SLAVConnects

From the Guardian: Schools of the future series. Technology just have to mean the end of school libraries.

Resources to help plan lessons that promote global awareness with your students..

"Digital storytelling is one way for students and teachers to share their knowledge. This page includes links to support the use of digital storytelling for both teaching and learning. "

How to teach text structures for better reading comprehension and improved retention. Teachers of history, science, and other subjects are now expected to weave literacy instruction into their teaching of content. But how should they do that? What are the most effective ways to help students learn to read challenging content-area texts? This article breaks down the research behind explicit teaching of text structures and includes a video that shows how to do it (Great for content-area literacy)

Kathy Schrock's page features some wonderful links to many sites that help to explain the key literacies that are part of today's literacy landscape. Well organised under clear headings, these offer a great resource for educators and offer many opportunities for classroom inclusion.

This infographic features six kinds of readers together with a short description on each. When I looked at the categories I find that I am a bit of a cross between a couple of these.

An interesting article that looks at teaching critical thinking but in a way that shifts the ownership for the questioning to the students. The ap[proach empowers them to think at higher levels but at the same time there is support provided with the question stems

"Links to quite a few simple library-related, online games are in linked to this post.  They are primary level but might be useful for lower secondary as well. You simply click on the flower signs to go to the games.

An app that may be useful or parents or educators when they first come across a title. Level It Books is an app that tells you the DRA, gre, lexlile, and guided reading level just by scanning it!

"This SLV guide explains how to find and use information collected in censuses from 1788 to 1901. It also includes information about the history of censuses in Australia. A census counts and describes the population of a particular area. Census data is useful for researching places & people's lives over time, or at a point in time. Sometimes information about individuals is available too. The earliest systematic collection of information about Australia's residents occurred in 1788. The colonies and states regularly collected data in musters or censuses, up until the first Australian (national) census in 1911."

Another interesting way to use the technology with a good explanation about how the author did this.

The article discusses figures that seem to show that e-book sales have plateaued and the demand for hardcopy books remains steady. "There have been plenty of ideas on how to reinvigorate bookstores, but Waterstones and Barnes & Noble appear to have benefited from less radical moves. Waterstones has spent millions of pounds refurbishing its 290 stores, adding cafs and trying to emulate local bookstores by giving store managers more control. The growth of "click-and-collect" sales also benefits shops, which can encourage shoppers to browse when they come to pick up their orders. In the US, Barnes & Noble has put its faith in selling ancillary products alongside books, including vinyl records and craft beer kits. Some in the books industry suggest bricks-and-mortar stores may have benefit from resentment of Amazon among some consumers. However, globally, there is no guarantee that physical books will be sold through physical bookstores. "Online sales of physical books are likely to remain strong," Deloitte says, in its forthcoming 2015 predictions."

" Which children's do you find moving? The team at Quotery.com has created an infographic called "20 Inspiring Children's Book Quotes." The words come from a variety of titles including Roald Dahl's Matilda, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone. The the full infographic is embedded"

"From teaching coding to modelling texts for literature analysis, teachers share the inventive ways they use Lego in lessons"

A good glossary of literary terms on @genius. Images/video help explanation and include refs to contemporary examples

"Lit Genius is a community of scholars-and a crew of heroic hearts-devoted to annotating great literature. We host everything from the classics to recent fiction to spoken word."

"Genius Hour in the classroom is an approach to learning built around student curiosity, self-directed learning, and passion-based work. In traditional learning, teachers map out academic standards, and plan units and lessons based around those standards. In Genius Hour, students are in control, choosing what they study, how they study it, and what they do, produce, or create as a result. As a learning model, it promotes inquiry, research, creativity, and self-directed learning."