Praise for THE FIRST NATIONS SERIES FOR YOUNG READERS TEACHER RESOURCE

Recently added The First Nations Series for Young Readers Teacher Resource : Grade 4-10 :  a resource companion to the First Nations series for Young Readers from Second Story Press by Shawntelle Nesbitt.

The introduction includes praise for this author and resource. “Shawntell Nesbitt gets it! Rich and extensive programming flows throughout Nesbitt’s guide, which demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of all that must be considered when bringing First Nations, Métis, or Inuit culture into the classroom”–Shelley Knott-Fife.

“The series and resource guide are current and allow students to learn about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit role models while incorporating Aboriginal perspective.”–Lynn Herr

“Durham District School Board’s Authentic Learning Wheel and Deconstruction Approach have been incorporated [in this resource] … Nesbitt has recognized the immeasurable value of the Anishinaabe Medicine Wheel Teaching of the Four Aspects of Human Beings as foundational to holistic education today”…–Deanna Fry.

Link to our catalogue

Early Childhood Education

Six new books to assist with early childhood curriculum planning.

The All-day Kindergarten and Pre-K Curriculum : A Dynamic-Themes Approach, by Doris Pronim Fromberg. 375.001 FRO

Provides examples of how professional early childhood teachers can organize content-rich classrooms with Activity-Based Learning Environments (ABLE).  Dynamic-themes focus on the connection making process of learning, a reflection of how our brains function to create meaning and strengthen memories.  Grounded in theory and research, provides an activity-based and classroom proven curriculum for educators to consider as they plan and intereact with pre-k and kindergarten children.  Describes a culturally sensitive curriculum in the context of literacy, technology, mathematics, social studies, science, the arts, and play.

Connecting Emergent Curriculum and Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom : strengthening content and teaching practice, by Sydney L. Schwartz and Sherry M. Copeland.  372.19 SCH.

“Two active early childhood educators provide teachers with resources to bring content alive in the daily, action-based pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms, and explore ways to document it.  Includes lists of key content ideas- coordinated with learning standards in science, mathematics, social studies, and the communication arts – to guide teacher observations, of, and interactions with, young children.  Chapters focus on ways to extend children’s emerging use of content in the block, manipulatives, water and sand, drama, expressive arts, and literacy centers, and link to the development of themes”–cover.

Twelve Best Practices For Early Childhood Education : integrating Reggio and other inspired approaches, by Ann Lewin-Benham.  372.21 LEW.

“Presents 12 best practices inspired not only by Reggio, but also by play-based and Montessori approaches to early childhood education.  These practices are demonstrated, one per chapter, with scenarios from classrooms, dialogues of children and teachers, and work samples showing the outcome of using each practice.  Used together, the 12 best practices offer a new framework for early education.  Written in the accessible style, expands on Lewin-Benham’s earlier works by showing the foundations for teachers to practice the Reggio Approach in their own settings”–cover.

The Problem With Math is English : a language-focused approach to helping all students develop a deeper understanding of mathematics, by Concepcion Molina.  372.7 MOL.

The goal is to raise readers’ mathematics expertise while simultaneously explaining the critical role of language and symbolism in understanding mathematics conceptually.  Philosophy in this book is to help teachers understand mathematics at a conceptual level so that they can develop their own activities to deepen students’ learning.  Through the process of answering questions and solving problems, readers will enhance their level of pedagogical content knowledge.  For Grades 3-9.

Different Speeds and Different Needs : how to teach sports to every kid, by Gary Barber.  796.083 BAR.

For K-12 teachers and coaches a guide to establishing and sustaining inclusive sports programs.  Learn how your sports program can include students with a range of special needs : austism spectrum disorders, ADHD and other attention difficulties, behavioral challenges, visual or hearing impairments, learning disabilities, physical challenges, anxiety, stress, and depression, height and weight challenges and more.

Teaching in the Digital Age : Smart Tools for Age 3 to Grade 3, by Brian Puerling.  371.33093 PUE.

A go-to resource for using today’s technology in the classroom.  Chapter one emphasizes the importance of goal setting.  Chapter two- eight cover seven technologies to support learning, access student knowledge and teacher practice, and exhibit learning.  QR codes add videos for further explanations and toolbox tips help faciltiate applications.  The seven technologies engage children to create and share ideas: cameras, projectors and document cameras, audio recordings, video conferencing and webcams, publication and presentation tools, videos, multi-touch mobile devices.  Strategies reflect Technology in Early Childhood Programs, the joint position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young children and the Fred Rogers Center.

Link to Catalogue

EARLY LITERACY

A Place for Wonder : reading and writing nonfiction in the Primary Grades, by Georgia Heard & Jennifer McDonough. 372.64 HEA

Discusses how to create “a landscape of wonder”, a primary classroom that encourages curiosity, creativity, and exploration.  Provides practical ways to set up “wonder centers,” to gather data through senses, to teach nonfiction craft.  A “how” to establish a classroom environment where students’ questions and observations are part of daily work.  Presents a step-by-step guide to planning a nonfiction reading and writing unit of study, which results in nonfiction texts created by students.  The project includes creating a table of contents, writing focused chapters, using “wow” words, and developing point of view.

