Visual Arts bibliography

Here is another bibliography of books about  teaching Visual Arts.

Visual_Arts_2009

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

Rowan

ESL/ELL bibliography

We have updated our ESL book bibliography, attached here FYI.  Note that it is deliberately brief since (1) bibliographies are probably the most boring thing ever invented in the whole world, and since  (2) it reflects our newest books only. We have many, many more books on this important subject.

ESL_2009

Rowan

Interactive whiteboards

From Judy A, one of  our fabulous reference librarians:

In the November issue of Educational Leadership there is an interesting article by Robert Marzano on teaching with interactive whiteboards. In it Marzano discusses the increasing use of whiteboards in the classroom and their effect on student achievement. His study found that using whiteboards was linked with a 16 percentile point increase in student achievement, with three features particularly related to achievement: the learner-response device, the use of graphics and other visuals, and the reinforcer (applications teachers can use to indicate that an answer is correct).

 The article also mentions potential drawbacks of the technology and suggests how teachers might use whiteboards more effectively.

 To obtain a copy of Marzano’s article or to find out more about interactive whiteboards, contact the library at (416) 395-8289.

 Judy Ameline, Librarian

Gains or EduGains

Gains is a relatively new web page with strong ties to the Ministry.  It states that it is “built on the success of … [the Ministry documents]… Think Literacy Success, Think Literacy Cross-Curricular Approaches, Me Read?No Way, Leading Math Success, Targeted Implementation and Planning Supports, and Critical Learning Instructional Supports”.  It is very web 2.0 and encourages contributions from many sources.

It is a bit of “rag tag” fleet of stuff mainly to support Ontario secondary teachers of math, literacy and differentiated instruction with stated plans to continue to grow to support other subject areas. 

Literacy Gains includes among other things,  concise guides to listening, media literacy (I liked this one), critical literacy and metacognition.  Math Gains includes documents from a variety of sources and Boards, videos, Ministry documents, posters, software lessons (eg Geometers Sketchpad).  As my son would say “it is a bit random” BUT it does contain useful resources and is worth checking out.

A final comment: both the literacy and math gain pages include the following introduction “Reaching every teacher and student; gathering and sharing local evidence of promising practises; precisely personalizing instructional trajectories; harnessing collaborative technologies; establishing communities of practice at every level in the system”.   HUH? I am not sure what this means.  My recommendation would be to de-jargon and simplify this.

Rowan

Financial literacy

The Ministry’s latest announcement is about putting together a working group to research integrating financial literacy into the Gr. 4- 12 curriculum.

We have a couple of new books on this:

1. Economics and personal finance education (2009, NBEA)
2. Fun with finance: Math + literacy=success (2009, Carol Peterson)
3. I’m broke: The money handbook (2009, Liam Croke)

And a recent article:

1. Tye, Peg. (2009, Sep/Oct.). The truth about kids and money. Instructor, 19(2), 40-5.

Contact the library, (416) 395-8289 to borrow any of these.

Rowan