In particular, the SOCIAL JUSTICE BEGINS WITH ME Kit for Primary, Junior and Intermediate grades and the K-8 CONNECTIONS are Ontario curriculum  based resources that include lesson plans and classroom resources to help bring inclusion, equity, empathy, respect, and dignity to your school.

There is a section in Connections specifically for French language classroom needs as well.

The TRC is pleased to have acquired these resources and they will soon be available for borrowing.

Check out STRANDS for more details about DIGNITY MONTH and the DIGNITY PROJECT

May is also a month of acknowledgements and celebrations:  May Day, the international celebration of both Spring and of Workers,  Canada’s Aboriginal Awareness Week May 22 – 25,  World No-Tobacco Day on the 31st, and of course, Mother’s Day. Can’t wait for this year’s craft brought home from school, thanks Teachers for taking time to remember Moms!

Another theme acknowledged in May is DIGNITY.  While dignity is a theme important to many human service organizations, it has been comprehensively championed by the Salavation Army’s Dignity Project, a non-denominational program suggesting simple ways to help others help themselves in your community. This program dovetails well with the exploration of Social Justice present in Ontario’s curriculum from Kindergarten all the way through to Secondary.

ETFO has created many resources to support the integration of Dignity and other values of Social Justice for elementary as well as secondary Ontario classrooms.

In particular, the SOCIAL JUSTICE BEGINS WITH ME Kit for Primary, Junior and Intermediate grades and the K-8 CONNECTIONS are Ontario curriculum  based resources that include lesson plans and classroom resources to help bring inclusion, equity, empathy, respect, and dignity to your school.

There is a section in Connections specifically for French language classroom needs as well.

The TRC is pleased to have acquired these resources and they will soon be available for borrowing.

Please contact the TRC Librarian, Peggy Lunn, for more details about what these excellent resources have to offer, and check the TRC catalogue to book them for yourself.

If you are one of the many teachers who are hailing The Hunger Games trilogy as the saviour of recreational reading for the 11- 15 set, perhaps you are feeling brave enough to harness that momentum and introduce the concept of DYSTOPIA as a genre of not only reading, but of THOUGHT. Yep, I said it, I DARE you to introduce the concept of Dystopia, and discuss examples of these constructs in writing and film to intermediate age students.

The danger here, of course, is snapping the trap down on the mouse as soon as it goes for the cheese. In other words, RESIST any urge you may have to delve deeply into the social criticisms, the historical references, the biblical allegories that all exist within The Hunger Games’ plot lines. You do not want to take away the sheer joy of an engaging read for those who have finally shown a willingness to give reading for its own sake a try.

However, by using The Hunger Games as a vehicle, you can gently take the opportunity to introduce to the kids that this story -that is great just on a story line level – does have more to it, and that it is just one of a whole genre of thought and social criticism available for them to explore as they continue participating in recreational reading.
By the time they get to Grade 11, with a few Dystopia titles under their belts, the political allegory  of Animal Farm might be less daunting. Heck, they might even enjoy it !
Mini-lessons or activities you can do with The Hunger Games that won’t suck the joy out of the book :

• OVERVIEW OF DYSTOPIA AND ITS ELEMENTS
Provide a definition of Dystopia, (and this could also be a great opportunity to instance a time when Wikipedia IS an appropriate resource choice as the topic is well established in public knowledge, and the provided sources are recognizable, and easy to trace and verify.) Once the general description of what the concept of Dystopia is begins to emerge, students will likely realize they have been exposed to this genre of fiction before in either book or film format without knowing what it was.
Providing some academic boundaries to surround their prior knowledge will allow students to go into their personal backfiles for recall and categorization of information.

The most important concept for them to “get” about Dystopia is that “The Authority”, be it Big Brother from 1984, The Government in The Chrysalids, The Capital in The Hunger Games, the not so nurturing qualities of The Nurturing Centre in The Giver, The National Administration Centre in the film adaptation of Kurt Voneggett’s Harrison Bergeron, tries to convince the citizens they oppress that the oppression they experience is justified or even good for them. This is what separates Dystopia from Science Fiction.

Adolescents are, of course, VERY receptive to identifying and calling out the hypocrisy of authority figures; they are biologically wired to do this !   Once they buy in, you can challenge them to go further; to take their critical observations and form them into a supportable argument.  Discussions of reasonable vs. oppressive societal restrictions are just around the corner!  Sounds like great preparation for Grade 10 Civics , Gr 12 Challenge and Change in Society, or the Philosophy courses available in Gr 11 or 12.  Best of all, they likely won’t even know you are clandestinely preparing them for it.

