56 Resources for English Language Arts Educators

Every English teacher has the opportunity to profoundly impact their students, even if their influence doesn’t always make the news. By fostering a love for writing, speaking, listening, and reading, English educators can open doors to personal discovery and professional success.

English Language Arts is more than just a subject; it’s a toolkit for essential life skills such as critical thinking, effective communication, and personal development. For those in the Rutgers Alternate Route program, teaching is about more than delivering lessons—it's about empowering students to excel in all areas of their lives. These dedicated educators are committed to sharing their innovative strategies and resources, ensuring their students gain the full benefits of a robust English education.
 

56 Resources for English Language Arts Educators

10 Interdisciplinary Teaching Activities
This source has some fun examples of games that can be used for interdisciplinary teaching. It also gives steps to planning interdisciplinary lessons. (Mark K, 9-12)

Achieve 3000
When logging in for the first time, students take a pretest to assess their reading level. Once completed, the site provides them with articles set to their personal reading level and assesses whether they grow, go lower, or stay the same using data collection. (Benjamin R, 9-12)

Amplify.
Amplify is a site with many functions. Amplify can be used to assess students to see where they are, offer general knowledge on core content, and more - I have not discovered everything it offers yet! This is certainly a site to be used to promote student learning. (Beshouy B, 6-8)

AP English Language and Composition Teachers
This is not a specific site, but this Facebook group has been my Bible since I started teaching this course. They have these Facebook groups for every content area. Teachers post numerous assignment ideas along with examples. One thing it has that your typical website doesn't is that you can post a specific question on the pages and tons of teachers will respond willing to help and share resources. And they are FREE unlike how it would be on Teachers Pay Teachers. (Harleen B, 9-12)

Blookit
Creates fun games. (Nicole C, 9-12)

Boddle
This site is a great way to help students practice specific standards in a fun way that they will enjoy. (Izanae C, K-5)

Booksource
You can scan the books in your physical library to make checking out and checking in easy by using a scanner. You can also see which books are out and which books have been out for too long. You can also get prices for books and level books in your library based on reading levels. (Matt A, 6-8)

Building Book Love
This is a very active site, so the owner updates it almost daily! New ideas, lessons, projects, games are always posted so you can step away from a lesson you feel is getting boring or outdated (especially with technology taking over). (Harleen B, 9-12)

California Educators Together
Lesson Plan Ideas. (Danielle D, K-5)

CommonLit
CommonLit has a full library of texts, along with pre-designed units to add to an existing curriculum. One way I am currently using CommonLit is to assess my students' literacy skills; I administered a pre-test in September, which will be followed by a mid-year assessment and post-assessment. CommonLit creates, scores, and analyzes the results of the assessments for you!  (Moira C, 9-12)

Cult of Pedagogy
This site has a lot of very specific ideas for assignments and methods of explanation. It's especially useful in its podcast format, so you can just listen to it as you work or drive. (Aaron Y, 9-12)

The site I listed above offers some advice and tips on starting differentiated instruction. As a novice teacher like me, it was great to see a starter kit to get an idea on what to do in the beginning. (Brian B, 9-12)

Differentiation Strategies: A Teacher's Guide
This site was a generic guide or survey of strategies to use while using differentiation instruction. If you don't like one strategy of doing things, the site offers other ideas. (Brian B, 9-12)

Discovery Education
This site contains interesting content articles from vetted sources that are easily accessible and filterable. There are also valuable interactive tools (the school may have to subscribe to the service) such as live discussions that allow students to type in answers to a question and the teacher can view answers in real time. This adds to class participation, especially for students who don't feel comfortable raising their hand and speaking in front of the class. (Alexandria N, 6-8)

Dr. Caitlin Tucker
We watched a video of her speaking in class and after some research, I found her website. Her blog is very helpful, it has ideas for differentiated lessons as well as professional development courses, and links to her various education books. (Vanessa D, 6-8)

EdPuzzle
EdPuzzle offers a platform for making videos more interactive and instructive without having to print anything out or hand anything out. Students can work at their own pace, and it grades the questions for you. Additionally, there's a ton of content and quizzes already made on the site. (Joshua M, 9-12)

