Welcome!

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Welcome to my blog! My name is Tom, and I am an English teacher. I use this site to share materials with my students, with my colleagues, and anyone else who needs learning materials, even mothers and fathers who homeschool their children. Currently, I have a listing of downloadable materials for use. I have also added a YouTube channel for your perusal. I hope to have many more resources made available in the coming months, even years. Please check back, and thank you for coming. Be well and find joy. 😊

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching Philosophies, Focuses, and Requirements

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  I have a short list of requirements for every activity. Every activity should be:  a) Active (problem-solving centered) b) Blended (flexible and self-paced) c) Edutaining (to educate and entertain) d) Gamified, if applicable (encouraging participation and motivation) e) Micro-Learning Oriented & Scaffolded f) Universally Accessible (developed to enhance engagement and self-expression) I often teach a lesson and follow with an activity. Sure, self-paced is great, but being involved as a teacher is much more preferable for me (so I like to blend things and be flexible). I don't mind hand-holding my students. I want them to feel supported. Also, I want to be accessible for questions. On the issue of accessibility, I like to design things as if all of my students had special needs (e.g., larger fonts, Sans-Serif for ease of reading in large print and digital, etc.). I like to incentivize everything (slightly gamifying things), although I recognize that some students like the...
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OER Titles on Composition and Rhetoric

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I love finding older books on rhetoric and composition. I love noticing the shift in the paradigms and the orientations. Here are a few classic titles. Many of these titles are almost in the public domain. Enjoy! Strunk & White - Elements of Style  (*) Richard Weaver - The Ethics of Rhetoric Stratton D. Brooks & Marietta Hubbard - Composition-Rhetoric Thomas Wood - Practice Grammar & Composition G.H. Armstrong - English Grammar and Composition for Public School Edwin Abbott - How to Write Clearly: Rules and Exercises on English Composition Dorothy Canfield Fisher & George R. Carpenter - Elementary Composition (*) I teach many of the principles in this book today. I known many law schools, business programs, and humanist departments who regard this book as the gospel of writing style. Many of the stylistic techniques described in this book hold up well. 
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