Secondary Students: Links

Reading

• Alphabet Organizer

  Students can use this tool to create such things as an alphabet book or for discussing background knowledge on a topic they are beginning to study.

• Beyond the Fire :Teen Experiences of War

  Real-life stories of 15 teenagers, now living in the U.S., who have survived living in war zones. Interactive site with teaching resources that are aimed at mainstream students.

• Folk Legends of Japan

  Animated Japanese folk legend, in English, for intermediate readers.

• LearnEnglish

  A British Council site. It offers opportunities to learn and practise English online. It is aimed at the intermediate learner.

• The Why Files: Science Behind the News

  Great site for reading texts. Short, high interest, great graphics.

• Aardvark's English Forum

  Comprehensive portal with resources for students and teachers.

• Active Reading Strategies

  Five strategies for students to think about as they read (PPT).

• Activities for ESL Students

  Quizzes, tests, exercises and puzzles.

• Aesop's Fables

  Traditional and modern versions of tales from Aesop illustrated and retold by art students of the University of Massachusetts.

• Author Yellowpages

  A searchable directory of author web sites. Suitable for all levels.

• AwesomeStories.com

  American site with the story behind historic events. Free and subscription sections.

• BBC - Skillswise

  Literacy and numeracy site from the BBC aimed at improving adult literacy. Useful for older elementary level students.

• BBC - Skillswise Words - Summarising

  This module helps learners improve their summarising skills by extracting the main points from written and oral texts.

• BBC Learning English

  Rich site including listening, reading, vocabulary sections.

• Best New Zealand Poems

  An online collection of poems from contemporary New Zealand poets.

• The Big6

  A clear outline of the steps in the research/information problem solving process.

• Bookbox

  Information and activities on children's writers and their books.

• Dave's ESL Café

  A popular site with news updates, forums for students and teachers, a graffiti wall, an ideas page for teachers, an on-line help centre for students and much more.

• English Language Centre Study Zone (University of Victoria, British Columbia)

  Grammar, reading, vocabulary and puzzles. Graded and appropriate for primary - secondary students.

• English Specialist

  Online exercises, worksheets, texts, topics, grammar, distance learning, fiction, jokes, games, links and resources.

• English-to-go.com

  Up-to-date resources based on Reuters® news articles. Some free lessons.

• English-Zone.Com

  Activities for elementary, intermediate and advanced students to practise English skills. It includes the Dolch word list, irregular verb chart, phrasal verb dictionary and preposition dictionary.
  Some parts of the site are available for members only.

• EnglishLearner.com

  Learners of English will find all types of tests and exercises here: grammar, vocabulary, reading, crosswords, hangman and more.

• ESL go

  ESL go.com aims to give ESOL students help learning English as a second language through free ESL classes and free English practice message boards. Teachers can share teaching activities.

• ESL Home: Online Reading Passages and Exercises

  Good, graded reading resources that test comprehension with a variety of activities.

• Eslgold.com

  Hundreds of pages of graded ESOL materials. The language is not embedded in a context.

• From Caveman to Spaceman

  Listen and read. A cartoon on the evolution of the human species. From BT Education.

• Games (British Council)

  Word games, grammar games and much more.

• Grimm Fairy Tales

  Folk and fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. Read and hear interactive, narrated, animated stories.

• Guardian Weekly TEFL update

  Links to email versions of the materials and lesson from the 'Learning English' sections of the Guardian Weekly.

• How-to Guide to Writing Book Reports

  Practical scaffolding for book report writing.

• Idiom Site

  An extensive collection of idioms with explanations.

• In Search of the Ways of Knowing Trail

  A reading experience for Years 6-11. An interactive walk through an African forest. Flash-driven.

• Karin's ESL Partyland

  Aimed at secondary and tertiary students this site has learning pages on topics such as dating, the internet, music, and food. There are interactive quizzes and discussion forums.

• Learning Resources

  Simplified newspaper articles with interactive learning activities. This material is intended for adult literacy educational purposes, but is useful for senior/advanced ESOL students.

• The Music Archive for the Pacific

  Established by the Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia.

• National Geographic Online

  Reading for senior students.

• The New Zealand Dictionary Centre

  From Victoria University. Activities for students such as "Unravelling NZ English usage for newcomers" (PDFs).

• Newsweek Education Program

  Reports on current events.

• OnestopEnglish

  From Macmillan publishers. A wide variety of teaching and learning resources. Free registration.

• Online Reading Passages and Exercises

  Varied reading passages with activities to test comprehension and understanding of grammar. For intermediate level students.

