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ESLCO Non Credit
Ministry of Education Course Title: ESL LEVEL C
Course Code: ESLCO
Grade Level: C
Prerequisite: None
Department: English
Course Description:
The ESL Level C course further extends students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English for a variety of everyday and academic purposes. Students will make short online classroom oral presentations; read a variety of adapted and original texts in English; and write using a variety of text forms. As well, students will expand their academic vocabulary and their study skills to facilitate their transition to the mainstream high school English program for the OSSD. This course also introduces students to the rights and responsibilities inherent in Canadian citizenship, and to a variety of current Canadian issues.
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 into simple essays.
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 C 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 A Whirlwind of Emotions
- Students will read, extract and demonstrate meaning from short stories, poetry, and independent novel study all of which combine to develop their critical thinking skills.
- This unit has a strong foundation in developed Writing Skills. To this end, students will begin creating linked paragraphs. Students will learn to read, wite and respond to news reports, summaries, and personal response journals.
- Grammar usage, spelling and punctuation are key elements of grammar focused upon in this unit.
- Listening and Speaking skills will be further developed through creation of Presentation of a media text and book talks using language structures correctly.
- Overall skills assessment occurs in terms of assessing how students work effectively in group learning activities.
- Students will prepare an advertisement for a product to sell to a character in a story.
- Summative Evaluation – Short story test and oral presentation of media text are two of the evaluations to take place in the unit.
- 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 B.
- NOTE – Students will be presented with a Book List on day one of their Level C ESL course at which time they will choose the book they will be reading independently throughout the course. They will be assigned Book Project Assignment that will have monthly submissions but also culminate in an evaluation at the end of the course.
- Competitions include Skills competitions through Ontario Skills and Youth of Canada Skills competition in Literature.
Unit 2 Writing in Rhyme
- Students will review and extend their understanding of a variety of literary and stylistic devices in poetry. To this end, students will develop their own poetry book, in which they will write their own poems that reflect their feelings and their understanding of topics discussed in the course. Furthermore, students will identify and connect pieces of poetry, including songs, with similar themes.Students will work to demonstrate their ability to apply the correct stylistic functions and poetic devices to poems taught.
- Students’ culminating in this unit will be a rewriting of a Chinese poem into English, and a retelling of it into English. This project is intensive and requires 15 hours of work in total to be completed well.
- During this time, they will also have a chance to discuss the poem 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 III and conjugation of verbs III, and creation of longer paragraphs into simple essays.
- Competitions include submission of best student poems to a variety of Ontario and international competitions for student level and age group.
Unit 3 Oh Canada Through Print!
- In this unit, students learn the reading strategies of reading, skimming and scanning information texts including newspaper articles. To this end, students will learn to explain relationships between some important aspects of geography and history and current Canadian issues.
- Students will learn Note-taking, completing graphic organizers, and answering comprehension questions including on grammar.
- Students will engage in dialogues and role plays using language structures correctly.
- The Summative Assessment in this unit includes student creation of an online Scrapbook and media text presentation.
- Sub topics in this unit are identifying tense choices, 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 An Author in the Making
- Students work throughout the unit on writing, editing and publishing their own Kids’ Book.
- Students work to review and extend their understanding of literacy elements, including comprehension and application of plot graph elements and characterization. Students will build their story and plot around a strong and developing kid character. Students have an opportunity to create an animal character instead.
- With respect to developing their own kids’ book, students will read kids’ books with similar themes and identify and connect these to the broader understanding of the elements of writing kids’ books.
Unit 5 Adapting to a New Situation
- This unit focuses on introducing students to the daily obstacles facing a newcomer to Canada. Students will read primary testimonials and will respond verbally and in writing to these.
- Socio-cultural Competence and Media Literacy components are developed in this unit in that students participate effectively in a variety of learning and teaching situations. Students will prepare a media text for invention research, as they will be delving into writers, poets, mathematicians, scientists and others who are newcomers to Canada and who have contributed immensely to the social, economic, educational and financial wealth in Canada.
- Students will research one such newcomer to Canada and will develop their writing skills to this end. Included in this is learning to link paragraphs into a simple essay and answering comprehension questions. Within the context of their research, students will develop information paragraphs, summaries, note-taking, character analysis and develop stronger grammar usage.
- Summative Assessment will focus on the research project, and will include an oral presentation using PPT.