Link to our catalogue

GEOWAT INNOVATIVE TEACHER HELPERS

New print edition from Canadian Curriculum Teacher Helper series. Students will learn about Canada in these simple to understand, comprehensive unit helpers.  Follow-up activities are included designed to consolidate the concepts taught.  Includes assessment ideas and an end-of unit test. Our new titles : All about Canada Grades 1-2 ;  Canada’s aboriginal peoples Grades 4-6 ;  Canada’s geographical regions Grades 4-6 ;  Canada’s pioneers Grades 2-4 ;  Canadian government Grades 4-6 ;  Canadian traditions and celebrations Grades 2-3 ;  Music lessons Grades 1-3 ;  Our community Grades 1-2 ;  Urban & rural communities  Grades 2-3. 

Link to our catalogue

Canadian content for Canadian teachers.  GEOWAT- Innovative Teacher Publishing has all of their titles available on-line.  Navigate to the subject of your choice and click on a book to see a sneak-peek of its content.  Sneak-peeks are printer friendly, so feel free to print and use in your class.

Link to GEOWAT

INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS AND FLUENCY

Literacy Is Not Enough: 21st-Century Fluencies For The Digital Age by Lee Crockett, Ian Jukes, Andrew Churches.  The fourth book in the 21st Century Fluency series identifies and explains the fluencies: solution fluency, information fluency, creativity fluency, media fluency, collaboration fluency, and global digital citizenship. The balance of the book introduces the framework for integrating the fluencies in traditional curriculum.

Link to Catalogue

Apps for Learning: 40 Best iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone Apps For High School  Classrooms by Andrew Churches, Harry Dickens.  Covers mobility apps categories for utilities, general classroom applications also specialty apps designed with unique learning tools that students can utilize both in class and on the go.  Includes detailed descriptions for some of the best apps around for high school students.  Explores the versatility of utility apps like Atomic Web Browser and GoodReader.  Make use of general apps like Evernote, Pages, and Dragon Dictation, or have fun on projects using Garage Band, iMovie, or Whiteboard HD.  Or create unique learning adventures using speciality apps like Comic Touch, StoryKit, Video Science, or NASA App HD. 

Link to Catalogue

The Active Classroom: Practical Strategies For Involving Students in the Learning Process by Ron Nash. Just by dipping into the book, teachers will be able to begin implementing Nash’s ideas immediately.  A highly valuable resource for busy teachers, who can look at almost any section and within minutes select an idea, a tool, or a strategy, and put it into action the next day.

Link to Catalogue

On Purpose: How Great School Cultures Form Strong Character by Samuel Casey Carter.  In telling the stories of twelve very different but equally extraordinary schools from all across the country, Carter explains how school cultures are made, how they form student character, and ultimately, how great school cultures harness student character to drive achievement.

Link to Catalogue

Making Friends PreK-3: A Social Skills Program For Inclusive Settings by Ruth Herron Ross, Beth Roberts-Pacchione.  Second edition. Revised edition of Wanna Play: Friendship Skills For Preschool and Elementary Grades. Reworked to be more effective and added to the program’s strengths for a more enriched social experience.  There are details guiding teachers with lesson objectives and goals.  More suggestions have been added for compensating for different cognitive and developmental levels.  Specifics about lesson preparation and implementation time have been added to help the flow of lesson planning.

Link to Catalogue

 Unison Reading: Socially Inclusive Group Instruction For Equity and Achievement by Cynthia McCallister.   Unison Reading is a method that shifts responsibility to children for determining which information sources to attend to during the reading process and how these should be integrated.  The method is also based on a commitment to social justice.

Link to Catalogue

Academic Instruction For Students With Moderate and Severe Intellectual Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms by June E. Downing. The information and strategies are based in the understanding of the importance and interrelatedness of curriculum, context, and instruction for all students but especially for students with significant disabilities.  Students are not likely to pick up all the possible skills in general education classrooms unless the material has been adapted and the skills taught to them.

Link to Catalogue

Connecting Content and Academic Language For English Learners and Struggling Students Grades 2-6 by Ruth Swinney, Patricia Velasco. Focuses on amplifying the teaching strategies and modifying the instructional strategies so as to recognize the emergent bilinguals’ “cats and dogs,” and then build upon them.  Swinney and Velasco give teachers ways of leading emergent bilinguals to also find the lions, and tigers, and bears that they’re sure to find if they’re allowed to walk on the same challenging curricular road as all the other children.

Link to Catalogue

40 Active Learning Strategies For The Inclusive Classroom, Grades K-5 by Linda Schwartz Green, Diane Casale-Giannola. Terms such as brain-based learning, differentiated instruction, and information processing come alive through the vignettes, step-by-step directions, activities, and reflections.  The text steers students and teachers in the direction of learning for retention with active strategies that connect to both the concepts and individual learners.

Link to Catalogue

Students Taking Charge

Teaching the 3Cs: Creativity, Curiosity, and Courtesy: Activities That Build a Foundation For Success, by Patricia A Dischler.

