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Classroom Technologies
15 Online Resources That Help Improve Essay-Writing Skills
Throughout the journey from kindergarten to 12th grade,
students are supposed to gain appropriate vocabulary and grammar skills that
need to be successfully implemented into essay writing. Here are some effective
online tools that can help you make the art of essay writing more attractive
for your students.
This page is a great source of interactive tools that
help students accomplish various goals, from organizing their thoughts to
learning about different aspects of the English language. Some of the most
popular tools for grades K-12 include Story Map, Persuasion Map, Word Family
Sort, Acrostic Poems, Trading Card Generator and Comic Creator. You can choose
different tools based on the grade level, capabilities, student interactive
type, theme, and learning objective.
This website serves as a resourceful guide to English
language arts topics. You can find educational, interactive games and
simulations for grades K-5 in the categories of grammar, compound words,
capitalization, phonemes and words, punctuation, poetry, reading and sight
words, parts of speech, writing and rhyming. These activities work well with an
interactive whiteboard. However, you can also recommend them for individual
learning at home.
Young students can hardly manage all the ideas they get
if you leave them in front of a piece of paper and saying they should write an
essay right away. The process requires pre-writing stages, where these graphic
organizers will be of great help. Your students can use them as a way of
putting their ideas and notes in order. Then, the actual writing stage will be
much more focused.
This website may not be that appealing in terms of
design, but it’s a great base of resources that will help you become a better
teacher. This is actually a collection of awesome articles related to writing.
Every educator should spend time examining these resources as they progress
through different teaching methods.
Time4Writing.com is mostly known for the eight-week
online writing courses it offers. However, the website is also a great source
of free resources in seven categories: teaching writing, writing skills,
writing sentences, writing paragraphs, writing mechanics, writing essays and
standardized-test writing.
This website offers comprehensive lessons on all aspects
of English grammar and writing. You will easily locate all materials you need
in the Index, which includes links to all resources of the Guide to Grammar and
Writing, as well as Principles of Composition. This online source is like the
grammar textbook you always wished to have. Now you can use it to make the
lectures more accessible for your students.
7. Essay Mama
This is an online agency that offers professional
assistance to students who need advice with essay writing. The company has
hired PhD tutors from various areas of study, so its users can get reliable
help regarding the topic they need. The blog section at this website is worthy
of a bookmark, since it’s a great source of inspiration, news and tips on
school writing. The glossary of essay terms and essay writing guide are
efficient tools that will make the process easier. In addition, your students
can enter writing contests at the same website.
8. Essay Punch
Essay Punch is an interactive, online, essay-writing
tutorial that takes students through all stages of the academic writing
process. The guidance it offers is based on pre-set writing prompts and
interactive exercises for the pre-writing, organizing, writing, editing and
publishing stages.
9. Teen Ink
This well-established magazine publishes high-quality
essays and other written forms created by students. The categories at the
website include nonfiction, poetry and fiction. There is no need to subscribe
to the monthly print magazine; all you need to do is recommend the website as a
source of inspiration. You can select some of the featured essays and read them
in class in order to show great samples of academic content.
10. Thesis Builder
Your students will love this tool! Since they are always
struggling to come up with a believable thesis statement, you can recommend the
Thesis Builder, an automatic engine that launches a statement based upon the
topic, opinions and supporting arguments the users provide in the form. Once
they get the thesis, your students can proceed with the creation of an outline
without looking for another online tool.
11. Novel
Guide
This website offers plot summaries and discussions on
some of the most notable novels ever written. Needless to say, you should warn
your students about plagiarism issues; make sure to instruct them to use the
content solely as an addition to their studying materials.
12. Hemingway Editor
There is a rule about long, complex sentences: You can
only use them if you know how. K-12 students rarely manage to handle complex
sentence structure, but they still want to impress you with big words and
endless arguments. When you want to emphasize the importance of clarity, use
Hemingway as an example. This tool will highlight the common errors and long
sentences that need corrections.
This tool tests the readability of a piece of writing
according to a set of commonly used indicators. You can recommend it to your
students as an editing aid that will help them improve the readability of their
work before they submit it to you.
14. WordCounter
When you assign a specific word count for a piece of
writing, you want your students to respect it. This tool will help them achieve
that goal. It will not only provide them with a correct number of words in
their essays, but will also enable them to locate repetitive words and phrases.
15. Citation Machine
Referencing is certainly not the most exciting part of any
writing assignment. Nevertheless, you cannot simply neglect all those details
and citation rules. This tool provides instant citations in Chicago, Turabian,
APA and MLA styles. Upon entering the appropriate parameters, the students get
a properly formatted reference without any fuss.
Source | http://thejournal.com
Regards
Pretty good rundown of Hemingway, have you used INK at all? They’re similar but INK also does SEO so you don’t really have to use another app. INK has some room for improvement but is definitely helping me save some time. Would love to hear your opinion on your experience using the INK platform
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