Teaching ELLs

For a great article on teaching English Language Learners, read the article(here) by Claude Goldenberg titled Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does-and does not- say.

Soup to nuts

The Library has something for everyone. Here are some new titles showing the diversity of our collection:

• Closing the poverty gap: Strategies to reach every student.
• High-impact teaching strategies for the ‘XYZ” era of education (that is generationXYZ).
• Personalizing the high school experience for each student
• Podcasting at school.
• Quick and lively classroom activities: Meaningful ways to keep kids engaged during transition time, downtime or any time.
• Secrets of the teenage brain

TDSB teachers may contact the library at (416) 395-8289 to request any of these.

Rowan

New books: math and reading

Even towards the end of the budget year when our pennies are dwindling, new books continue to roll in albeit at a much slower pace and volume. The best thing about working in a library is getting to see, touch and smell the new books. A book order is like Christmas morning: full of wonderful surprises and treats!

Here are two new math titles:

• My kids can: Making math accessible to all learners, K-5.
• Accessible mathematics: 10 instructional shifts that raise student  achievement. (BTW, those shifts would work brilliantly in any subject and with all students, esp. special ed. )

3 new reading titles:

• Active word play: Games and activities to build vocabulary (elem and all ESL).
• Creating the best literacy block ever (elem, includes 80+ reproducibles)
• Differentiated small-group reading lessons  (K-3).

TDSB teachers may contact the library at (416) 395-8289 to request them.

Rowan

Research Success now in French Translation

In 2005, TDSB Library and Learning Resources developed and wrote a document titled Research Success @ Your Library: A guide for secondary students.  Visually friendly with lots of worksheets and handouts, this document was written as an aid for teacher librarians about teaching the library research process and to assist students in becoming organized researchers, critical thinkers and effective communicators.

Finally a French version is available under the title Réussir dans vos recherches@ la bibliotèque: Un guide pour les élèves secondaire. to purchase you copy email curriculumdocs@tdsb.on.ca.

Online privacy for students

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of  Canada has created a web page aimed at middle to secondary students called My Privacy. My Choice. MyLife. and its purpose is to get students to think before they share personal information on the Internet, and the importance of protecting their personal information. It asks the questions how does technology affect my privacy and why should I care.  It also includes a Teachers’ Resources Page, which in turn includes 2 online privacy units from the Media Awareness Network.

Rowan

3 Internet reference resources

The April 15th 2009 issue of  Library Journal, includes recommended reference resources, both book and “free” digital. I checked out the following 3 web pages and they look pretty good for teachers and students:

1. Earth Portal for the environmentalist, includes the Encylcopedia of the Earth  containing all sorts of eco and enviro hot topics and articles. Searching it seems to be better by the A-Z topic and not the basic search box (unfortunately true for many webpages). Secondary level.
2. Poetry Foundation, is made available by the publisher of Poetry magazine. They have  created a vibrant web page with text and video and a searchable database of poets by name, occasion, popularity, first line etc. Includes a children’s poetry section and Jack Prelutsky has some tips on introducing kids to poetry. (The library has a lot of books by Prelutsky.) Mainly secondary level, but does access kids poetry.
3. UNdata is basically a federated search service that allows the global user to search all the UN databases at once – education, economic, countries, populations etc.  Again the search structure is kind of basic and the page itself is a tad plain, but it  gives you world on information at your fingertips. Definitely secondary school level.

Rowan

Girls dominate science fair.

Today’s Globe and Mail includes an article by Hayley Mick (page L1,2) about the 2009 Canada-wide Science Fair, noting that more girls than boys are participating and winning the competitions. Is it a reflection of the one subject area (seems not) or does  it reflect all areas of education (seems to)? Some say the boys are not motivated enough, or they don’t want to  do that work and would rather be involved in sports.

Back in the ’80’s when I started working in education libraries, we were buying resources on encouraging girls to excel, to participate in what were then non-traditional roles and courses.  Now it has flipped and we are buying resources to support male students.  Do you think we’ll ever get this right?

The link above won’t last long, so if you don’t read it soon, you’ll have to contact the library for a print or database copy (see my blog from earliar  about newspaper articles).

Rowan

Student Assessment: Growing success

Most Ontario teachers know that the Ministry has been slowly updating the subject curriculum  documents issued in and around 1998-2000.

One of the documents currently under review is the assessment document. The 2000 document is titled Program Planning and Assessment, available to borrow from the library or downloadable from the Ministry.   Recently, the Ministry has created a discussion document titled Growing Success-Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting: Improving Student Learning and it is available for reading and downloading on the OCUP Resources page <here>. We don’ t have it but we are working on it.

TDSB has two popular assessment documents (2006) titled Fresh AER, one for grades K-8,  the other for  Grades 9-12.  TDSB teachers may borrow them from the library although they should be in your schools. if you can’t find them (and we all know curriculum docs have feet and are never where you last saw them), you can purchase them from Curriculum Documents at curriculumdocs@tdsb.on.ca ($25.00 for elementary and $20.00 for secondary).

Rowan

Homework debate, again

The Canadian Council on Learning has reviewed 18 studies published from 2003-2007 on the value of homework and how much is too much.  In their summary they say “homework is more likely to be effective and improve academic outcomes when assignment are engaging, relevant and meaningful  because it forces students to actively focus on thier  homework tasks”.  In other words, it is only as good as it is done well.

Here is our bibliography, now a year old Homework

Rowan

Music Monday

Today is Music Monday. Read below for a brief description of this event (copied from their web page). See a clip of  Serena Ryder singing “Sing Sing” . What a fabulous idea,  and today’s  weather in TO couldn’t be better.

Music Monday , the first Monday of May, is a very special demonstration of our love of music – in our lives and in our schools. students and teachers take their music programs outside into the open air of their school grounds or into their communities, to perform a short concert. There are outdoor concerts right across the country from the elementary level right through to secondary schools – some small celebrations, some large.