Take One Leave One - Sharing Resources

    Sharing resources, lessons, and materials happens beyond just between colleagues, as there are millions of online resources available for teachers to use and adpat in their own classrooms. Some resources require a payment, understandably so, while others are free for the general public. Two great websites that I’ve used a lot during my time at Thomas Merton are Ereading Worksheets and Curio. I’ve relied on Ereading for ‘gap-filling’, or extra practice/support for ELL students as well as students who are a little rusty with the basics, such as identifying elements of a short story, or figurative language. On the flip-side, Canada Reads is where I was able to help shape a novel study while I was teaching 3U.They provide excellent context, information, and graphics on specific authors and their work. I’ve decided to include both resources to demonstrate the spectrum with which types of online resources are available - as you’ll see, the range is quite large!

Back to the Basics: EReading

Focus on Short Stories: "The Lottery Ticket" - applicable for grades 5-9

    This is a short story I use as part of the final assessment in mPLAR English as it is not an overly long story but, provides opportunities for students to analyze the text for important meanings and themes. What’s great about this activity is that there is an answer key to the multiple choice questions which makes it easier for marking. There is also a vocabulary in the footnotes section to assist with certain language barriers. There are 20 more short stories included on this website and what’s neat is that you can download the story, and any other resource in multiple files. Everything is available to download as PDF for easy uploading, a Word Doc for easy editing, or simply in a link format if you were to embed the story on another online platform. Though there are tons of materials on this site, figurative language, text structure, point of view, to name a few, this is should be a great place to start. There are also powerpoint presentations on topics like theme which should serve as inspiration for a teacher’s own lesson. Ereading doens’t provide fully drawn out lesson plans, as it is more of a good resource bank, especially for those students who need extra support and practice with core literacy skills. I would recommend this site to ESL/ELL teachers as well as it does a great job with providing other basic skill developing, practice work.

Extending your Understanding: Curio (CBC)

Novel Study: The Marrow Theives by Cherie Dimaline

    You may have heard or seen this resource before, but Curio is where it’s at when it comes to information and study guides for different novels. There is an excellent Canada Reads (on Curio) page for The Marrow Theives which comes with interviews and other videos of Dimaline talking about her experiences writing her book, and why she wrote it. There are also teacher guides and question prompts to help frame the direction of the novel study. What is also great is that there are related topics to those in the novel with clickable links to explore that topic in further detail. Curio is a great place to get started on ideas for a new book or unit as there are other great resources on multiple topics all of which you can easily search up. There is even a great ‘how-to’ graphic on how to use Canada Reads in the classroom. Curio is a lovely Canadian resource that allows different authors' voices to be heard, while presenting the information in an approachable and student friendly manner - I highly recommend! I've purchased a memoir called From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle which outlines his life growing up Metis and homeless, and the challenges he overcame. I'm very excited to read it this summer, and to see that he also has a page dedicated to his book as well. Another great place to start if you ever have to teach this novel.

Whether you’re looking for something super basic, like a refresher on the different types of irony used in literature, or you’re looking for contextual information on a new novel, these resources would be a great place to start! 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these resources, feel free to take one and/or leave one!