Eduaide.ai
It is an AI program that can create lessons, activities, tests and all sorts of other lesson elements that teachers can use. It can save tons of planning and creating time. At the very least, it can inspire teachers to understand what they can create themselves. (Joseph G, 9-12)

Education Week 
They provide research on current topics/issues in education. it helps educators stay up to date with hot topics (i.e., "the science of reading"). (Michelle S, 6-8; K-5)

Education.com
There are worksheets, lessons, and lesson plans on various ELA topics for my grade level. (Jodie G, 6-8)

Facing History & Ourselves
Facing History has been instrumental in my planning for teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and has tons of resources for addressing similarly difficult texts, subjects, and topics with students of all levels. (Joshua M, 9-12)

Flocabulary
This website uses songs and videos to help students learn different things, mainly grammar. It makes learning fun to cool music. It helps students remember better, pay more attention, and have more fun. It fits all learners and improves teachers' lessons. (Yanique B, 6-8)

Gifted and Talented Teacher
This website has excellent resources (that are a bit on the pricey side) but the "freebie hub" has many free resources ready to be downloaded. Most are related to literacy or numeracy, however, there are also SEL morning meeting cards and so much more. I found that having one or two activities in your back pocket is like a superpower for teaching. I always check here and Teachers Pay Teachers when I need supplemental non-prep activities. (Vanessa D, 6-8)

Goodreads
This site is beneficial to Young Adults because it helps them find books sorted by genre. The site provides information for each book so YA students can browse until they find what they like. (Megan E, 6-8)

Guardian Photo of the Day
Big collection of visuals to use as writing/discussion prompts. (Hugh G, K-5)

How to Teach with an Interdisciplinary Approach
I used this site while researching interdisciplinary teaching.  It explains the usefulness of this instruction style while giving great instruction on how to create a lesson plan that incorporates interdisciplinary teaching. (Mark K, 9-12)

Huff English
Professor Dana Huff has a multitude of resources available on her website. From lesson plan ideas to blog posts about teaching in our new age of technology and so much more. As an English teacher, I have borrowed several of her lesson plans and adapted them to work in my classroom for my students. (Sea L, 9-12) 

Kami
Kami is an online tool designed for document collaboration and annotation. It allows students to annotate, highlight, and comment on various file types, such as PDFs, Word documents, and images. While enabling the teacher to monitor/provide feedback to the student’s work on shared documents in real-time. Additionally, Kami offers many templates for fun, creative learning activities that teachers can download for free. (Yanique B, 6-8)

Learning Ally
Learning Ally has the world's largest audio textbook library with over 80,000 human-narrated books that are audio-only or VOICE text, our unique learning solution that highlights words and sentences as students read. (Brianna M, 6-8)

Membean
Personalized vocabulary instruction that tailors to each student based on results from a diagnostic test. (Brianna G, K-5) 

Minnesota Public Radio Archive Guide
The site offers the only fully audio examination of Indian boarding schools. Listening to these stories has a gravity and weight that no written descriptions can match. (Marc W, 9-12)

Much Ado About Teaching
Much Ado About Teaching contains lesson ideas for language arts classes by two English teachers, Brian Sztabnik and Susan Barber. (Ryan C, 9-12)

Mystery Science
This site is great if you are teaching science as it provides lessons, quizzes, videos, vocab sheets etc. My students have enjoyed many of these lessons. (Daniella R, K-5; 6-8)

Nearpod
Nearpod is a great tool to have an interactive class with the students. They would be able to see the presentation you are teaching in their Chromebook, and it will be live. You can put questions for them to answer and quizzes. It’s an interesting interactive tool and locks their screen to the presentation you are doing. There are also some lessons pre-made depending on the topic. (Claudio P, K-5)

New York State Regents
This has grade-level passages and evidence-based writing. The tests serve as end of year assessments. They also have writing tasks. They have full math, science, and social studies. (Winsome D, 9-12)

Newsela
Newsela is home to a wealth of articles on a wide range of topics. These topics include current events, different holidays/celebrations, works by authors of a specific ethnicity, etc. One of my favorite features is the "Curriculum Complements" tab; I was able to find a few poems by Elizabeth Acevedo, which lend well to my 9th grade unit on the loss of innocence.  (Moira C, 9-12)

