http://www.eduplace.com/tales/

This is such a silly yet fun site! It is essentially on-line madlibs. In case you have never heard of madlibs, it's an English teacher's rainy day/Friday afternoon dream. Madlibs came in books that you could use over and over if you photocopied the pages. Essentially, without knowing the content of the story, students are asked for example to give a plural noun__________, past tense verb___________, adverb_____________, adjective____________, place___________, famous person___________...to name a few examples. Then you plug those words into the story, and it is guaranteed laughs for both the teacher and students. Generally, learning grammar is confusing and tedious so finding any sort of fun alternative is a bonus for middle and even highschool English teachers as well as fourth and fifth grade teachers. My students never tired of madlibs. I also liked that students can work independently or with a friend on the computer. The program also offers part of speech support if they are stumped.

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/

Above is the link to the entire Houghton Mifflin site. It has language arts activities for students in grades K-8. My favorite link besides the web tales is the site that offers tons of graphic organizers to aid in the writing process. They have cluster graphs, desribing wheel, KWL charts, and a sandwich chart to help students learn to write paragraphs. I use to do the hamburger paragraph, which is the same idea. The graphic organizers for the younger grades has a graphic organizer for paragraph writing, but it is an ice cream cone. It is worth looking at each of the charts because they would be very useful.