Introduce the fact that many authors, artists and film makers have explored the concepts associated with Dystopian society. Make a timeline of famous works: Lord of the Flies, The Running Man, Brave New World, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange, ones they are likely to have heard or seen referenced in some context; be it film or fiction.

Be sure to throw in some YA titles, well known ones like The Giver trilogy, City of Ember, Canadian ones like The SALT Trilogy, The Dirt Eaters -all of which we have at the TRC – to legitimize books used in your classrooms as being part of a bigger picture.

• VISIT A LOCAL OR REGIONAL PUBLIC LIBRARY’S  TEEN PAGE ON ITS WEBSITE
  

Our own KFPL, the Ottawa Public Library, or Brockville Public Library all have comprehensive sections dedicated to YA and Teen readers. There are lots of  lists of recommended Dystopia fiction for teens.  And thanks to Katniss, these read-alike lists are everywhere right now.

Like this  If you Love the Hunger Games list from Ottawa, or this list of Top 12 Dystopian Novels, or this Blog link to Reading Rants, for your kids with a little more * edge* who might take recommendations from other teens before they take them from you

• HUNGER GAMES AS A GATEWAY TO SOCIAL JUSTICE
  

As we already know, empathy is the root of compassionate acts.  Making a connection with Katniss, and all the other suffering characters from the Districts, might just allow room for a connection to be made that there are people right here, right now, in your town, and in your school, or in their class, who feel such desperation and deserve support.

A great website that can serve as one of these gateway conversations is that of the Hunger is NOT a Game project, an offshoot of the Harry Potter Alliance found at:

http://thehpalliance.org/imagine-better/hunger-is-not-a-game/

This organization has brilliantly used The Hunger Games to spearhead discussions about power imbalances around the world and more specifically, about food security. Take a look at this amazing site and be prepared to be inspired !

• And ….. THAT’S IT !

That’s plenty for the YA age group ( 11 – 15 or grades 6, 7, 8, 9)  Inclined readers are already reading, what we really want here is for those mice ( aka reluctant readers) to not have their noses snapped if they finally find a story they can grab onto. And of course,  you never know, if we provide these prompts, and leave them alone to explore all the amazing Dystopian cheese that is out there,  they just might read another one.

Here’s to the authors who engage the readers – and citizens – of the future !
Please visit the TRC catalogue and search by the keyword  Dystopia for available titles

And YES! we have The Hunger Games !

Hopefully, many of you were able to see the TRC suggestion list of titles and authors that was distributed via your Teacher Librarian or LRA. If not, here they are for elementary and secondary.

In that correspondence, I had made mention of a research summary document by Dr. Janette Hughes of the Faculty of Education at UOIT in Oshawa. I found this document very interesting, and a couple sections really resonated with me. Dr. Hughes highlights the advantage of using poetry as a content light approach to using digital media. The students can devote time and effort into utilizing the sound, image, and text features of the software, when the amount of text they are required to create is shorter and less structured than traditional paragraphs for narration. Check out her recommendations for trying Digital Poetry Performance as an evaluation format that utilizes technologies many students hold in their hands everyday.

Another section discussed reluctance to use poetry. Dr. Hughes states, “Much has been written about the problems associated with teaching poetry….More than other genres, poetry seems to elicit the most groans from students. Often language arts teachers report feeling uncomfortable teaching poetry, either because they aren’t sure how to teach it effectively (owing to lack of pedagogical role models), or because they find it elusive themselves.”

I agree with Dr. Hughes that discomfort with the medium on an instructor level can lead to avoidance. Opportunity lost! Poetry can be a great ice breaker, and a springboard for discussion regardless if you have a degree in Literature or not, or whether you teach Algebra, Social Studies, or English. It allows the student with a flair for language a chance to shine in math class for a change, it can encapsulate concrete concepts for an abstract thinker, and by seeing you incorporating it into your class, it role models for students that it really is ok to be a person who likes sports AND literature. And you don’t have to do a Poetry UNIT for it to count, just sprinkle it into your daily lesson.

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TRC RESOURCES SUPPORTING POETRY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Here are some great resources – that we just happen to have here at the TRC- that include content that can help incorporate poetry into Language Arts as well as into some other subject areas.

For laughing out loud: poems to tickle your funnybone / edited by Jack Prelutsky

One section of the book includes poems entitled, Nuts to you and Nuts to me, Oodles of Noodles, Forty Performing Bananas, and Bananananananana. What a great way to springboard or augment a lesson or unit about nutrition or the food groups.

