Tag Archives: middle school writing

For teachers and students, Shmoop.com, a popular online study guide website, recently released a new feature called “Shmoop Essay Lab” and it’s a powerful teaching/learning tool, especially for students who struggle with developing ideas and organizing their essays.  Students can choose to write about literature or to develop a college entrance essay and Shmoop’s interactive tutorial walks them through the process from topic selection to final edit.  What’s really interesting is that the literature essay tutorials are custom designed and paired with any one of dozens of books.  So, for example, if a student is writing about To Kill a Mockingbird, she can select that book from the menu and follow the step-by-step tutorial for developing an essay about a theme or a topic related to that particular book.  The tutorial even offers specific quotes from the text that students can use to support their ideas in  the body of … Continue reading →