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ESLBO Non Credit
Ministry of Education Course Title: ESL LEVEL B
Course Code: ESLBO
Grade Level: B
Prerequisite: None
Department: English
Course Description:
This course is the second of five OIA ESL courses in the ESL Program. The course extends students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing skills in English for everyday and academic purposes.
Students will participate in conversations in structured situations on a variety of familiar and
new topics; read a variety of texts designed or adapted for English language learners;
expand their knowledge of English grammatical structures and sentence patterns; and link
English sentences to compose paragraphs.
The course also supports students’ continuing adaptation to the Ontario school system by
expanding their knowledge of diversity in their prospective province of residence and/or
country of Canada.
The course’s end aim is to prepare students now for their future high school career.
Learning English, as in learning any language, takes time and practice. To this end, each
unit in ESL Level B and its resources will promote success in learning and developing the
students’ spoken and written language skills.
Overall Curriculum Expectation - all units are interrelated
Unit 1 Who I Am Becoming
- In this unit, students learn how to use and create a Prezi. They will use audio files to introduce themselves to their teacher and classmates, and with their Prezi, students will write a timeline about important events in their lives.
- Students will focus on their strengths as students, as well as the areas in which they could improve academically.
- They will also participate on a discussion board, which allows them to write about their ideas, opinions, and feelings. This component allows for student privacy as well as allows students to have a forum in which they can practice their English skills with the teacher and other students in the course.
- Students will have a chance to showcase their character and personality and show who they are, how they have developed within a year since Level A.
- In this introductory unit students will also be working closely together interactively to learn English. Students will work hand in hand with their teacher to also set learning goals for their classes within this unit.
- The unit will help students learn about themselves, their feelings, actions, and emotions, their surroundings and how to place these things into English spoken and written context. Sub units include grammar II, present tense and present participle and use of idioms II related to the unit topic itself.
- Competitions include Skills competitions through Ontario Skills and Youth of Canada Skills competition in Literature.
Unit 2 Telling Fables - Why Do We Do So?
- In this unit, students will readand listen to fables, which are short stories that are passed down from generation to generation. While listening to and reading these stories, they will learn about several English language structures, as well as how to pronounce words more accurately. Students will write a short conversation (dialogue) between two characters, and they will create an oral retell of a story.
- Students’ culminating in this unit will be a rewriting of a Chinese fable into English, and a retelling of it into English. This project is intensive and requires 20 hours of work in total to be completed well.
- During this time, they will also have a chance to discuss these fables in small groups online. They will learn different reading strategies in order to help them understand the harder texts that they are reading.
- Sub topics in this unit include past tense II and conjugation of verbs II, references to syntax and creation of longer paragraphs.
- Competitions include submission of best student stories to a variety of Ontario and international competitions for student level and age group.
Unit 3 Oh Canada!
- In this unit, students will learn about the five geographic regions that make Canada so beautiful and diverse. They will journey from the West Coast to the Atlantic Region,
- learning about the similarities and differences among the regions. Students will create an audio (oral) journal, as well as a personal thesaurus, and they will also learn how to extract information from texts and organize it into charts.
- They will then do more structured research about one of Canada’s regions to learn about it. They will have opportunities to discuss what it means to be a Canadian from a different part of Canada, and what Canada can offer them in the future.
- After completing research, students will have the opportunity to see how pictures appeal to them and then create their own visual project based on their research. To this end, an online collage will be created which will be entered into the art competition featured in a variety of Ontario and Canadian based organizations.
- Some teaching strategies in this unit are: teacher modelling of primary and secondary research skills, looking at exemplars and programs to create media projects.
- Sub topics in this unit are future tense focus II, elements of colloquial english )), idiomatic English used in Ontario and other English based countries. These latter will be focused on the idioms students will require in speaking to other English speaking students, teachers and others in English.
- Competitions include entry in the yearly Ontario Veteran affairs Poster competition. Prizes and certificates are awarded by the Veterans.
Unit 4 Comparatives in the English Language
- In this unit, students will learn to recognize and use the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives.
- Articles and news reports about the Guinness Book of World Records will introduce a variety of interesting characters, vocabulary and topics.
- Independent, free reading will be supported.
- The unit will also focus on listening, speaking and nonverbal communication skills.
- Students will create and record their own news cast on a self-chosen topic, working hand in hand with their teachers in order to complete this project which, when completed thoroughly, takes 15 hours to complete.
Unit 5 Knowledge is Power
- This unit focuses on Canada’s three levels of government, the electoral process, which is how Canadians vote for the politicians who represent them, and the main political parties in Canada.
- Through media texts, students will also learn about the diversity (differences) in languages and cultures that are visible in Canada.
- They will continue to participate on the Discussion Board, but throughout this unit, students will post their audio (spoken) responses and replies to their classmates’ posts.
- Finally, students will write a letter to a government official on one thing they would like to change about Canada.
Unit 6 Graphic Novel Study
- In this unit, students will read a digital graphic novel. Smaller portions of text are combined with stunning images, providing the student with visual cues about what is happening in the story.
- Students will write their thoughts, ideas, and opinions, along with information from the story, in an online journal.
- They will also continue to communicate with one another, through speaking, on the Discussion Board. A variety of questions and focuses will direct student discussion. This discussion board is a large part of the student reflection on how they are improving in their English communication. Age level and age appropriate questions will be asked.
- Students will learn how to organize and write an opinion paragraph, based on events from the graphic novel.
- Students will write a letter to the author of the graphic novel explaining what they liked about the novel and what they would like to change.