Part 1. addresses creativity, that is allowing for creative moments to happen and expanding on them when they do.  Discusses what makes a creative person and what attributes can enhance and bring out creativeness in all children.  Includes activities.

Part 2. focuses on curiosity.  Discusses the importance of curiosity and how it supports further learning.  Explores the connection between curiosity and creativity.  Includes activities that foster creativity.

Finally courtesy is explored.  Teachers and parents are key in supporting this attribute through our modeling.  Activities included that promote courtesy in children. 

The purpose is to create a basis for further learning.

Link to catalogue

Students Taking Charge: Inside the Learner-Active Technology-Infused Classroom, by Nancy Sulla.

Intended as a guide to designing an Authentic Learning Unit and structures and strategies to support its implementation.  The early chapters delve into designing an appropriate core problem for students to solve and the analytic rubic to provide them with clearly articulated expectations.  Chapter 4 introduces the notion of “participatory structures”, or ways in which students participate in the learning process.  Chapter 5 addresses differentiation techniques.  Chapter 6 offers a variety of structures and strategies for creating an environment in which students take responsibility for their own learning and thus engage more fully in the learning process.  Chapter 7 offers a look at facilitating learning in this environment.  Chapter 8 addresses physical classroom design. 

The ten principles of the “Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom” are woven throughout and then addressed in the final chapter.

Link to catalogue

Making Math Accessible To Students With special Needs: Practical Tips and Suggestions, Grade 3-5.

Each chapter offers informed choices for an array of understandable, doable, best-practice instructional procedures.  Four students are followed throughout with opportunities for reflection to increase personal awareness of both the teacher’s role and students’ needs in the mathematics classroom, tasks to provide interaction with the content of the book, and tips for ideas applicable to real-world classroom situations.  Reflections and tasks in each chapter will actively engage readers and can be used as a self-study professional development tool or as a group book study.

Aims to provide useful tools to provide high-quality, research-based instruction and support for students with special needs.  Includes reproducibles.  Easy-to-read resource, full of practical strategies and lessons based on best practices.  Explains the 5E instructional model – engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate – and provides a sample 5E lesson plan with clear objectives and materials checklists.

Link to catalogue

Activities for English Language Learners Across the Curriculum, Grades K-5, by Stephen A. White. 

Designed to provide educators with diverse classroom activities that will help meet English language learners educational needs.  Includes a variety of strategies that support opportunities for the following: building academic vocabulary, increasing comprehension, developing oral language, developing socialization, cooperative learning, building and activating prior knowledge, and informal assessment with progress monitoring.  The classroom-tested activities are based on students’ language proficiency needs and the key to success with these activities is to know the proficiency level of the students and the appropriate questions to ask students at that proficiency level.

An interactive-Whiteboard-compatible CD is included that contains reproducible teacher resource materials and student activity pages for use with either Macintosh or Windows.  Activities are provided for reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies.  The included list of questions is based on new Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Link to catalogue

School Library and Classroom

Connecting Libraries with Classrooms: the curricular roles of the media specialist. 2nd edition, Kay Bishop.

An in-depth exploration of the topics that are currently relevant in K-12 curricula, including the school librarian’s role in dealing with these issues, collaborating with the teachers, and connecting to classrooms.

The introduction relates how some school librarians use this book as staff development taking from the book one chapter and presenting it to classroom teachers in professional development settings.  Definite help for practicing school librarians to integrate library services into the curriculum.  Further reading and Websites for most part lead to practical information, include lesson plans for specific subject areas or groups of students.

Link to Catalogue

Books, Media & the Internet : children’s literature for today’s classrooms. edited by Shelley Stagg Peterson, David Booth and Carol Jupiter.

Find inspiration and strategies for melding technology and children’s literature from classroom teachers, librarians, university educators and journalists, who have found effective ways to engage young people with text, both in print and on screen.  There are five sections with current information, classroom examples, and anecdotes to help teachers use digital media, and print texts to extend students learning.  The helpful “Teaching Tools” section at the end of the book explains how to use a variety of digital tools in the classroom.

Link to Catalogue

Bookmapping: lit trips and beyond. Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg.

Bookmapping can enhance readers adventures and journeys of the mind in an interdisciplinary strategy that unites the settings of literature and the geography of social studies to help students understand both.

Working with maps / Google Earth, the reader can bring text into the real world.  A bookmap creates a cognitive connection between literature and geography- literary geography.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, organized to lead the reader from understanding and using existing mapped resources to creating their own mapped resources using the bookmap concepts for digital flat maps and for Google Earth.

Link to Catalogue

First weeks

Kindergarten Plus! has 10 theme-based units.  Each unit contains hands-on activities that integrate all the subject areas.  Highlights of each monthly theme includes; reproducible parent letter, engaging Math lesson plans; weekly poems with daily lesson plans; detailed Integrated Studies lesson plans;  classroom centre suggestions, comprehensive list of children’s books;  assessment suggestions and blackline masters.

Provincial curriculum correlation chart is a PDF on Portage & Main’s website.

The CD titled “Songs” circulates with the Resource Overview volume.

Link to Catalogue