September 2009

As Teachers’ Toolkit magazine Issue 16 arrives on your desk, we send you this latest e-newsletter to remind you about a few extra things. As always, we highlight some of the magazine's features while providing some extra classroom resources and references sites to help with your classroom/school work. All part and parcel of building resources for the Teachers' Toolkit community.

Guinness World Record Book winners

Congratulations to the following Teachers’ Toolkit members, who were the lucky recipients of the giveaway copies from Issue 15 of the magazine.

• Jill Short – St Joseph’s primary School, Moora, WA
• Sharon Patton – Prestons Public School, Prestons, NSW
• Rosslyn Cole – Weeden Heights Primary School, Vermount South, Vic

Spring clean giveaways

We are having a wee spring clean of our shelves and need good homes for some bundles of great books, including a selection from our friends at Pan Macmillan. Be a registered Teachers’ Toolkit member (if you are not, then it is easy to do so) and email us the answer to these two (related) questions taken from one of the featured articles in Teachers’ Toolkit Issue 16 of the magazine.

1. What special event takes place on Thursday 22 October at 11.30am AEDT?

2. Complete the title of the song: The _________________ is Everything.

Email your answers to: giveaways@teacherstoolkit.net.au before 25 September.

Teachers’ Toolkit Magazine Issue 16

A reminder that there are heaps of extra activities on the Teachers’ Toolkit website which support the teaching units and lesson plans that appear in the magazine.

Special Days and Special Events

September
Biodiversity Month
17 Australian Citizenship Day
19 Talk Like a Pirate Day
25 World Heart Day
29 National Police Remembrance Day
October
11 National Nutrition Week
16 Stand Up Against World Poverty
18 National Water Week (Check Issue 16 of the magazine)
24 United Nations Day
30 National Bandanna Day
30 World Teachers’ Day

For extra information visit EDNA: Australia’s free online network for educators.

Music. Count Us In – One Song, Your School. More Music

This annual event is on again: Thursday 22 October 2009, 11.30 am AEDT.

Be prepared and be part of Australia’s biggest school music gig. This is a national initiative designed to promote the value of music education in our schools, run by the Music Council of Australia with funding from the Australian Government. Register at www.musiccountusin.org.au. Listen to and download the new song specifically created for this event.

Let’s Get Growing: Living fundraisers

Living Fundraisers provides an innovative way for schools to raise funds and a chance to leave the chocolate drive behind! Living Fundraisers was started this year by Rebeka Jageurs and Rachel Taylor in response to a need for schools to find alternatives to the ubiquitous, unhealthy chocolate drive. Living Fundraisers offers easy-to-grow vegetable and herb kits exclusively for fundraising. Visit: www.livingfundraisers.com.au

Children’s Book Council of Australia

While Book Week, Numeracy and Literacy Week and more are still fresh in your mind, add this event to your 2010 diaries. The Children’s Book Council of Australia NSW Branch invites you to their 2010 State Conference, Imagine This! Imagine That! to be held 18-19 June at The Menzies Hotel, Sydney. Register to receive updates via email: cbcansw@bigpond.com

Conferences

And talking of conferences. Keep up-to-date with conference programs via the EDNA website: www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/events/conferences

If you are looking for overseas conferences:
www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/events/eventsoverseas

It may be worth adding the RSS feed for library related conferences to your RSS reader/igoogle (or similar) to keep a watch on events as they are added to EDNA:
http://api.edna.edu.au/service/noticeboard?action=item&calendar=5372

Our Little Earth – World News for Young Citizens

This is a great little website (and featured on the home page of Teachers’ Toolkit website) that presents an electronic newspaper for kids. Subscription is only $40 a year for schools. Though US based, it does contain international news from around the world.
Visit: www.ourlittleearth.com

Talking of newspapers online.

