Hello,

Hope you are enjoying this snowy weekend!

We have a lot of content in this week's blog, so let's get started.

1. Chromebook Guides and Tips 


Our students have been persevering hard to access their classes and tutoring sessions in Zoom. After months of support from our instructors and dedicated volunteers, all of the students are accessing their classes! Most of this success comes from students acquiring Literacy Source Chromebooks. Chromebooks are great as they are small, mobile, and easy to use. Plus the Chromebooks are set to open at the Literacy Source Splash Page so students can access their class in 1-2 clicks. 
We know how confusing it is to tutor a student who is on a different device to the one you are using. We have also found that not all Zoom features are available on the Chromebooks which has been a learning curve for all. With this all in mind I want to share some of the great visual guides our instructors have developed over the last year to help students and tutors navigate into Zoom on the Chromebooks.
Please check them out below:


All the information is on the Literacy Source Class Google Drive. We know that there are a ton of resources here and it can be hard to find. We encourage you to use the Search function, it is a very powerful tool and works really well:
Try typing Zoom Chromebook in the Search in Drive bar and see what you find!  

2. New 2021 Winter/Spring Term Calendar


We are changing the dates for the end of winter and start of spring terms. Winter term will now end on Thursday March 18th, and Spring term will start on Monday April 12th. This will allow us time to register and orient new students and prepare for classes.


3. Tough Topics Roundtable


We ran our third discussion in this series talking about how we can create space to have conversations with students or just allow time in the classroom and tutoring sessions to reflect and acknowledge these are tough times. We talked about having a routine that creates this space in each session, maybe as the warm-up activity which in tutoring may be talking about highs and lows, looking at photos or doing a dialog journal. It is important to recognize that not everyone wants to talk openly and that we may differ in what we each consider to be a "tough topic". Here is a list of takeaways from our discussion: 
  • Respect the students’ goals
  • Be clear of your own boundaries, what you’re willing to share, how much you can be vulnerable
  • Link tough conversations to instructional communication skills or critical thinking goals
  • Set ground rules and prepare with language and guidelines for disagreement, determining fact vs. opinion, or verifying the validity of a source
  • Model language and give students time to work through their ideas 
  • Routines are good, give students agency and help them learn vocabulary to express themselves
  • Present options for Yes/No questions at lower level
  • Be purposeful about current events debrief as a warm up - to create an opening
 If you need ideas or have questions please talk to your advisor.

We look forward to running another roundtable in spring term.

4. Trivia Night



Reminder! Literacy Source's virtual Trivia Night is coming up next week: 
Friday, February 19th, 6:30-8:30pm.



It's not too late to gather your friends and/or family to form a team and join us for some brain-teasing trivia or, join solo and we'll team you up! Stuck for a team name? Here are some of the fun team names that people have come up with for ideas:
  • Talk Timers
  • Ida y Vuelta
  • In Second Place
  • Jane Error
  • Rosen's Renegades
Prizes: 1st prize, $100 gift certificate to Phinney Books and Kaffeeklatsch gift certificates for 2nd and 3rd places. 

Volunteer tickets are $12 per Zoom link. Use this discount code: Trivia2021!

Thank you all. Please remember to leave any comments, ideas, questions or suggestions below.


Warmly,

Caroline