Welcome to the English Collaborative!

This site is designed to support High School English teachers who want to prioritize rigor, choice, relevance, and twenty-first century learning. Our mission is to provide teachers with tools to explore new works, approaches, and perspectives on teaching and learning to instill a life-long appreciation for engaging with texts in a personal and meaningful way. Over time, we hope to build a collaborative network where English teachers from around the world work together to share ideas and resources, engage in action research, connect students, and support one another in achieving high impact teaching and learning through global collaboration.

IB English Assessment Considerations

IB English Language and Literature

IB English Literature

Featured Units

The PDF resources in these units are available for free with a standard access membership.

Guided Inquiry Units

These units put students in the driver’s seat of their learning.

What else will I find on this site?

  • Articles, resources, and research on how to approach the teaching of English Language and Literature with a focus on literacy, critical reading and thinking, close reading skills, effective writing strategies, differentiation, collaboration, choice, and authentic inquiry.
  • Lessons and Units designed to guide and teach critical and close reading strategies while encouraging students to develop their own personal responses to texts and works through reflection and collaboration.
  • Activities that utilize collaboration protocols from Adaptive Schools, The School Reform Initiative, and Project Zero.
  • A wide range of units on literary and media texts that are organized by genre and text type with a focus on global representation and diverse perspectives.
  • Text specific assessments.
  • Units and resources on how to support guided inquiry, choice, and personalized learning.
  • Blog writings about pedagogy, research, and problems of practice.
  • Reviews of literary and media works.
  • Guidance on how to approach IB and AP English courses.

Do I need a subscription?

Our blog posts and general resources are publicly posted, and we offer several units, lessons, and planning ideas for FREE with a Standard Access membership. Some resources require a Premium Access membership. You can purchase either an individual or school annual membership that will provide you with full access to all of our deliverables, including full units with lessons and activities as well as sample student work. We are self-funded and fully appreciate your contributions and support! We please ask that you ethically choose a plan that adheres to our Terms of Service. Please also read our Privacy Policy.

Meet Anneke and Jen

We are the ladies behind the English Collaborative. After working on a close collaborative English team at The American School of Bombay for four years, we continued our collaborative relationship by discussing, creating, sharing, and comparing ways to engage students in the English classroom. To learn more about us, visit The Team page.

**All the resources on this site have been independently created by Jennifer Brooke and Anneke Hoekstra, unless otherwise noted.