High School English Language Arts Books
1. An English Teacher's Guide to Performance Tasks & Rubrics: High School by Amy Benjamin, Paperback: 189 pages, Publisher: Eye on Education
This book is realistic, and well written. Performance tasks are explained in depth, with standards driven examples which a teacher could use in class immediately. What is a performance task? Performance tasks are authentic assignments that are accomplished over a period of days or weeks and are more meaningful and rewarding than traditional tests and assignments, because they connect, communicate, and illuminate the outside world, making learning meaningful.
2. Hooked On English!: Ready-to-Use Activities for the English Curriculum, Grades 7-12 by Jack Umstatter, Jack Umstatter, Paperback: 304 pages, Publisher: Jossey-Bass
This unique and practical resource gives junior and senior high school English teachers 186 stimulating activities that can be used to review and reinforce concepts across the English curriculum in a challenging and entertaining way. The activities have been tested with students of varying abilities and include a variety of crossword puzzles, word jumbles, word searches, magic squares, crypto-quotes, word scrambles, matching columns, fill-ins, and more. The book is organized into seven sections including Composition, Usage, Vocabulary, Mechanics & Wordplay, Composition & Speaking, Literature, and Everyday Language. Also included are complete answer keys that can be copied for student self-checking, and "The Internet Connection", a special appendix giving access to useful sites about authors, lesson plans, literature, writing and research. This is an unparalleled store of stimulating reproducible activities to help your students enjoy English, all ready to use "as it" for homework, tests, extra credit, or any other purpose you wish.
3. Barron's How to Prepare for the Cahsee-English-Language Arts: California High School Exit Exam by Christina Lacie, Paperback: 320 pages, Publisher: Barron's
California high school students and teachers will find in-depth preparation in this manual for the statewide English Language Arts Exam. Detailed review chapters cover all exam topics and include a short quiz to test students' command of each chapter's content. The topics are: Word analysis, fluency, and systematic vocabulary development in three progressive sections; reading comprehension in two sections; literary response and analysis in two sections; written and oral language conventions in two sections; writing strategies; and writing applications, the last dealing with different approaches to writing essays for different purposes. A full-length double-session practice exam is presented, complete with answers and a scoring guide to its literary response question.
4. Teaching English So It Matters : Creating Curriculum For and With High School Students by Deborah Stern, Paperback: 368 pages, Publisher: Corwin Press
Use a constructivist approach to teaching English. Contains flexible thematic instructional units you can adapt for your classroom.
5. Teenage Boys and High School English by Bruce Pirie, Paperback: 168 pages, Publisher: Boynton/Cook
By pulling together research from the fields of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and education, then measuring that research against his own years teaching in the secondary classroom, Pirie has been able to map the hurdles that stand in the way of boys' achievement.