• Pacific Islands Literature

  Links to literature and writers of the Pacific

• Pacific Literature Authors

  Links to Pasifika authors.

• Page by Page Books

  Popular texts broken down into single web pages containing single chapters so they're easier to read online.

• Paragraph Punch

  An online tutorial dealing with the steps of writing a basic paragraph. For advanced students.

• Parapal Online English Exercises

  Interactive listening, writing, reading, vocabulary and grammar exercises.The site includes software for schools and teachers to use. (Uses Flash Player.)

• Peak: The Online Interactive English School

  This site contains interactive reading, writing, speaking and listening lessons as well as games, links and a chat facility.

• Penguin Dossiers

  Monthly articles - Penguin Reader level 3. Archive of past Penguin Dossiers and worksheets. Dossiers include reading and listening practice, and vocabulary building.

• Phil Shapiro Websequiturs

  A shareware program for windows that lets you create reading exercises on the web where students have to figure out which phrase comes first and next in a reading passage.

• Phrasal Verb Demon

  Activities, games and a comprehensive database they can be searched by topic as well as by verb.

• The Plural Girls

  Twin sisters Pearl and Flora lost their friends in the bubble machine. Students can help them get their friends out by choosing the correct plural form of the given word.

• Poetry for Children: Internet School Library Media Center (ISLMC)

  Designed for primary and junior secondary school teachers, librarians, parents and students to preview selected WWW poetry sites.

• Reading for English Language Learners

  From Ohio ESL.

• Reading Signs in English

  An American photo collection of commonly used signs.

• Repeat After Us

  This site contains copyright free poems, children's stories, nursery rhymes, quotes, prose and drama, many of which are accompanied by an audio file so that students can listen as they read. Suitable for more advanced learners.

• Rhetoric

  Over 5000 full text audio and video versions of American public speeches, sermons, debates and interviews.

• RIF Reading Planet

  Online world of books, from Reading is Fundamental, Inc. RIF is a children's literacy nonprofit organization. It includes interactive reading games, writing activities, book reviews, author interviews, and more.

• Sai's Lost Horse

  A bilingual Chinese folktale.

• Secondary School Texts: English Online

  An annotated list of novels, non-fiction text and films used by NZ secondary school English teachers - divided into junior and senior secondary.

• Self Access: For Students of English as International Communication

  Lesson sequences with interesting reading texts, accompanying questions, and related writing tasks for student self study. From English-To-Go.

• Sentence Construction Game

  You must jump on the correct logs to complete the sentence and get Bryan the beaver safely to the other side. This game has sound. (BBC Skillswise Words)

• Skillswise: Words: Reading (BBC)

  Skimming, scanning exercises and information about text types.

• Stories to Read and Tell: Africa

  Stories, legends and folktales from Africa.

• Stories to Read and Tell: China

  Stories, legends and folktales from China.

• Stories to Read and Tell: Egypt

  Stories, legends and folktales from Egypt.

• Stories to Read and Tell: India

  Stories, legends and folktales from India.

• SuperThinkers

  SuperThinkers features a set of interactive mysteries designed to foster literacy and problem-solving. Created by children's book author & illustrator/educator Peter H. Reynolds. Suitable for advanced students, years 7-10. The mysteries are Flash-driven.

• Takako's Great Adventure

  Read and listen to the story of a Japanese girl's fictional adventures in Canada. Includes cloze, sequencing and multiple choice activities.

• TalkWorks Comic Online

  An animated comic book with games and exercises that help build communication skills. For primary, intermediate and secondary school students. From BT Education.

• Types of Text

  A three level quiz to test students' knowledge about text types and a test with a quiz based game (BBC - Skillswise Words).

• Up the Creek

  This bilingual interactive website from the Department of Conservation introduces concepts about biodiversity in waterways by focusing on the life cycle of whitebait. Intended for level 3 and 4 of the New Zealand curriculum, the resource includes teachers' notes and ideas for class discussions and activities.

• Using Songs in the Esl Classroom (Esl-lounge)

  The lyrics to 100s of songs.

• The Virtual Independent Learning Centre (vilc)

  Interactive language learning resources for independent learners.

• Webquest Directories: English Online

  A directory of useful webquest sites.

• Wicked: Language Websites

  Links to recommended web sites such as interactive stories.

• Words Without Borders

  Aims to introduce western readers to other points of view. Examples of poetry from the Middle East, China and South America as well as both fiction and non-fiction works from the Korean peninsula, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and many other countries.

• Yahooligans News

  News stories (including slide shows) for school students.