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

Critical Literacy

The Literacy Numeracy Secretariat (Ministry of Ed) has posted the August 2009 issue in the Capacity Building Series titled Critical Literacy.  In the writers say “it is not something to be added to the literacy program as it is  a set of skills, dispositions and strategies”. 

It incorporates differentiated instruction (by understanding the diverse interests, backgrounds and values of your students and ways that they can respond to a variety of tasks); global and social  issues; multimedia; debate and conversation in respectful classrooms; thinking and analytical skills.

If you are intrigued by this concept , the library can always search and email articles on this topic to TDSB teachers. Contact us at  (416) 395-8289.

Rowan

New Ministry Arts (K-8) document

Over the past couple of years the Ministry has been revising the curriculum documents, the most recent being the 2009 The Arts for K-8.  It is at least triple the size of the old one, nicely formatted with a fabulous glossary for the included subjects (dance, drama, music, and visual arts). 

Teachers can read it online <here> or get your school to contact the TDSB Curriculum Resources Department- they have some free print copies to distribute. Email them at  curriculumdocs@tdsb.on.ca or phone (416) 395-6571.

Rowan

2009 Ont Education Research Symposium

The Ministry of Education sponsors an annual research symposium and the 2009  theme was the achievement gap.

The papers have been posted online <here>. Read the papers get a synopsis of the current research on the link between the achievement gap and the following subjects: Aboriginal, gender (boys and reading), poverty, English /French language classes, special education.

Rowan

French resources for elem literacy and numercy

Judy A wants me to remind teachers about the Min of Ed and TFO eWorkshop web page of online resources (including video resources) that  support literacy and numeracy. French page <here> and English page <here>.

And I am attaching a recent bibliography of books in French for French language teachers. Teachers may contact the library to borrow them.

FrenchTeacherResources

Rowan

Impact of music instruction on literacy

The May 2009 (Monograph #19) Ministry series What Works  Research Into Practice is titled Placing Music at the Centre of Literacy Instruction.  Children benefit from music instruction; it helps with memory, auditory perception, metacognitive and phonolgoical memory. The authors recommend the following techniques to aid in music and literacy learning:  singing, using percussion, melody, expressing song in writing.

Rowan

The Arts (Grades 1-8)curriculum doc revised

The Ministry has released the 2009 revised Arts curriculum document, Grades K-8.

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

Including students with exceptionalities

The Ministry’s web page includes a monograph series of monographs called What Works? Research into Practice.

The January 2009 is titled Including Students with Exceptionalities and would be a basic read for any teacher new to special education in Ontario.  Remember that special ed is a huge topic and that the Professional Library has got oodles of books and articles to help teachers teaching or taking courses.

Rowan