While many Australian newspapers are available on the internet, take a look at the National Library of Australia’s website to digitised versions of newspapers published in the colonies in the nineteenth century. Find recent and historical news online. www.nla.gov.au/npapers

National Film and Sound Archive

Happy Little Vegemites (1954), Helen Reddy’s I am Woman (1972), Yothu Yindi’s Treaty (1991) and others have been added to the national sound archives. Sounds of Australia, the National Registry of Recorded Sound, is a public list of Australian recordings that celebrates the widest traditions of recorded sound culture and history in Australia. Add this site to your history research database for some recordings linked with our history.
www.nfsa.gov.au/whats_on/soundsofaustralia/2009.html#2

Book Trailers

Teachers’ Toolkit have had a number of enquiries regarding book trailers. Book trailers offer an alternative way to respond to the reading of a book, ways that are creative but encourage critical thinking and analysis. Students can explore a variety of literacies and ways of communicating their response to their reading. There are many website resources to help you and your students create your own book trailers. Here are a few to start with:

www.slav.schools.net.au/downloads/08pastpapers/31reimagine/trailers.ppt

www.thecreativepenn.com/2008/12/03/book-trailers-11-steps-to-make-your-own/

www.squidoo.com/booktrailers

www.chrischeng.com/trailers.htm

And take a look at the Pan Macmillan’s Battle Boy feature on pages 14 & 15 of the latest issue of the magazine. To celebrate the release of this fantastic new series, Pan Macmillan and Teachers’ Toolkit are running a competition inviting you to enter your best book trailers created for your favourite Battle Boy title. Entries must be delivered by 20 November.

Promethean Planet – the world’s largest interactive whiteboard community

With interactive whiteboards becoming an integral part of classrooms teaching and learning, the Promethean website offer heaps of great resources. Check it out at: www.prometheanplanet.com

Marine Literacy Kit

The printed version of the Kids and Water Marine Literacy Kit has been highly successful over a number of years. It is now available from the AUSMEPA website as a free online resource. There are a total of 18 titles covering all levels of primary school. There are also four comprehensive teacher resource activity books that will extend students' literacy into SOSE and science. They are non-fiction and creatively designed with many exquisite photographs and illustrations. The Kit is completely Australian and covers a wide range of marine topics of interest to children. This Literacy kit fills some of the large gaps in non-fiction titles.
www.ausmepa.org.au/marine-education-literacy-kit.htm

MobileMuster Winners

Congratulations to the students at Glen Waverley South Primary School who have proved they are Australia’s future eco warriors. These students beat more than 280 schools by handing in 97kg of mobile phones and accessories for recycling, to become the national winner of the 2009 MobileMuster ‘Old Phones, New Fence Posts’ Schools Recycling Challenge.

MobileMuster is a year round free program, so residents can continue to hand in their old mobile phones, batteries, accessories and chargers for recycling at any one of MobileMuster’s 3,500 drop-off points nationally. Alternatively they can pick up a free recycling satchel from participating Australia Post outlets, or by downloading a free reply paid label from www.mobilemuster.com.au

English Essentials ISBN: 978 1420229424 Macmillan Education Australia

How often have you heard young people just don’t know how to write any more! Mem Fox and Lyn Wilkinson have written a light-hearted, strict, useful and easy to understand handbook English Essentials: the wouldn’t-be-without-it handbook on writing well. Ideal as a handy reference, teaching tool or as a ‘must-have’ for the would-be writer aged 15 plus.

Did you know?

Using the following table, discuss this water issue with your students, exploring some of the pros and cons of making the best use of this increasingly scarce resource.

Water Footprint.

New Zealand named world’s most peaceful nation.

According to the Global Peace Index ranking of 144 countries, New Zealand has been named the world’s most peaceful nation. Peace being defined as ‘the absence of violence’.

Top 10 most peaceful nations: 1 New Zealand, 2 Denmark, 3 Norway, 4 Iceland, 5 Austria, 6 Sweden, 7 Japan, 8 Canada, 9 Finland, 9 Slovenia.
Ten least peaceful: 1 Iraq, 2 Afghanistan, 3 Somalia, 4 Israel, 5 Sudan, 6 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 7 Chad, 8 Pakistan, 9 Russia, 10 Zimbabwe.

And where does Australia rank? 19th

There are some great classroom and staffroom discussions ready to take place based on this data! Check out the full ranking: www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php

Let your fingers do the talking

The lips can lie but the fingers reveal all. Or near enough. Apart from reflecting criminality, hand and fingers can tell more about an individual's personality, possible psychiatric abnormalities and more. Read this fascinating article online. www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=93087&sectionid=3510304

Share this e-newsletter with your colleagues, including those new to your school, and suggest they also register for all the Teachers’ Toolkit benefits.

Don’t forget to send us any of your lesson plans for possible loading to the TT website; just lodge via the website. We are particularly interested in seeing any webquests or book trailers that you have created.

Hooroo for now.

The Teachers’ Toolkit Team.

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