ONTARIO SKILLS PASSPORT

This is a great web site to use if you are wondering about your education, skills, your career path, resume and so much more.

Second Career Strategy Update

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Second Career Strategy update
Second Career was launched in June 2008 to help laid-off Ontarians identify and train for new careers in growing sectors. Each participant can receive up to $28,000 to help pay for tuition, travel, books and other training costs.MTCU has just announced that it is expanding access to Second Career. As of November 10, 2008, the guidelines for Second Career will be expanded to include:· Workers laid off as far back as January 1, 2005· Laid-off workers who have taken an interim job to make ends meet· Short term training options (less than six months) for laid-off workers who are not eligible for Employment Insurance· Potential additional financial assistance to cover expenses for the cost of academic upgrading, living away from home while participating in training, and dependent careFor more information on Second Career please visit: www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/tcu/secondcareer/index.html and www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/tcu/secondcareer/factsheet.html
Posted by Karen at 1:06 PM 2 comments

How to Write a Paragraph

This is a great site that explains how to write a paragraph and gives you a chance to write your own. If you aren't sure how to start, this is the place to go.

Election 2008

I have started a new blog for our students to learn about the political parties being represented in the upcoming federal election. It's just basic right now, and I would welcome all contributions. The blog address is: http://canadianelection08.blogspot.com/

What Superhero are You?

Heromachine is a generator that allows you to create your own superhero. Some of our students would enjoy this activity. Then they could write about the character that they created.

TOP TEN VOCABLULARY LEARNING RESOURCES

This is a good site with lessons and drills to help learners with things like building vocabulary, financial terminology and visual dictionaries to mention a few.

Algebra

This is a good site for algebra and writing expressions for those students who need extra questions.

Essential Skills Quiz for Students

It is important that students use the business and labour terms of "essential skills." The website http://srv108.services.gc.ca/english/general/home_e.shtml is an important site for you to review. The toolkit includes quizzes and indicators that students can complete.

The Olympics Are Coming

http://the2008olympicgames.blogspot.com/ is the website for our new blog about the Olympics. You can add it to googlereader so that you get updates as activities and stories are added to the site.

Demonstration: Explaining Square Numbers

Ruby K. Payne explains in Understanding Learning that mental models are how our minds hold abstract information.

The diagram is a mental model that helps us understand the concept of square numbers. In math a square number is a square number because it physically forms a square. Nine is a square number.

The square root of 9 is 3 because no matter how you draw the lines (horizontal or vertical), you will always get three.

Math & Business Skills

In lemonade stand you learn business and math skills.

The TV will show you a weather forecast for the day. Your ASSETS is how much money you have. The COST PER GLASS shows what it will cost to make EACH GLASS of lemonade. This number changes daily.

Choose how many advertising signs you wish to make. Next decide how much you want to charge per glass. Then decide how many glasses to make. It is a good idea to never spend all of your money – you might need it later if you have a bad day.

Then hit GO and see how well you did. The results screen shows a newspaper that tells you how the weather really was. You can also see how many glasses you sold, your GROSS PROFIT, your EXPENSES, and your NET PROFIT. It may take a little practice to get good at running your lemonade business – good luck and have fun!

Google docs Templates

One of the most important things that we teach students about writing is that they don't have to do all the work. That we all use formats and templates to help us complete our writing tasks. (This is part of the genre theory.) Google Docs now has over 300 templates available for use.

Grammar Tutorial

Take a look at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
Some shows would be useful for our students. I have added it to our delicious links. Let us know if you get any feedback from students about the podcasts.

Flickr Credit: DudeCrush

Countdown to next demonstration

Demonstration - Signed Numbers

Demonstration for signed numbers. If you click start, you can do the quiz right inside the blog.

Read'em and Reap Submission

A Spring Party
We're going to have a spring party. There will be flowers on each table--pink tulips and purple hyacinths. White and purple streamers along the wall will make the room cheerful. We will have music.

For lunch there is small sandwiches,bread and butter pickles and cupcakes. We will have a lemonade punch.
***
A week later, we started getting ready for the party. Lucy, Tim, and I started to put the streamers around the walls. Lilia started doing the flowers. All of us helped to put the flowers on each table. Everyone will bring sandwiches and Lucy and Lilia will make fancy cupcakes. All that is left is to make the punch.

"Oh dear, we forgot the recipe for the punch, " said Tim.

"We can remember the recipe," said I.

Lucy had already made fancy ice cubes. She had put a cherry in each cube, covered it with cold water and had frozen it in the refrigerator. Now was the time to mix everything together. In a large juicer, we put lemons, oranges, and limes. We put the juice in a large punch bowl and added water. Then we put it in the fridge ready for the party later that night.

***
Everything was ready. Lilia added ginger ale to the punch. Guests started arriving. They started dancing. Everyone started getting thirsty. Strangely, after people tasted the punch, they started to look for a water fountain. The punch remained on the table.

"What happened with the punch?" asked Lilia.

"Nobody is drinking it." said Lucy.

Lucy tasted it. "Oh this is sour! Did you forget the sugar?" said Lucy.

Quickly I got some sugar from the kitchen. We added a little sugar at a time, tasting each time until it tasted sweet.

Lucy,Tim, Lilia and I went around to our friends and said we were sorry for the mistake. People started drinking the punch and this time they smiled.
The party was now a success. A recipe is a good thing!
Submitted by MC

Read 'Em and Reap

Welcome to the ALC's student centered blog! We are now taking entries for our first ever online edition of Read 'em and Reap. If you have a story, poem, recipe or anything interesting to say, please submit a written copy to a staff member, and we will see that it gets uploaded here. This blog is open to all ALC student's for viewing and commenting. Thanks for stopping by!