NoRedInk
Loaded with interactive lessons and activities. Great for small group work and early finishers.  They have great grammar activities for ELLs. They also have activities that will accompany some novels. (Dianna H, 6-8)

NYT: Lesson Plans & Ideas
I have used this site countless times as well. It has lesson plan ideas and resources for most subjects and tips for teachers. I recently read an article there called "How to Fix Wordy Writing" which I shared with my students whose college essays were way over the word limit. (Sea L, 9-12)

Perris Indian School
The wealth of letters that were written by boarding school students but never mailed contain a sadness and speak of the deception and callousness of the education endeavor as presented to Indigenous people. (Marc W, 9-12)

Planbook Blog
Planbook Blog discusses big-picture approaches to teaching literature in the modern world. (It's not for granular content strategies, but more along the lines of the author's philosophy of teaching ELA.) (Ryan C, 9-12)

Prodigy
Helps students improve both math and reading skills in fun, exciting and interactive ways. (Brianna G, K-5) 

Purdue Online Writing Lab
This has resources for all stages of the writing process for academic writing. (Winsome D, 9-12)

Read Me A Story
This site has very short stories that I use as a whole text, or I take a section of one for a close reading. (Hugh G, K-5) 

Read Write Think
It provides lessons that are standards-aligned with rationale, resources, and pacing recommendations to help you teach a specific skill with little frustration. It also has great graphic organizers to assist with any literacy lesson. (Michelle S, 6-8; K-5) 

Reading A to Z
Reading A-Z offers various teaching materials for phonics programs, shared reading books, reader's theater scripts, fluency passages, and assessment tools for all levels of students. (Nandani G, K-5)

Reading Rockets
It provides research-based strategies and best practice information for educators that teachers could use to help our readers become more proficient and confident. (Nandani G, K-5)

Readworks
ReadWorks is a free website offering research-based strategies and resources for differentiated reading instruction, specifically comprehension. (Brianna M, 6-8)

Scholastic Teachers
Resources for teachers: lesson plans, teaching strategies, and professional development tools. The site provides materials specifically tailored to different grade levels. Also, features articles, book lists, and classroom activities that improve ELA instruction. (Fernand M, 6-8)

Sparknotes
In the same mindset as AI and Wikipedia, I believe we as teachers must show students how they can have access to these tools rather than them discovering it on their own. By introducing Sparknotes as a reading guide, I hope to instill in students the need for both reading, as well as review (done via sparknotes summaries). (Jake F, 6-8)

Study.com
Offers curricula in reference to state standards, lesson topics have varying skill levels to foster differentiation, and comprehensive study guides for classic literature to make books more approachable for students. (Eric P, 9-12)

Teachers Pay Teachers
TPTs has a lot of elementary education ELA and math worksheets, PowerPoints, games/activities and more that are either free for download or cost a low price which directly pays the teacher that created/uploaded the resource. (Vivian M, K-5)

TEDEd
TEDEd has a variety of topics that can teach students using a video source. I use this specific resource when teaching students about irony when starting our Suspense unit. (Megan E, 6-8)

Toppsta
Toppsta has book reviews for all kinds of children's books with both video and written reviews but also give you suggestions if you like a certain book for what you should read next. This resource helps teachers find similar texts to use for comparing analysis. (Matt A, 6-8)

Twine
Having a running list of different resources is always helpful and I often find myself scrolling through and seeing what options I have available to me during my lunch period. (Jake F, 6-8)

Twinkl
Like Teachers Pay Teachers, Twinkl has many elementary education resources. I got many ELA fast finishers and extra practice sheets for my students off this site. (Vivian M, K-5)

YouTube
I know. I know. But this is where I go to seek useful info. I tend toward some channels more than others, and often visit multiple videos on the same subject. It truly is my other main go-to website. (Aaron Y, 9-12)
 

If you’re considering following your dream of teaching, Rutgers Alternate Route can offer you the support and training you need to succeed. Be sure to follow Rutgers Alternate Route on Twitter and sign up for Alternate Route’s monthly newsletter for more information and stories from the field of education.