Shmoop

Whether you’re looking to select a text for an English Language Arts classroom or you’ve already got one in mind, Shmoop is a Web site worth consulting for lesson planning. Developed and maintained by affiliates of esteemed universities such as UC Berkeley, Stanford and Harvard, the site claims that more than 90 percent of its writers have classroom experience. The literature link under the free “Learning Guides” includes more than 300 titles — and each one has an incredibly in-depth treatment, from an intro and a summary, to the handling of character and theme, and the analysis of literary devices, to sample quiz questions. There’s also a “Best of the Web” section — for each book — that functions as a filtered Google search. For the ELA classroom, there are also links for poetry and Shakespeare. Shmoop also offers for-pay content.… (mere)