TeachersPayTeachers

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

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TeachersPayTeachers

I offer a number of items on teacherspayteachers.com. Most of what I currently offer focuses on literature (American literature in particular). You can visit my store here.

Stories and Poems

Technology is changing the face of education, especially with regard to content delivery. Students do not need to lug around a heavy textbook (or leave it at home) when we can provide them electronic versions of texts.

I am currently adapting stories and poems for use in an American literature curriculum to electronic form. (You can see the curriculum—a work in constant progress—here.) For each of these items, I provide the story or poem in the following formats:

  • epub — This is readable in most ebook readers, including the Nook.
  • mobi — For use in the Amazon Kindle.
  • pdf — With line numbers* for copying and in-class distribution.
  • html — For inclusion in a web page or Google site.

*One thing that really annoys me about high school literature textbooks is the lack of line numbers, making it impossible to refer to a given passage with precision. (College publishers can manage this, so why not high school publishers?) These pdf files have line numbers in the margin, making it easy for students and instructors to refer to a specific passage. Additionally, the vocabulary and notes which occur at the end of the document are listed by line number.

What You Get

When you purchase a package for a story, you get the following items:

  • The story or poem, in the above formats.
  • Comprehension check — A short text-based quiz that assesses whether students have read and understood the material.
  • Discussion questions — These can be used as the basis for whole-class discussions, small-group discussions, or short written assignments. You may find value in giving selected questions to students before assigning the reading. Questions are keyed to Common Core standards.
  • Extension activities — Follow-up activities and extensions keyed to Common Core standards.

Vocabulary and Notes

Stories and poems include a lengthy vocabulary and notes section, keyed to line numbers. (In the electronic versions, page numbers and line numbers don't exist, so vocabulary entries are listed alphabetically at the end of the file.) The sorts of things that I note here include:

  • Archaic or obsolete words and phrases.
  • Words and expressions in a language other than English.
  • Allusions and references which readers are probably unfamiliar with.
  • Common words which are used in an unusual way.

Some of these contain a "Read More" link. These are often, but not always, links to Wikipedia pages; occasionally they are links to my own wiki. I do not link directly to outside pages; rather, I link to my own link shortener. Doing so means that if a link becomes unavailable, I can simply change the link on my end to a different one. Thus, clicking on a "Read More" will never result in a 404 error.

Quizzes and Tests

Quizzes and tests are provided in the following formats*:

  • .pdf without answers — for quick viewing and printing.
  • .odt an OpenOffice text file — if you want to edit the document.
  • .odp without answers an OpenOffice slide show — to show as a paperless quiz or in-class review.
  • .odp with answers and references an OpenOffice slide show.

*See "Office Suite", below.

Software

As I want to make these available to as many people as possible, I support the use of free and open source software whenever possible.

Ebook Reader

I prefer the free (and ad-free) FBReader. It is available for just about every platform your students may use (including Windows, OSX, Android, and Linux). Best of all, it just works.

As an alternative to the Amazon Kindle, I recommend Sumatra PDF, which is also a good alternative to Adobe Reader. You can't maintain a library of books like you can with the actual Kindle app, but it is much lighter weight, and can be run from a jump drive. Add this app and a bunch of Kindle files to a jump drive, and you have a portable library.

Office Suite

Most of us are familiar with Microsoft Office, and probably have a version (either free and limited, or expensive and unlimited) of it on our work and home computers. However, not everybody can afford the price tag. Fortunately, there are better alternatives that are free:

  • OpenOffice contains word processor, spreadsheet, slideshow, drawing, and database functions. It is available for Windows, Linux, and OSX. It is the software I use to create pdfs and slideshows.
  • LibreOffice has the same functions as OpenOffice, and is available for the same platforms.
  • NeoOffice is an office suite available only for OSX.

All of the above programs can read MS Office documents. I have found them (especially LibreOffice on Ubuntu) to be more stable than MS Office.

The default word processing file extension for these suites is .odt, and the default slideshow file extension is .odp. All the documents I ship are created with OpenOffice, therefore you will need to install it to edit these files.

Permissions

I retain the intellectual property rights to these documents, but I am publishing them under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License so that you can adapt them to suit the needs of your students.

Specifically,

  • You have permission to distribute the files (especially the story and poem files) to your students electronically, provided they must use a school-supplied login to access them. This means that you can email the files to their school email accounts, or post them on a school website which they must access by providing a username and password. You may not post them to a publicly available website which anyone can access.
  • You may not resell or redistribute these files.
  • You have permission to edit the files, either by adding, deleting, or changing the information they contain. You can, for example, add additional questions to a quiz, delete questions, or reorder the questions. You may not sell or share any alterations you make to these files.
  • You are permitted to make a reasonable number of paper copies for distribution to your students. “Reasonable” is defined as the number of your students plus ten percent.
  • You are purchasing a single-classroom license, which means that you may use these files in all of your classes, but you may not share these files with your colleagues for use in their classrooms. If you would like to buy a site license, which would give you permission to use these files in two or more classrooms, please contact me with details.

Creative Commons LicenseTeaching files by Kenneth John Odle are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite this Page:

  • Odle, Kenneth John. "TeachersPayTeachers." kjodle.net. 19 September 2014. Web. 20 April 2024. <>