Lisa Hill, teacher librarian at Mossgiel Park Primary School, is integrating the new Australian Curriculum into her existing literature units of work. Lisa outlines this work on her fantastic blog LisaHillSchoolStuff’s Weblog, and is willing to share the four units of work when she has completed them. On behalf of many primary school educators out there, thankyou Lisa!
State Library of Victoria (SLV) offers professional development opportunities to support teachers, teacher librarians, librarians, writers, and literacy professionals. Visit their page ‘Professional learning’ for details of upcoming events:
Awesome stories is a gathering place of primary source material that is free to join, so history teachers get excited (it even includes lesson plans!). If you decide not to join, you are still able to access plenty of amazing resources that are sourced from the USA national archives, universities, museums, historical societies, and government created websites. The ‘stories’/topics, such as impact of shooting, the King’s speech, and Chernobyl disaster, are told/explained by the relevant images, videos, audio, documents, and other primary sources linked to that story. It is an amazing place to find interesting sources to show your students, or for your students to search for primary sources to support their assignments.
The Houston Chronicle Editorial recently published the article ‘Elegy for librarians: After all the budget cutting’s done, who’ll be around to help us ask the sharper questions’ (March 30th, 2011). While this article is a solid look at some of the roles of libraries and librarians in today’s society, what is powerful are the comments being left. Have a look and see what you think.
Shaozhuo Wan, Carol Grantham and Silvana Jenkins from The School Library Association of South Australia (SLASA) have developed Online Referencing Generator.
The generator uses the Harvard author-date system and supports junior school, middle school, and senior school. This resource would be a valuable asset for any teacher and student, and would be great to have as a resource available on a library website. If you want to add an Online Referencing Generator button to your site, go to SLASA’s website and follow the link.
During the Victorian school holiday period (9th April – 26th April), Bright Ideas will be posting twice weekly. All educators having term holidays, enjoy a safe and restful holiday period.
Bev Novak’s recent post ’10 reasons why Google can’t replace learning!’ on her blog NovaNews is an impassioned reminder of the role of educators and the role of ICT tools in teaching and learning. As Novak explains, information is readily retrievable, but students still need their teachers and librarians to teach the life-long-learning skills required to turn that information into knowledge.
Creative Net facilitates author and illustrator participation at schools without you having to pay a speakers’ agency fee. There are plenty of speakers to choose from ranging from picture book authors and illustrators to young adult fiction authors and illustrators. You choose from an impressive list of speakers, and Creative Net confirms your date with the speaker and then puts you in direct contact with them. A great way to celebrate Book Week (August 20th – 26th).
There is an amazing opportunity for school groups to hear and learn from a range of authors about their stories and growth as writers at Reading Matters: Youth Day, on Thurday 26th May. Youth day is part of the Reading Matters conference (Friday 27th May and Saturday 28th May) (see blog post ‘ALERT – Reading Matters conference’, published February 10th 2011, for more details).
Upper primary school and secondary school students can attend half-day sessions of presentations from four authors and an accompanying performance.
Upper primary school students and teachers, you can be wowed by; Newbery Medal winner Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me), inaugural Text Prize winner Richard Newsome (The Billionaire Trilogy), graphic artist Brenton McKenna, and Oliver Phommanvanh (9.20am-11.30am and 12.35am-2.50pm).
Secondary school students and teachers, your session will feature; Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), Jane Burke (The Story of Tom Brennan), Karen Healey (The Guardian of the Dead), and Ursula Dubosarksy (The Golden Day) (9.20am-11.30am).
The cost is $8 per student (teachers are free).
There is also a Middle School Writing / Poetry Workshop with Lorraine Marwood (Prime Minister’s Literary Award winner, Star Jumps). In a one hour writing session Marwood will share her wisdom with students and challenge them to tap into their creativity (10.30am and 12.45pm). This will cost $10 per student.
This is a wonderful opportunity for students and teachers alike. For booking information and more details, visit the SLV page below:
55 interesting ways to support writing in the classroom (and counting) is a compilation created by Tom Barrett, that can be contributed to by whomever. It is a ‘this is brilliant’ Google Doc resource that is flying around Twitter and is being contributed to through crowdsourcing. It is part of Barrett’s ‘Interesting Ways’ series and is definately worth a long look. Literacy is cross-curricular, so remember to share this resource with all.
