Writing Tools
Writing Platforms
In all honesty, Google Docs is probably the best tool out there for writing. The collaboration options make it easy to give students feedback. You can have prewritten comments ready to go & just copy and paste them. There are also a ton of great writing add-ons.
Grammar & Vocab
Grammar practice for students with lots of practice questions, customized to student interests. The free version gives you some of the content, which may be enough for some teachers.
Research
Handy tool for teachers and students! Anyone can copy & paste essays & other writings to have them checked for plagiarism, all for free!
Creative Writing
This website is just like those magnetic poetry sets that stick on your fridge, just on a website instead.
Create picture books and other written pieces with this website. They provide lots of free artwork you can use with your writing, which may inspire some students who are not sure what to write! Coolest part: students can have their books printed!
Students an create a text-based story online, or they can play text games others have created! If you're unfamiliar with text games, they're basically interactive stories. They require writing, storytelling, critical thinking, logic, and world development. Lots of skill practice in one free package!
9. Inklewriter: students can read or create their own choose-your-own-adventure story
10. InstaGrok: website to help with digital research
11. RefSeek: a search engine made for student research
12. Creative Commons Search: an image search engine for Creative Commons Licensed Images (gets students using legal images in projects)
13. Zotero: research tool to help collect & cite sources