Digital Content Resources - English Language Arts

​ These resources have not been examined for compliance with the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA)  and Education Law 2-d, therefore schools that choose to utilize any of these resources must ensure compliance where applicable. For more information on Education Law 2-d and data privacy and security in general  please refer to NYSED’s Data Privacy and Security webpage.

The sites below are provided as options and sources for ideas and inspiration only. The list is also not exhaustive; there are many quality resources and learning activities available online.

1. National Council of Teachers of English(link is external) ReadWriteThink(link is external) (Grades P-12)
   • ELA resources for all grade levels for students, teachers, and parents. Includes lesson plans, activities and projects, etc. Resources are filterable by grade level, learning objective, theme, etc.
2. New York Times Learning Network(link is external)
   • Activities for students include writing, current articles and trends, crosswords, multimedia, and contests. Teachers resources are organized based on content areas.
3. Authors Everywhere!(link is external)
   • A YouTube channel created and run by children’s books writers and illustrators. Users will find workshops, readings, activities, art projects, writing games, and writing advice that will offer fun and creative distractions during potential school closures and quarantines.
4. Readworks(link is external)
   • Readworks offers free content and curriculum for grades K-12. It includes remote learning resources for educators, families, and students. Content includes reading passages, question sets, paired texts, vocabulary, ebooks, audio narrations, and lessons and units.
5. Quill(link is external) (Grades K-12)
   • Provides free writing and grammar activities for elementary, middle, and high school levels. Includes lessons, diagnostics, and assignments allowing teachers and students to work together.
6. Poetry Foundation(link is external) (Grades K-12)
   • This site offers a collection of over 40,000 poems for children, teens, and adults. The collection is organized by genre and includes, but is not limited to, historical time periods, culture, pastime, and humor. Students also have access to archived and current Poetry magazines, poems read aloud by poets, and Poetry magazine podcasts.
7. Library of Congress(link is external) (Grades K-12)
   • Students, families, and educators can discover the world of books. Available and free to the public, this site offers digital collections, resources and lesson plans for educators and parents, books for kids, teens, and adults, poetry, and archived historical images and documents.
8. StoryCorps(link is external) (Grades 9-12)
   • The largest single collection of human voices ever gathered through interviews with Americans about their lives. The For Educators(link is external) webpage provides teachers with ways to use StoryCorps in their classrooms and free, step-by-step lesson plans about the interview process. Teachers can use The Great Thanksgiving Listen(link is external) project to provide an opportunity for high school students from diverse backgrounds to share important issues and experiences by recording an interview with an elder, mentor, friend, or someone they admire using a free app. The interviews help to create an oral history that can be published to The Library of Congress’s American Folklore Center(link is external).