ELA and Digitial Citizenship Resources and Activities

Resources (as suggested by Donawa and Fowler in Reading Canada Chapter 6).

• Canadian Review of Materials
• Quill and Quire
• Kids’ Books
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
• Between the Covers
• The Next Chapter
• Writers and Company
• Cross Country Bookshelf
• Canada Reads 
• Children’s Literature Roundtables
• Globe and Mail
• Canadian Children’s Book Centre
• Kids Space
• Canadian Children’s Book News
• Best Books for Kids and Teens
• 49^th Shelf
• Association of Canadian Publishers and the Canadian Publishing Council
• Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian’s Children Illustrated Books and Publishing (2010) – Book
• Beyond the Letters: A Retrospective of Canadian Alphabet Books
• Clearly Canadian
• Online Author and Publisher Websites (Arthur Slade, Kenneth Oppel, Bright Ideas, Susan Juby)
• Book Clubs
• Writing Workshops
• House of Anansi Press
• Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology
• Massey Lectures
• HarperCollinsCanada
• Authortracker.com
• Groundwork Guides (controversial issues)
• Shelly Heslitschka’s Sun Signs (2005) (Great middle years book written in email form and relates well to a discussion about identities and online relationships).
• Alice Kuipers’s Life on the Refrigerator Door (2007) (Great middle years book written in post-it notes which relates well to texting language).
• Fishtailing by Phillips (2010) (Great senior ELA book written in texting and email exchange).
• Governor General Award
• Fan Fiction (fun, introduces students to critique, global communication/sharing, promotes reading and writing, creative, interpretative, and great to use to discuss copyright)

 “Fan fiction writers use pre-existing fictional characters from an original work to develop alternative relational, situational, and plot events which they self-publish for one another… fan fiction makes up 33 percent of all content revolving around books [on the web]” (in Boos, 2008)”” (Donawa et al., 2013, p. 186)

“Carlie Webber (2009) points out that school assignments like writing a letter from Mercutio to Romeo are fan faction: “You put your own spin on someone else’s story”” (Donawa et al., 2013, p. 186).

Activities (as suggested in Reading Canada by Donawa and Fowler 2013)

1. Role-play
2. Use Cross-Country Bookshelf to get students to present about authors
3. Movie trailers
4. Canada Read’s to debate and defend book of choice

“The concept of play (good for the brain and emotions) requires the students to know the story, setting, characters, and themes to be able to participate. The result tends to be higher order thinking and more elaborated conversation, including more extensive understanding by the young adult readers” (Donawa et al., 2013, p. 187).