Click, Rumble, Roar: poems about machines / selected by Lee Bennet Hopkins

Garbage Truck – March Ridlon

Hungry Monster, you grumble, wheeze,
never seem full.
You stop everywhere to graze
and go off again
in search of more
for your keepers
to shove between
your greedy jaws.
Do you digest
when you rest?

I can see this simple yet poignant poem being a conversation starter about the disconnect between consumption and waste; applicable anywhere from grades 3 to 12! Another option for use is to include responding to the poem – or another one you like – as a bonus question opportunity on a test in any subject discussing sustainability at the Intermediate or Secondary level. At the Elementary level, the Community units of the Canada & World Connections strands in Grades, 1, 2 and 3 Social Studies could all incorporate this poem into their content.

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I found this cute poem in a collection of poetry here at the TRC called: Poems for Brothers, Poems for Sisters.

Skating in the wind / Kristine O’Connell George
I crouched.
My brother Bill shoved hard.
I held up my jacket;
the wind caught it, shaped it taut like a sail.

The wind slammed into my back.

My skates clattered.
Skidding,
Skimming,
like butter in a hot skillet.

Mouth dry,
the wind roared in my ears.

Bill said I was almost flying
Until that fence.

At the beginning of a term, this poem could be an opportunity to have students respond to you about activities they do and do not enjoy doing in Phys.Ed class and the reasons behind their like or dislike. Maybe they have a great passion for an activity that they would be willing to share and provide them with an opportunity for leadership, or maybe the poem evokes memories a student may have – good or bad ! – about an activity. Perhaps more importantly, it may open up communication about potential reluctance to participate, and allow you to engage with that student about ways of overcoming anxiety or fear of certain physical activities.

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Local Resources

Representing local writers and educators, Terry Ann Carter, an Ottawa based teacher and Haiku poet,
is the author of Lighting the global lantern : a teacher’s guide to writing haiku and related literary forms.
This work is available to TRC users through the Queen’s Education Library collection.

Another way to engage your students in writing poetry is to get involved with
In Your Own Words: the City of Kingston Poetry Project.Online poetry submissions in Haiku, couplet, free verse and Twitter form can be made to the website, and are reviewed and selected by Kingston’s inaugural Poet Laureate Eric Folsom.

( I wonder, is there such a thing as a Haiku Tweet ?? )

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Mulitmedia Resources
Learn 360 has a 4 minute piece by National Geographic entitled Poetry Slam, that will give students an introduction to Spoken Word performance. For our younger learners, a character series by TVO called the League of Supercitizens has a 3 minute piece called Poetry Jam.
A great example of cross-curricular applications is a 6 minute piece Sandburg’s Arithmetic, where the author himself reads aloud his poem set to music and visually stimulating moving imagery.

If you are not set up with Learn 360, or would like some support with its use, please contact the TRC and we will be happy to get you started !

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I hope this blog entry starts you thinking, or furthers an already held conviction, about the many ways poetry can be incorporated into your grade or subject area. Even more importantly, I hope it encourages those who haven’t used poetry as a teaching medium before, to give it a try.

Please feel free to post your responses or suggestions!

Whether a teacher candidate in the Queen’s B.Ed program, Faculty of Education researcher, elementary, intermediate, or secondary teacher, teacher librarian, school administrator, or board curriculum officer, universally agreed upon is the importance of staying current with contemporary understandings of literacy – reading, writing, numerical, financial, emotional & social, global, digital, informational, media and critical - and then finding the resources to support their integration into curriculum content.

Then, once that conversation begins, the many subtopics start emerging: engaging reluctant readers, ADHD learners, ESL learners, IEPs, gifted learners, the commercialization of learning materials, the hyper-gender identification of children’s and YA reading material, diversity within First Nations representations, how to incorporate technology in a meaningful way, French language instruction vs teaching in French immersion environments, finding time/ways to incorporate reading across the curriculum, contemporary Canadian content ….. to name only a FEW !    PHEW !!

STRANDS will, hopefully, provide a forum for the TRC’s community of users to turn to for ideas as well as showcase the resources that will allow these discussions to shift into useful, real world applications to real world classrooms : YOURS !

I invite your feedback, comments and contributions to any and all postings, and I look forward to sharing knowledge about the many STRANDS of literacy with all of you.

With warmest regards,

Peggy Lunn
Teacher and TRC Librarian

To locate these kits, search the TRC catalogue using the search term Ontario Science and Technology and select SERIES as your search function.

Please contact the TRC circulation staff if you are having trouble finding these resources.