Who do you think are the three greatest Canadians of all time?

Canada has a long history of its citizens achieving greatness for their accomplishments in many fields of endeavor. This website provides some consensus with a listing of the Greatest 100 Canadians of all time.

The listing is based on the nominations of thousands by the Canadian public, combined with the judgment of a diverse team of advocates selected by the CBC. When you review the entire list, you will find a diversity that includes political leaders, scientists, explorers, athletes, entertainers, inventors, etc.

Your students can use the listing to research more information about the candidates that are particularly attractive to them. From this research, student should select three Canadians that meet the following criteria: at least one woman; and no two selections can be from the same field of endeavor.

The essence of quality in an inquiry-based learning activity requires that students integrate critical thinking and original thought in their reports and presentations. Teachers should always create essential questions for critical thinking to ensure that students develop and use these lifelong thinking and problem-solving skills. Here are some sample questions you can assign. You can create and substitute others.

• How did the era in which this person lives or lived impact their accomplishments?
  
  
• How did the region of Canada that this person lived in impact their accomplishments?
  
  
• What do you think was this person's greatest accomplishment and why?
  
  
• What obstacles did this person have to overcome to achieve his/her goals?
  
  
• How does Canada and the world benefit from this person's accomplishments?
  
  
• Is there anything about this person's life that inspires you?

Student reports and/or oral presentations (PowerPoint) should address all of the essential questions for each selection. Written reports should be approximately 100 words per nominee. PowerPoint reports should be about one minute per nominee.

Students can create a written report (model) or PowerPoint presentation (model 1 or 2.)

April birthdays of famous people you should know something about!

You can bet that there will be someone in your class or in their family who was born in April. Here is a list of people who have April birthdays. Most are not well-known to your students but have made significant contributions to the world during their lifetime. Some are still alive and continue to contribute to the world today.

April Birthdays

• William Harvey (April 1)
  
• Abraham Maslow (April 1)
  
• Hans Christian Anderson (April 2)
  
• Jane Goodall (April 3)
  
• Maya Angelou (April 4)
  
• Booker T. Washington (April 5)
  
• Colin Powell (April 5)
  
• Kofi Annan (April 8)
  
• Paul Robeson (April 9)
  
• Joseph Pulitzer (April 10)
  
• Commodore Matthew Perry (April 10)
  
• Leonardo da Vinci (April 15)
  
• Wilbur Wright (April 16)
  
• Charlie Chaplin (April 16)
  
• Clarence Darrow (April 18)
  
• John Paul Stevens (April 20)
  
• Elizabeth II (April 21)
  
• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (April 22)
  
• Sergei Prokofiev (April 23)
  
• James Buchanan (April 23)
  
• Meadowlark Lemon (April 25)
  
• Edward R. Murrow (April 25)
  
• John James Audubon (April 26)
  
• Coretta Scott King (April 27)
  
• Ulysses S. Grant (April 27)
  
• Samuel B. Morse (April 27)
  
• Oscar Schindler (April 28)
  
• Zubin Mehta (April 29)

Most K-8 curricula include popular research activities that focus on biographies of famous people. Your students will benefit from both learning about these famous people and telling their classmates about them.

Teachers should assign a different person from the list to each student. Students should create an oral or PowerPoint report of about two minutes that uses at least two resources. It should include a picture of the person, as well as a second picture of something representative of their accomplishments. The report should include answers to at least three of the following essential questions for critical thinking:

• Where, when, and in what kind of family was this person born?
  
  
• What obstacles did this person have to overcome to achieve his/her goals?
  
  
• What do you think was this person's greatest accomplishment and why?
  
  
• Are there any events or deeds that this person might regret and why?
  
  
• How do this person's accomplishments benefit us today?
  
  
• Is there anything about this person's life that inspires you?

Students should use the name of the person assigned to them to do a key word search.

Students can create a written report (model) or PowerPoint presentation (model 1 or 2.)

eLibrary Support for Professional Development

eLibrary supports educator professional development in two distinct ways:

1. Access to a free professional library: Browse more than 100 education magazines and journals, as well as a variety of magazines that provide the latest news and developments in the worlds of science, literature, history, geography, mathematics, etc. Print articles to update and supplement your textbook in the classroom.
   
   
2. More than 30 ProQuest model BookCarts: Librarians can copy these BookCarts for teachers to use and learn from (yes, BookCarts can benefit teachers too!) BookCarts address many of the hot topics in schools today: Differentiating Instruction, Classroom Discipline, and 21st Century Literacy and Skills as examples. (See the Special Collections tab.)

Download the following resources to get listings of the free professional library and tips on publication browsing:

Professional Library Publications to Browse

Professional Development BookCarts (See Special Collections worksheet)

Each of these librarians had a BookCart vision for increasing librarian-teacher collaboration. Their stories (read here) will provide motivation and strategies for other librarians who subscribe to any of the eLibrary family of learning resources and want to get started on building their own collections of 21st Century resources for learning through inquiry-based activities:

Ana Banos
Sweetwater Union High School District, San Diego, CA

Ann Martha
Philadelphia School District, PA

Diane Gallagher Hayashi
Stelly School, Saanich SD, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Elizabeth Golden + Johanna Lawler
Greater Essex County SB, Ontario, Canada

Carolyn Hoye
Coyle & Cassidy HS, Taunton, MA

All Stories: Read here!