Teaching about facial expressions

The Professional library has purchased a book by Pat Crissey titled Getting the Message: Learning to Read Facial Expressions. Very often students with autism have a difficult time interpreting facial expressions, impacting negatively on their social interactions. This book is very classroom friendly and contains black and white sketches of faces displaying different emotions with teaching activities. Very cool.  Call us to borrow it at (416) 395-8289.

New Books: Differentiated, ELLs

More new books.

Differentiated instruction, from the general to the specific: Strategies for Differentiating Instruction: Best Practices for the Classroom(2007 by Roberts and Inman); Differentiating Reading Instruction: How to Teach Reading to Meet the Needs of Each Student (2008 by Laura Robb); Differentiated Instruction for the Middle School Math Teacher: Activities and Strategies for an Inclusive Classroom (2008 by D’Amico and Galloway).

English Language Learners: Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies that Work K-5 (2007 by Samway and Taylor); 6 Principles for Teaching English Language Learners in all Classrooms (2009 by  5 authors, Corwin Press); Learning to Read in a New Language (2008 by Eve Gregory).

TDSB teachers can call us at (416) 395-8289 to borrow them.

Rowan

Harvard Business Review September 08

The September isuue of the Harvard Business Review has a couple of articles that might be of interest to principals and administrators.

The first article by Ed Catmull is titled How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativityand looks at creativity in relationship to the organizational culture.  Pixar has three operating principles: 1) Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone; 2) it must be safe for eveyone to offer ideas; and 3) we must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

The second article is by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis and titled Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership.  (We have a bunch of books by Goleman on emotional intelligence). More brain research (read about mirror neurons, spindle cells and  oscillators)  which shows that effective leaders have an effective social intelligence which is defined as ”a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits”.  Qualities include: empathy, attunement, organizational awareness, influence, developing others, inspiration, and teamwork.

Give us a call if you are interested in reading these articles, (416) 395-8289.

Teaching and the Brain

I am the parent of a son who has what I call a “glitch in his matrix”, meaning that some things just take a long time to learn. Because he has great social and oral skills (he makes friends easily and can talk up a storm), it has taken us to secondary school to diagnose it, if  you can call it that. It has affected his ability to read (fluency and decoding) and we are not sure that he has ever learned his times tables, or the months of the year, or how to read the time on a face clock.

I have been reading the book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge. The Professional Library has a copy available for loan at 612.82 Doi.  Doidge talks about the brain being plastic and pliable so that where neurons don’t seem to connect,  the brain can create new pathways to overcome the glitch.  Traditionally children with learning disabilities are accommodated (given extra time) or taught to compensate (eg the use of technology), but this as such does not fix the problem.

The book, I think it is Chapter 2, looks specifically at learning disabilities and Doidge discusses the life and work of Barbara Arrowsmith Young and the development of a program and school based on her work.   The September 2008 issue of Professionally Speaking includes an article titled Raising Cognitive Capacityby Leanne Miller in which the program is described.  The program relies on repetitive brain exercises, targeted exercises that are repeated and slowly increase in complexity and difficulty. It is an interesting read. The program is being offered in the TCDSB.

One of our new books is titled Green Light Classrooms: Teaching Techniques that Accelerate Learning by Rich Allen( 371.102 All). It  offers some brain-based strategies to boost learning and teaching. The chapters are titled: Memory, Connections, Movement, Novelty, Tone, Emotions, Socialization, Drama,  and Visuals. They include lessons, debriefs and key points.

TDSB teachers may borrow these books (and article) by calling the Professional Library at (416) 395-8289.

Rowan

New Books: Writing, Green Activities

We’ve lots of new books ready for borrowing.

Writing (is the new reading, remember?): the first title is Best Practices in Writing Instruction(2007) and is intended to  provide evidence-based practice for enhancing the writing of students at all levels. A very thorough book, I would recommend more for a teacher taking AQ courses or the administrator.  The next two 2006 titles are very classroom friendly: Reproducible Forms for the Writing Traits Classroom K-2, and Inside the Writing Traits Classroom K-2, both written by Ruth Culham.

Being Green: We have two new books for the elementary classroom: Global Warming Grade 4-6 (2008, Popular Book Company (Canada) Ltd) and Environmental Print Activities: Activities Using Logos, Lables, Packages and Signs, PreK-1 (2006, Carson-Dellosa Pub Co).

TDSB Teachers may request these  by calling the library at (416) 395-8289.

Character Development in TDSB

TDSB has created a new document titled Build Character, Build Success: Character Development School Resource Guide K-12. This guide is meant to assist all school teams with the implementation of their character development programs. It includes info on the following character attributes: respect, responsibility, empathy, kindness/caring, teamwork, fairness, honesty, co-operation, integrity,  and perseverance.  There is a resource section with lists of books (with recommended grade levels) to support each of the attributes.

To order the guide, email curriculumdocs@tdsb.on.ca. Click here to visit the TDSB web page on Character Development.

Rowan

Tip for searching the ministry web page

The Ont.  Min of Ed web site contains many, many items, but I find it very frustrating to search, especially for documents or publications.

You’d figure that if you do a publications search by date you’d get a list of all documents from the most current backwards to the oldest.  How great to stay current with new publications!  Wrong-o: sometimes you are in luck, sometimes no.  It is also hit and miss  when you use the search feature.

Sometimes (here is the tip, and it is not rocket science), do your search in Google or your favourite search engine.  For example, we have a print copy of Making a Difference for Students with Autism …., but do you think that I could find it on their web page???  Perhaps I just missed it, but I made several forays into different parts of the web page with zero success. So, I backed out to Google and strung together this search sequence <ontario ministry education “making a difference” autism>, and whamo-I go right to the pdf for the document. So if you get stuck searching the Ministry, try doing it from Google. And actually, it is also a good way to search TDSB too.

Rowan

Ontario curriculum on environmental education

Hot of the press, and only available on-line at this point in time, the Ministry has released two new curriculum resources guides about the environment. Environmental Education: Scope and Sequence of Expectations is available for both the elementary and secondary levels. A two page document, Standards for Environmental Education, is aslo available.

Rowan

Autism and the Ministry of Ed.

The Ontario Ministry of Education has published a couple of documents on Autism,  dated 2007. The Library has print copies for borrowing and you can view them on-line at the Ministry Web page.  Click  here for Effective Educational Practices for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Resource Guide.  This is a brilliant, practical, hands-on guide for teachers working with autistic children. It includes a long section titled Tools and Techniques that includes strategies and resources that may be used  by teachers in classrooms across Ontario (in other words no copyright issues).

The other book is titled Making a Difference for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Ontario Schools, 2007, click here.  It is the report from the Ministers’ Autism Spectrum Reference Group, and while it does not include  the practical strategies in the title above, it includes the recommendations regarding province-wide implementations of practices to support students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. It sort of provides the foundation for policies and practices.

Rowan

Teaching Poetry

Here is a  link to a recent bibliography about teaching-poetry.  We can send books to you via the school courier and any articles can be emailed to you.

Rowan