Recapping an excellent year for the Centre of Literacy
Nipissing University’s Centre for Literacy brings its academic year to a successful close and is in process of developing many active partnerships with local school boards, teachers, community partners, and those who help to run our city.
Highlights between January and June of 2018 include the following:
June’s Events: Literacy in the Outdoors
You may have noticed elementary students roaming the woods (and the halls) at Nipissing University recently. That’s because NU Reads (Advisor: Dr. Tara-Lynn Scheffel) and the Centre for Literacy (Chair: Dr. Michelann Parr) are hosting Literacy in the Outdoors, June 4 to June 13. They will welcome close to 500 junior students and teachers from six schools in the Nipissing District. This year’s group includes students from Sunset Park, E.W. Norman, Alliance, Our Lady of Fatima, Holy Cross, and St. Theresa. The full-day workshop revolves around four texts that connect the great outdoors and literacy in meaningful and authentic ways. These include Water Dance by Thomas Locker, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, The Great Kapok Tree by Lynn Cherry, and If You Find a Rock by Peggy Christian, all of which were provided to each class to enhance the partnership between the schools and the university. Many thanks to the students, teachers, and parent volunteers who participated in an action-packed day, particularly those who braved the rainy weather.
May: Love Builds Brains
Dr. Michelann Parr facilitated a family engagement workshop with close to 200 early learning teams from English Catholic and Public school boards, childcare centres, and community partners from the East and West Parry Sound areas, at the beautiful Active Living Centre in Huntsville, Ontario. To support ongoing professional learning of each of the community teams, the Centre for Literacy provided complimentary copies of The Table Where Rich People Sit by Byrd Baylor, Kids are Worth It by Barbara Coloroso, and Daring Greatly by Brené Brown.
April: YMCA Northeastern
As part of ongoing professional learning, Dr. Michelann Parr facilitated a family engagement workshop with close to 50 YMCA personnel from the Northeastern Region. We explored assumptions we make about family engagement - what it is and what it is not - and discussed alternative perspectives that would allow us to work more effectively with both students and families.
March: Learning Together and Leap into Learning
Members of the Centre for Literacy have been active as part of the organizing committee for the annual conference co-sponsored by Nipissing University, all four local school boards, and the Learning Partnership. Plans are underway for this year’s conference to be held at Chippewa Secondary School on October 13, 2018; the focus this year is on social-emotional awareness and feelings. In an effort to make Welcome to Kindergarten more than a single event, Leap Into Learning is being implemented in various schools to provide children entering school in the Fall an opportunity to visit classrooms where they read, play, sing, and learn alongside their school-aged counterparts and get accustomed to what school is all about.
February: Turning Points
Two graduate students (Marianne Vander Dussen, MEd and Sarah Driessens, PhD Candidate), three faculty members (Dr. Terry Campbell, Dr. Michelann Parr, and Dr. Tara-Lynn Scheffel) and Lynn Julien-Schultz, the Learning Partnership Manager for Turning Points, co-facilitated a full-day workshop for close to 35 Bachelor of Education Students. The focus of the day was on personal narrative writing, mini-lessons to support the writing cycle, and understanding how pivotal moments in our lives shape who we are and what we do. In addition to the development of a personal narrative, students were each given a full teaching package for use in the classroom.
January: Embracing All Voices
January began with school-community meetings to further conversations about family engagement and Welcome to Kindergarten in local contexts. Over the month and early into February, our collaborative group, including community partners and school boards, hosted planning meetings in North Bay, Sturgeon Falls, and Mattawa. We engaged in virtual values walks from the perspective of families, planned multiple events for Welcome to Kindergarten (viewing engagement as more than a single event), and explored children’s literature related to social-emotional development.
Throughout the Year
The Centre for Literacy is a proud sponsor of Books for Brook, whose aim is to put a book in the hands of as many children as possible. Over the course of 2017-2018, Books for Brook has donated board books to the NICU at the North Bay Regional Health Care Centre, provided books for the Summer Literacy camps, and participated in the Learning Together conference.
The Fall 2017 Centre for Literacy list of events can be found here.
Goals and objectives established for the Centre for Literacy include promoting socio-cultural awareness of the contemporary classroom; establishing community partnerships to support literacy development across the lifespan; providing leadership through collaboration, advocacy, and communication; promoting effective literacy practice in teacher education and graduate studies; sharing and disseminating innovative research findings that inform and enhance classroom practice; and providing professional development for teachers, administrators, and teacher educators.
For further information and/or to join us in our quest to make literacy(ies) happen, please contact Dr. Michelann Parr at michelap@nipissingu.ca.
The Centre for Literacy has been established in connection with The Elizabeth Thorn Chair in Literacy, created in 2002. As a founding member of the Nipissing University Faculty of Education, Dr. Elizabeth Thorn dedicated her life to the promotion of literacy and inspired educators around the world with her wisdom, passion and commitment to language education.
For more information on the Centre for Literacy and some of our initiatives, please click here.