Bring your class in for a library tour. We begin by sitting down at one of our round tables sharing our experiences of libraries. I share my own personal story of how the library was pivotal to my childhood and education and why I decided to pursue library teaching. We take a tour around the library where I show them my favourite books and the most important sections while also showing them how to find books from the catalogue based on call numbers. Finally, we end with a competition through a scavenger hunt with teams of 2-3 students. The first students to find all of the books on the list wins a PRIZE! [30 min to 1 hour]

Bring your class in for a book talk! Book talks consist of us finding a series of books connecting to a common theme, reading level, genre or topic. We are extremely flexible and offer a variety of options based on curriculum connections and your classroom needs and reading levels. Once the books are collected, we can also organize, recommend and highlight the books to your class when they visit the library. We'll speak about the books, how to choose one that will fit their reading level and interest, and help them try new reading strategies. 

Our goal is to help each CALC student find the book that is perfect for them and get them reading! [30 min to 1 hour]

This lesson introduces students to the concept of university presentation requirements and powerpoint style. We speak about different themes, the importance of collaboration and creating a product as a team instead of separate people adding things together, and the importance of text, speech and memorization and preparation. This is an essential lesson for all University courses that have a presentation assignment and has been modelled to suit the high requirements and expectations for University.  [2 hour +]

This is a wonderful lesson that encourages students to determine commonalities between two topics and finding their 'reasons' a much tricker skill then one would expect. We begin with brainstorming, organzing our ideas in a KWL chart, and then focusing on exploring the research databases available to us both on the Virtual Library and beyond. Finally, students organize their research in their research charts using MLA/APA format as well as in-text citations. What was most exciting about this lesson was collaborating with the teacher to provide differentiated assignments to accommodate all levels of learning and continuously work with their students 1-1 in the library following the lesson.  [2 hour +]

This lesson was focused on accessing the resources on the virtual library to help ESL students narrow down their researching skills to a few that would suit their purposes for researching Canadian figures and geographical locations. With ESL learners, the expectation for research is being able to find reliable sources outside of Google and start having them think about what research means, looks like and what to do with it. 

This lesson includes answering the question 'What is the Virtual Library?" and 'Why use it?". We help the ESL students choose the best resource, what key word to type in based on the topic or research focus and help them get familiar with accessing the citation tools.  [2 hours]

This is a very fun, collaborative and honest lesson on plagiarism. Students begin with a fun 'Mind's On' Activity thinking about what the word 'plagiarism' means to them. We then go over the 4 types of plagiarists and the 10 different types of plagiarism in an interactive way. Students go into groups and each recieve a case study identifying what type of plagiarist their student in the case study was being, and what type of plagiarism they think the case study signifies. We have the students take up each case-study and share it with their class. To wrap up the lesson we quickly go over the ways in which can cite to avoid plagiarism, but we recommend you book us in for a follow up lesson to practice skills in 'direct quote', 'summarize' and 'paraphrase'. We have a secondary source (university/collage level JSTOR) article prepared for NBE classes to have them read and practice citing examples as well.  [1 hour]

This lesson can be a follow up to the plagiarism lesson to help students understand what to do with quotations and material when they find the ANSWER! This lesson can include MLA/APA focus, as well as providing students with an activity based on the subject and level to practice their direct quotes, paraphrase and summarize when answering a question or writing a paragraph.  [1.5 hour +]

This lesson will focus on preparing our university students for the heavy course load of reading and build essential tools to help them read with efficiency and effectiveness. Part 1 of the lesson will go over university reading and how to approach their readings with reading skills such as skimming, highlighting, annotating and note-taking. They will also be given activities, hands on work and will be provided with the conceptual understanding of what tutorial and seminar courses expect and how to prepare for them.

Part 2 of the lesson will have students be provided with a scenario setting after being given a lesson filled with tips and tricks on readings, annotation and tutorial prep. Students will be faced with a real life dilemma of having many readings unread prior to class and only having 1 hour to figure it all out. Students will use the strategies learned from the lesson and activities to navigate their readings and find the essential meaning and connections to help them survive their tutorial or seminar course. With the clock ticking, students will only be allowed their readings, notes and (a CHATGPT challenge) will also be introduced in the mix. Once the alarm rings, students will come to the tutorial and participate in the discussion and be evaluated live with their classmates and teachers.

Students will complete the class with a reflection on their performance and see their grades ensuring that they create next steps and goals to help them improve on their reading, speaking and time-management skills.  [2 hours +]

Note-taking is an essential skill for all levels and subjects to help students determine what's important to write down and how to summarize information and create short-form symbols and words to quicken the process of writing. It also helps student develop the skill of listening to writing or multi-tasking which can be essential during film watching with writing tasks, audio book reading with writing tasks and traditional lecturing. [2 hour]

One of the best parts of the library is that we tend to have a lot of books made into films! Being a speciality focus of mine, we are offering a new lesson / unit collaboration with teachers to help them get creative with media studies in their classrooms. Currently, we will be piloting this project with the media studies courses within EdVance for Q2 but hope that these connections to media can be made across all courses to help many of our students learn through a different medium and support our English Language Learners who can benefit from visual aids.