Parent Central by the Toronto Star

The Toronto Star has created a web page aimed at parents.  The tabs include: Babies & Pregnancy, Education, Family Health, Activities, Money & Shopping, News & Features.

The Education page <here> includes current articles on education as they appear in the Star – a handy link when someone asks you if you read the article about … in today’s Star. It includes links to education series such as the recent Louise Brown’s Learning Series examining diversity of students and the skills /respect /culture that teachers need to learn for teaching in urban multicultural schools.

There are links to the Public and Catholic school boards in the greater Toronto area.

There are links to relevant materials such as the full report of the Safety Panel on School Safety, resulting from the death of Jordan Manners.

This is a great web page to stay current with local education issues and news, not to mention to reading, emailing and printing full text news articles. This page may be aimed at parents, but librarians will like it too.

Rowan

Death and grief in schools – new books

More often than one imagines, schools need to comfort and advise students whose lives have been effected by untimely death. Most school boards have professional counsellors who can be dispatched to schools to assist the staff, especially in traumatic situations where a student has died.

Here are some of the new books available for TDSB teachers and counsellors from our library:  Talking with Children and Young People about Death and Dying (2nd ed); What does That Mean? A Dictionary of Death, Dying and Grief Terms for Grieving Children and Those Who Love Them; Grief in Children: A handbook for Adults (2nd ed.); A Complete Book about Death for Kids; Keys to Helping Childern Deal with Death and Grief; I Found a Dead Bird.

Call the library if you want to see any of them, (416) 395-8289.

Rowan

Year Round Schools

year-round schools – bibliography

Year round schools is a topic that regularly rears its head (like retention & acceleration;homework).  Often the information is old, but it is all there is. 

Rowan

 

Turnaround Schools

The Professional Library has created a bibliography of resources for the school leader: books, articles and Internet links:   turnaround_schools 

Turnaround schools are those schools who were low performing schools (low performance scores in high stakes testing compared to other schools) that have been able to improve the academic achievement of their students and hence the schools’ overall scores and standing.

 Critical elements include (in no particular order): data-driven decision making, data sharing: good leadership skills, distributed leadership; a collaborative culture amongst staff; focused staff development aimed at student achievement, achieving common goals;  school culture, safety and student well-being;  an aligned curriculum with emphasis on improving literacy and numeracy; frequent student assessment and interventions for students who are failing, or have learning difficulties;  improved parent and community involvement

TDSB teachers can contact the Professional Library to borrow the books (416) 395-8289.

Rowan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Through The Arts

Last week, I participated in a book display and one of the new-to-me booths was Learning Through the Arts (LLTA), a program from the Royal Conservatory of Music.  The LLTA believes that the arts motivate increased student learning and can be used in all subject areas to improve learning outcomes. Their pamphlet says “LLTA brings specially trained artists into schools, who in partnership with great teachers, create lessons that make core curriculum engaging and relevant”.

On their web page, they include a variety of lesson plans like “Dancing Geometry” (math grades 2 and 3) and “Wily the Water Molecule” (science grades 2 and 3) and “Fathers of Confederation”  (social studies grades 7 and 8). The lesson plans are free to download and use in Canadian educational institutions.

Click here for the LLTA Lesson Plans.

Rowan