teaching and Learning supports, useful websites, etc.
Ontario Educational Resource Bank Ontario Educational Resource Bank - classroom activities, interactive online activities, lessons and entire course units; teacher login/password is required (go to the Passwords page under Teacher Resources to download the teacher login and password info if you need it) 
Learn360 is a video stream service licensed by Ministry of Education. Here you will find a growing collection of images, video and audio clips, and full length documentaries exploring many subject areas and appropriate for school projects. Once you find useful resources you can download them or save them in a project file to stream at a later date. You can also share lesson plans using these resources and find and use plans created by other teachers. Training resources can be found here.
login = your school email address; password = your five digit employee ID # 
Criterion on Demand No login or password required on any school computer or when using a school network (but not available at home). Simply click on the "Log In" button on the top right hand corner and then click on the "click here to log in" link. As of spring 2016, these same films can be found in the Learn360 collection. 
TumbleBook Cloud
Ebooks and audiobooks; includes YA novels, some of the "classics" (like all of Shakespeare's plays), poetry, short stories and nonfiction (science, history, geography topics). Listen and read along at the same time, OR choose to just read OR just listen - the choice is yours! On a home computer, you can bookmark where you left off. You may need to use a password from a home computer. Go to the Passwords page under Teacher Resources to download the teacher login and password info if you need it. 
National Film Board (NFB) - new website with lots of cool features, such as playlists, to help you discover many excellent films, documentaries, animiated shorts, etc.. You can create your own account to keep track of the items you are interested in.
The Ministry of Education has paid for school licences, so teachers can show content from the NFB website to their classes without having to purchase the films or infringe copyright; some films, however, can be purchased for download and most can be purchased on DVD if you don't want to stream the film. Log in to your Campus account here. For more details about setting up your "Campus Account", see the handout found on the Library and Computers folder on the staff drive. 
Mindomo - graphic organizer / mind mapping web-based software licensed by the Ministry for all schools. Info on how to register and login, and how students can log in, is available in the Library and Computers folder on the staff common drive. 
XpressLab
Web-based software, licensed by the Ministry, which can be used by classroom teachers to aid students in developing their communication skills. Focus on speaking and listening with this great differentiated instruction resource. Creating an account info available in the Library and Computers folder on the staff drive 
Naxos Music
Stream (not download) from over 700,000 tracks of classical, world, jazz, etc. You may need to use a password from a home computer. Go to the Passwords page under Teacher Resources to download the teacher login and password info if you need it. 
TED Ed - lessons worth sharing
Lessons built around TedTalks, TedEd original videos or Youtube vidoes, created by teachers. You can use the lessons as is, or modify them, or create and share your own! Print resources for teachers
Research Success: A Guide for Secondary Students, 2012 edition This document can be found on both the staff drive and on the student drive of the school's network (staff drive/COMMON/LIBRARY and COMPUTERS/eReources/TDSB Research Guides; student drive/_Common/Library). We have purchased the rights to this excellent resource, which covers the entire research process from initial ideas to final product, from the Toronto District School Board; feel free to print any work sheets you might need. You will also find an excellent explanation of MLA and APA documentation styles, with easy to follow examples, at the end of the booklet. Me Read? . . . And How!! - Ontario Teachers' Report on how to Improve Boys' Literacy Skils.
This is a follow up to the 2004 resource Me Read? NoWay! A Practical Guide to Improving Boys' Literacy Skills. This resource presents successful strategies used by teachers in Ontario classrooms using the ideas and resources presented in the 2004 document and it also provides some helpful professional reading around the topic of literacy in general and boys' literacy in particular.
Together for Learning Implemented in spring of 2010, this document explains how applying "The Learning Commons" concept of a school-wide approach to literacy and inquiry can create a 21st Century program that meets the needs of our students. It discusses the reality of the new literacies (beyond traditional print and numeracy literacies) and the impact of new technologies on the way we all learn.
Exemplary School Libraries
2009 document based on research into what makes an excellent school library program. The research was funded by People for Education and carried out by Queen's University professors.
Google Docs for Teachers
Great intro to Google docs, presentation, and forms. Despite the name, this could be very useful for students as well
Google Tools for Teachers
An excellent resource explaining how tools such as Google Books, Scholar, Maps, and Docs. (May 2014 update: a couple of points in this document are not out of date - for example Wonderwheel is no longer available - but most of it is still very useful).
Essential Classroom Practices
Definitions, examples and weblinks for 12 practices of good teaching, such as learning goals, success criteria, accountable talk, gradual release of responsibility, etc.; created by SCDSB teachers.
