In response to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, the Reading Council of Greater Winnipeg, along with many of its fellow Special Area Groups of Educators of the Manitoba Teachers' Society, has opted to move completely online for MTS PD Day, October 23, 2020.

We are pleased to share that Penny Kittle will be delivering a full-day webinar titled Empowering and Motivating Students to Read and Write. 

Are you ready to empower and motivate your students to read and write? Join Penny Kittle for an amazing day of strategies and tips to take student apathy head on. Learn how to recognize why students don’t read and to create a pathway to satisfying reading that leads to more challenging literature and, ultimately, a love of reading. Discover what makes the single biggest difference to student writers. Learn how to make your writing processes is made visible to your students to demonstrate the power of writing beside mentor texts and emulating those difficult writer’s moves in their own creative text.

For more information, visit our MTS PD Day page. 

The Manitoba Teachers' Society has shared a professional development opportunity with SAGE groups: "Talking About Racism in the Classroom." Canadian high school teachers can register to attend this free online seminar scheduled throughout the summer. The seminar is offered by the Global Centre for Pluralism in partnership with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. For more information, please visit the Global Centre for Pluralism's website.

In these challenging times, high school students may have many questions about race and racial injustice in Canada and the US, and as teachers, students may turn to you for context and perspective. What will you say and how can you support them? Perhaps you have the same questions? Where do you start? The Global Centre for Pluralism, in partnership with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, is offering two-hour virtual professional development sessions for Canadian teachers on how to have conversations about race in the classroom. Facilitated by inclusion and anti-racism consultant, Destine Lord, this dialogue-based small group session will provide educators with the key definitions and racial concepts necessary to get these conversations started.

Together, participants will discuss how to create brave spaces, which invite student engagement. Participants will walk away with techniques that help them listen with intent, validate emotion, model empathy and challenge students to question their own bias and assumptions. Leaning into discomfort, with openness and humility, is one of the most important things that a teacher can model for their students. The goal is not to make participants experts in race relations but to provide the tools to facilitate challenging conversations that hold space for emotions. Additional resources will be provided at the end of the session.

The Reading Council of Greater Winnipeg extends congratulations to the newly elected members of the International Literacy Association's Board of Directors. We are very pleased to hear that Rob Tierney, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the University of British Columbia, has been elected Vice President. As a result, Rob will be ILA's president in 2021-2022. Congratulations to all new board members!

The Board of Directors of the Reading Council of Greater Winnipeg invite all members to attend our Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, June 9, 2020 at 4:30 PM. The meeting will be held on Zoom.  Please RSVP to Leslie Dickson or Jackie Parsons to receive the meeting link.

Our friend and MTS PD Day 2019 presenter Lori Oczkus has shared with us two videos for parents to learn how to use the Fab Four Reciprocal Teaching Strategies (Predict, Question, Clarify, Summarize). The first is with informational text and the second with poetry. They include lesson plan bookmarks, question and answer, and links.

The Reading Council of Greater Winnipeg has curated the following short list of resources to support teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We know there are many resources already shared online, and we are encouraged to see so many organizations around the world stepping up to support learning in these challenging times. We are thinking of you and hope you and your family take time this week to relax and recharge despite the uncertainty ahead. 

Please note that all RCGW meetings and events are currently postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Please continue to check our site for more information. 

Armchair PD

• Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle have been posting videos of their conversations about reading and writing, which make for an energizing listen. See Penny's Twitter feed for more information. (Penny will be our MTS PD Day 2020 speaker!)
• Visit Office Hours with Kylene Beers (on Zoom and Facebook) to hear Kylene and friends (including Kelly & Penny, Kwame Alexander, and Naomi Shihab Nye) share ideas. 
• Register for School Library Journal's free Middle Grade Magic virtual event: Wednesday, April 8.
• The International Literacy Association will be re-streaming the featured sessions from its 2019 Annual Conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana. Members and non-members can access the streams from April 1 to 30. 

From Manitoba Education & Training

• Online Resources for Manitoba Educators
• Online and Unplugged: Supporting Student Learning During COVID-19 Suspension of Classes (on Maple; login required)

Bibliotherapy

• To help you talk to your children about these changes, Orca Publishers is offering free Read-Along copies of On the News: Our First Talk About Tragedy, written and narrated by renowned child psychologist Dr. Jillian Roberts.
• Access to the American Library Association's Booklist Online review site is freely available. Check out the newsletter for more information. 
• Check out the Canadian Children's Book Centre's post Finding Hope in Hard Times Reading List. 

Online Read-Alouds and Connections

• Author Kate Messener has prepared a list of Publisher Guidelines for Online Storytime and Read-Alouds during COVID-19 school closures. As teachers, we must continue to respect copyright. 
• Pernille Ripp has also curated a list of picture book creators reading aloud. 
• The School Library Journal gave tips on How to Run a Virtual Book Club with Middle Schoolers, and local author Colleen Nelson hinted at some news to come. 

Publisher Resources

• Nelson is offering open access to some of their student resources (Grades 4-12).  ​
• Pearson is giving access to a number of e-texts (Grades 1-12).  
• Resources for Teaching Online have been shared by Corwin.