It has taken the place of our old Edline system.

Project Gutenberg - This site contains links to free electronic copies of numerous books. **Most** of the books can be printed off if students would like to have a printed copy they can annotate, but cannot afford to go to the bookstore to purchase a copy. The books can also be downloaded to electronic devices (such as a Kindle, iPod touch devices, Android phones, some mp3 players, etc.).

I say **most of the books are free to print off** because there are a few that are not. If the copyright on the work has not expired, it will be noted on the eBook. Books which have expired copyrights are known as public domain works. Therefore, those works are free.

Students can also use this site to print specific passages from books we read in class to make notes in preparation for Socratic Seminars. Notes about the text and specific examples from it are required to receive an A on a Socratic Seminar discussion.

The Internet Archive provides free access to online books, live music recordings, and videos. You can also find audio recordings of short stories and books here for those who have difficulty with reading.

LibriVox is a project to record public domain works. Volunteers offer to read sections of books or stories. Information on working with the project can be found at the site, as well as numerous audio recordings of literary works.

Bloom's Taxonomy Revised - Bloom's Taxonomy is a measure of learning used by educators. Recently it was revised. I provide this link so you can see the higher order thinking skills students are expected to be able to perform. Education is no longer simply about memorizing facts. Students are expected to function at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy more often than not. This site gives verbs related to each level of Bloom's to aid in comprehension of it. Note: Part of this information was culled from British sources, therefore there are alternative spellings present (For example: recognise).