The expectations identified for this course describe the knowledge and skills that students are expected to develop and demonstrate in the various activities through which their achieve-ment is assessed and evaluated.

Two sets of expectations are listed for each strand, or broad curriculum area, of this course. Theoverall expectations describe in general terms the knowledge and skills that students are expected to demonstrate by the end of this course. The specific expectations describe the expected knowl- edge and skills in greater detail. The specific expectations are organized under subheadings that reflect particular aspects of the required knowledge and skills and that may serve as a guide for teachers as they plan learning activities for their students. The organization of expec- tations in strands and subgroupings is not meant to imply that the expectations in any one strand or group are achieved independently of the expectations in the other strands or groups.

Many of the expectations are accompanied by examples, given in parentheses. These examples are meant to illustrate the kind of skill, the specific area of learning, the depth of learning, and/or the level of complexity that the expectation entails. They are intended as a guide for teachers rather than as an exhaustive or mandatory list.

Strands

The course is divided into three strands: Building Reading Skills; Building Writing Skills; andUnderstanding and Assessing Growth in Literacy.
 

Building Reading Skills

Students need to be able to read and understand a variety of texts accurately for a variety of school and other real-life purposes. The competent reader, according to the OSSLT criteria, is able to read informational, narrative, and graphic texts4 with reasonable accuracy and profi- ciency, to understand directly and indirectly stated ideas and information, and to make con- nections between texts and his or her own experiences and knowledge. The competent reader reads for a variety of purposes, and is able to understand texts of varying levels of challenge.

Reading is an active process of thinking and constructing meaning from texts. Competent readers use strategies before they read, to preview the text and to activate their prior knowledge of the topic; while they read, to track and record ideas and monitor comprehension; and after they read, to consolidate and extend understanding. Competent readers know that reading plays a vital role in learning, opening the door to knowledge about themselves, others, and the world.

The Reading strand of the OSSLC is designed to help struggling readers to learn and use effective strategies to understand a range of texts. It requires students to read and respond to a variety of informational texts (e.g., opinion pieces, information paragraphs, textbooks), narra- tive texts (e.g., newspaper reports, magazine stories, short fiction), and graphic texts (e.g., tables, line graphs and bar graphs, schedules). Students will have numerous opportunities to learn appropriate reading strategies and use them to understand directly and indirectly stated ideas and information in texts, and to make connections between personal knowledge or experi- ence and the ideas and information in texts. As in the OSSLT, the emphasis in the course is on informational texts; however, students will also engage in independent reading for personal, school, and career-related purposes, thus going beyond the requirements of the OSSLT.
 

Building Writing Skills

Students need to be able to write competently for a variety of school and other real-life purposes. The competent writer, as defined by the OSSLT criteria, states and supports main ideas, organizes writing clearly and coherently, and uses the conventions of standard Canadian English.

A variety of research in the field of writing reveals that the quality of student writing is greatly enhanced when students use the writing process in their writing tasks. Unlike the OSSLT (which specifies the topics students write about and the forms of writing they produce, and sets limits on the time allowed for writing), this course gives students regular, ongoing experi- ence in using the writing process to produce and craft their writing, and allows them to choose some of their own topics and writing forms to suit their own purposes.

To help students develop into competent writers, the Writing strand of the OSSLC requires them to produce a variety of forms of writing for school and other real-life purposes, includ- ing summaries, information paragraphs, opinion pieces (series of paragraphs expressing an opinion), and news reports. Students will use the writing process and their knowledge of the conventions of text forms to organize ideas for writing, to develop main ideas and provide supporting details, to match tone and language to purpose and audience, and to use grammar, punctuation, and spelling correctly.
 

Understanding and Assessing Growth in Literacy

This strand requires students to assess their growth in literacy. Students will set learning goals, monitor their improvement in literacy throughout the course, and confer with their teacher about their progress at regular intervals. Students will also maintain and manage a literacy portfolio containing their reading responses, pieces of writing, and a learning journal in which they record their goal-setting and self-monitoring activities during the course. Students will review this portfolio, both during the course and at its end, in order to assess their growth in literacy.