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For teachers: screenshot walkthrough of how to set up a simple "CCI themed" class page in D2L in order to use D2L for collecting student files and using Turnitin: pdf file below. (Note that this is up-to-date as of spring 2014)
Some suggested websites for teaching ideas and curriculum resources 2Learn.ca - check out the "2Learn.ca for teens" and the "Senior High Source" links on the left hand side of the home page 4edu.ca featured resources page - free curriculum resources for Canadian teachers - website links and downloadable and/or print resources from organizations such as Elections Canada, the National Film Board, Canadian Bankers Association, Earth Day Canada, Statistics Canada, etc. Many are specifically aimed at particular courses, such as grade ten history or grade nine civics. 21st century Information Fluency - online tutorials and resources for teaching/learning "digitial literacy" - either for yourself or for your students! Learn more about how digital literacy differns from print literacy, including lots of info on finding and evaluating websites. Annenberg Learner - professional development for teachers (streamed vidoes, online courses) plus interactive lessons for student; based on American curriculum and standards, but most of what is here is applicable for Canadian teachers and students; does offer material for sale, but there is tons of stuff that you can read/stream for free Arts Connected - tools for teaching the arts Canada Year Book Historical Collection (1867 - 1967) - search by year or by topic - great resource for history, family studies and math courses teacher Resources - lesson plans and student worksheets which "have been designed to help students use the historical information of the Canada Year Book Historical Collection to bring the Canada of the past to life. The lessons also encourage students to develop critical thinking skills and to research and explore primary source documents." 2010 Canada Yearbook (pdf format) - page includes links to previous 4 Yearbooks as well Classroom Clipart Commoncraft.com - a great place to look for short videos you can stream to explain all kinds of topics, such as the issue of your digital footprint, web2.0 technologies like RSS feeds, and more. Community Learning Network - a teacher created resource bank of website links to curriculum based materials (note, no longer funded, so some links may be broken or out of date) Connect Safely - " for parents, teens, educators, advocates - everyone engaged in and interested in the impact of the social Web" - U. S. site, but has useful material on topics like using Facebook safely Cool Tools for Schools - a wiki with links to, and a brief explanation of, hundreds of online "tools", organized by function (writing tools, collaborative tools, video tools, research tools, etc.) Curriculum Services Canada - lots of links to online and print resources (pdf files, powerpoint slide shows, web-based activiites, lesson plans, course profiles, etc.) - definitely worth checking out! Discovery Education - provider of digital resources (videos, online resources, downloadable resources, etc.) for educators (some are free, some are not) Have fun teaching - mostly useful if you are looking for elementary level or ESL materials ICThinking wiki - info and links for a variety of classroom useful Web2.0 tools (designed for teachers, created by SCDSB teachers) Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario - Educational Resources. Of special interest on this website: What Students Need to Know about Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy, which includes a teacher guide for grade 10 iTunesU - over 350,000 educational videos, lectures Library of Congress Classroom Materials - the largest library in the world has created some resources for educators including sets of primary resources on specific topics, and presentations/activities for students; mostly American history topics, but there are some crossovers to other subjects (19th century authors for example). Primary source sets can also be found on this LOC Pinterest board. Other LOC PInterest boards can be found here. Media Awareness Network - "Resources and support for everyone interested in media literacy and digital literacy for young people". Click here for the teacher resources section, or here for the parent section, or here for free online games for kids that explore various topics such as online privacy and critical evaluation of websites. Lots more available at this site - really worth exploring! MIT Highlights for Schools - open course ware materials from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) selected for senior high school students going on to university looking for videos and other materials to review key scientific and technological concepts (teacher page) National Gallery of Canada - free distance learning (several live webinar topics available aimed at secondary students). Newseum Digital Classroom - "This innovative website is a free, cross-disciplinary classroom resource featuring interactive timelines, archival videos and downloadable historic front pages through our lenses of historical connections, media literacy and civics. Comprehensive yet flexible lesson plans are designed for middle, high school and college teachers and students." (note: U.S. focus but still relevant topics for us too particularly around media/journalism topics). Newsela - a great classroom resource for current nonfiction and news articles; each article comes in 5 reading levels so everyone in your class can read the same article but at a level they can understand; new articles added every day with an archive of over 1,000 articles; U.S. company so lots of American content, but there are international topics as well; free and paid versions available. OER Commons (Open Educational Resources) - "Find free-to-use teaching and learning content from around the world. . . This site is a structured database of links to high-quality resources found on other websites. OER Commons provides a single point of access through which educators, students, and all learners can search,browse, evaluate, and discuss over 30,000 high-quality OER." Ontario Time Machine - "really old Ontario books" (1750's to early 20th century) - includes teacher guides Project Zero - from the Harvard Graduate School of Education - " Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels" - see list of projects with links to individual websites explaining the learning concepts being researched and the resulting teacher resources that came out of these projects. For example, Making Thinking Visible - teacher resources for understanding and then implementing in their classrooms "visible thinking" strategies (one strategy for developing critical thinking skills) Puzzlemaker ReadWriteThink.org - created by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English; high quality language arts and literacy resources (lesson plans, handouts, student activites, and professional development) Science in movies: Flickclip - aimed at teachers looking for movie clips to use in science classes, especially to introduce new topics (eg. scene from Star Wars to introduce the idea of the speed of light); the movie clips are embedded in the site ________________ Statistics Canada home page Stats Can learning resources home page
Thinkfinity - curriculum resources aimed at U.S. teachers, but worth checking out Webtools4u2use - created by teacher-librarians for teacher-librarians, but fully applicable for all teachers! Wintertickle Press - located in Barrie, sells curriculum resources written by teachers 
Teaching Human Rights in Ontario - A Guide for Ontario Schools
(lessons, handouts etc. appropriate for grade 8 and up and applicable for a number of different subject areas) | ||||||||||||||||
