On Friday, I attended the Regional Literacy Council meeting held at the Thames Valley DSB in London. This group is a group of consultants from boards in southwest Ontario who meet 3 times a year and share literacy information and resources. When we meet, we usually have a ministry update, share new publications and literacy-based conferences and best practices.
The focus of this meeting was oral communication. We shared a number of resources (rubrics, lesson ideas, web sites) and also examined the Ministry documents that provide support and guidance to teaching. assessing and evaluating the oral communiation strand. I will pass these on to the English teachers through the department heads at our next meeting.
Here's some interesting websites that I have found from some of the feeds that I subscribe to:
One Minute Critic - this is from a library in Vancouver. They have created 1 minute booktalk videos for a variety of books. It looks fairly new because there aren't a lot of book talks. But you could use it as a model for either creating book talks for the school library or for students to create book talks.
Top 10 Obscure Google Tricks - For all you geeks out there, here is an interesting collection that tells you how to use Google to track flight information, find the time anywhere in the world, and a whole bunch of other stuff I probably wouldn't use.
20+ Places for Public Domain E-Books - This is a list of sites where you can find free books that can be downloaded to your ipod, pda or e book reader (Does it work with Kindle? BTW this little gadget is sold out according to Amazon's site. I still don't know if my eyes are ready for this).
The Red Room - Here's a site that will allow social networking between authors and readers. It has author bios, lists of works, audio and video.
YALSA Wiki - This wiki has lots of information for school librarians who work with Young Adults. Check out the book lists and advocacy toolkit section.
Poets.org - This is from the Academy of American Poets and incudes bios, lesson plans and other additional supports for the teaching of poetry.
United Nations International Year of the Potato - I kid you not, 2008 is the year of the potato (my husband will be happy to hear this!).
Google Lit Trips - This site combines Google Earth with literature by mapping story settings. Students can create lit trips as part of a book study.
Lastly, I went to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this Saturday morning. I don't think that I have been to the Auto Show since I was very young. My only memory ( I must have been around 8 or 9) is one of collecting pamphlets from as many of the car displays as possible. Well, I now know that pamphlet collection still seems to be the main attraction (besides the cars) as evidenced by the number of people who had a carry bag attached to their arms. I also now know why I haven't been to the show since I was young. I am definitely NOT a car fan.
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3 comments:
Hi, thanks for blogging about The One Minute Critic - i really appreciate it! The videos are going well, and i hope to add a lot more different people talking about books, over the next few months, so keep me on your radar! Also, if you want to make your own book review videos (for your students...? As a class project...?) I'd love to hear about it - if you upload them to youtube, use the tag "oneminutecritic" and i'll find them and feature them in the blog!
Thanks for the offer lucian. Unfortunately, YouTube is blocked in my district. If we have students or teachers create a book review video, we would have to post on TeacherTube - that one is not blocked.
TeacherTube is a good place, too. The offer still stands - let me know if the project works, or if you have any questions about the process.
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