Connecticut State Department of Education

Connecticut Core Standards

ELA Resource Libraries

Resource Libraries

  • iCONN-This is a comprehensive search engine for all students, teachers and administrators with free online access to a wealth of essential library and information resources from trustworthy sources. It is freely accessible from every school, library, and home. Access from home requires a public library card. (iconn.org) 
  • Open Professionals Education Network - This website provides openly licensed education content that can be used in whole or in part. It includes links to photos, videos, audio/music, general recorded lectures & video tutorials, open textbooks, simulations and animation, as well as modular course components and complete courses. (open4us.org)
  • Resources to Support Text-Based Instruction - This collection of free resources supports teaching and learning for students and staff on a wide range of topics. (63000resources.com)
  • BBC Learning School Radio – Audio Resources for Primary School. Teacher notes are available to support most programs. Categories include: Podcasts, Early Learning, English, History, Music, Dance, Mathematics, Drama, Geography. (www.bbc.co.uk)  
  • Open Textbooks - This website provides free, adaptable, openly licensed textbooks and supplemental resources.Whether you are looking for more affordable options for your students, or dynamic content to inspire your own teaching and learning practice, this hub, organized by discipline and provider will help you discover the resources you need at your fingertips. (oercommons.org)  
  • Tween Tribune – This news website by the Smithsonian provides daily news articles for K-12 students. Articles are selected by professional journalists working in collaboration with teachers and students. As a Smithsonian resource, it has a plethora of science and history focused articles. There are also articles in Spanish, different lexile levels, technology, a junior version for grades K-4 and more. (tweentribune.com)   
  • Owl Eyes  website offers free access to thousands of books, poems, short stories, and nonfiction texts, with helpful annotations. Using site resources, teachers can create online classrooms, quizzes, and their own annotations to text material.  
  • The Long & Winding Road to Women’s Rights -This blog by Susan Curtis on 02/10/2017 provides links to many primary source resources from prominent museums and collections concerning Women’s Rights in the United States throughout its history that are appropriate for middle school students.(middle web.com)  
  • ProCon.org: The Leading Source for Pros & Cons of Controversial Issues - This nonprofit nonpartisan public charity, provides professionally-researched pro, con, and related information on more than 50 controversial issues from gun control and death penalty to illegal immigration and alternative energy. Resource materials provided are fair, FREE, and unbiased and are created to help students learn new facts and think critically about both sides of important issues. (procon.org)  
  • American Academy of Achievement - This free website is a comprehensive video archive of historical figures. It includes autobiographies, interviews, symposiums, podcasts, and photographs of extraordinary leaders, visionaries, and pioneers. This resource is intended to help students examine how various leaders persevered through a wide range of challenges and went about achieving their dreams. (achievement.org)    
  • Teaching a People’s History: The Zinn Education Project - This website offers free, downloadable lesson activities and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.
  • The Hartford Courant Newspaper in Education Program is an online interactive classroom resource to help teachers connect students to the news. Many of the resources list Common Core Standards. Programs have been specifically designed to address the needs of Connecticut students in social studies, geography, science, math, and language arts. Resource pages are written by educators, museums, nature centers and other professional organizations. Current offerings include: Cartoons for the Classroom, Front Page Talking Points, Geography in the News, Green Room, News Video, Pulse of the Planet, This Week in History, Use the News and Words in the News. (nieonline.com)
  • SELA website provides teachers and students with nonfiction texts that are Common Core aligned. Each article offers a choice of five different Lexile levels, making it easy for an entire class to read the same content, but at level that is just right for each student. Formative assessments —quizzes, annotations, and “Write Prompts”—are included with every article. Teachers can measure each student’s progress online in real time by asking a few pointed questions at the end of every reading assignment and/or leaving interactive notes for students that they respond to online. High interest articles are updated daily on such topics as: War and Peace, Science, Kids, Money, Law, Health and Arts. New Text Sets are also available.(newsela.com)  
  • Newsela's SPANISH articles - These articles are available on a wide variety of topics and reading levels, in both Spanish and English.(newsela.com)
  • CommonLit website offers teachers and students a free collection of news articles, poems, short stories, historical documents, and complex nonfiction texts-all organized by theme and Lexile level. (commonlit.org)
  • CommonLit: New Features Video - CommonLit is an educational non-profit dedicated to advancing children’s literacy in grades 5-12. Their resources are flexible, research-based, and aligned to college and career-ready standards. (published on April 4, 2016 by Michelle Brown for commonlit.org)
  • The Washington Post Newspaper in Education Program allows all teachers to access topical NIE Curriculum Guides on a variety of topics in all subject areas. Common Core Standards aligned to the suggested activities are listed at the end of the most recent curriculum guide. (nie.washingtonpost.com)
  • EduCore Digital Tool— This repository of evidence-based strategies, videos, and supporting documents was created by ASCD to help educators transition to the CCSS in both mathematics and English language arts and literacy. (educore.ascd.org)
  • OpenEd – Common Core resources in a K-12 educational resource catalog (OpenEd)
  • Gooru – collaborative online community with standards-aligned, interactive learning materials tied to Common Core. (goorulearning.org)
  • LibriVox – offers free public domain audiobooks by author, title, genre and language. (librivox.org)
  • The International Children's Digital Library is a project of the ICDL Foundation in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab. The Foundation promotes tolerance and respect for diverse cultures by providing access to the best of children's literature from around the world in many languages. (en.childrenslibrary.org)
  • Epic! For Educators – This free ebook library includes thousands of popular, high-quality books for K – 5: Early Readers, Chapter Books, Non-Fiction, Read-to-Me Audio, as well as profiles with personalized recommendations based on reading level and interests are provided. (getepic.com)
  • OPEN eBOOKS is a free resource for educators who work directly with students attending Title 1 schools, students with disabilities, and several other qualifying categories. Each collection of titles has a variety of genres, of both fiction and informational text. (openebooks.net) 
  • Project Gutenberg – over 42,000 free ebooks (gutenberg.org)
  • Library of Congress – K-12 Informational Text and Multimedia Resources (loc.gov)
  • Common Core State Standards and Library of Congress Primary Sources (blogs.loc.gov)