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OLC4O Literacy
Open Course
Ministry of Education Course Title: Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course
Course Code: OLC4O
Grade Level: 12
Prerequisite: None
Department: English
Course Description:
This course is designed to help students acquire and demonstrate the cross-curricular literacy skills that are evaluated by the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. Students who complete the course successfully will meet the provincial literacy requirement for graduation. Students will read a variety of informational, narrative, and graphic texts and will produce a variety of forms of writing, including summaries, information paragraphs, opinion pieces, and news reports. Students will also maintain and manage a literacy portfolio containing a record of their reading experiences and samples of their writing.
Overall Curriculum Expectation - all units are interrelated
Building Reading Skills
BRV.01 – demonstrate the ability to read and respond to a variety of texts;
BRV.02 – demonstrate understanding of the organizational structure and features of a variety of informational, narrative, and graphic texts, including opinion pieces, information paragraphs, textbooks, newspaper reports and magazine stories, and short fiction;
BRV.03 – demonstrate understand of the content and meaning of informational, narrative, and graphic texts that they have read using a variety of reading strategies;
BRV.04 – use a variety of strategies to understand unfamiliar and specialized words and expressions in informational, narrative and graphic texts.
Building Writing Skills
BWV.01 – demonstrate the ability to use the writing process by generating and organizing ideas and producing first drafts, revised drafts, and final polished pieces to complete a variety of writing tasks;
BWV.02 – use knowledge of writing forms, and of the connection between forms, audience and purpose, to write summaries, information paragraphs, opinion pieces (i.e., series of paragraphs expressing an opinion), news reports, and personal reflections, incorporating graphic elements where necessary and appropriate;
Understanding and Assessing Growth in Literacy
UAV.01 – demonstrate understanding of the importance of communication skills in their everyday lives – at school, at work, and at home;
UAV.02 – demonstrate understanding of their own roles and responsibilities in the learning process;
UAV.03 – demonstrate understanding of the reading and writing processes and of the role of reading and writing in learning;
UAV.04 – demonstrate understanding of their own growth in literacy during the course.
Unit Descriptions:
Unit 1 Literacy Skills and Strategies
This introductory unit builds on diagnostic and formative assessments of reading and writing and progresses to evaluation of reading and writing.
Unit 2 Reading and Writing Narrative Texts
The emphasis in this unit is on the style and structure of narrative texts, which are examined in students’ course materials as well as in their reading outside of school.
Unit 3 Reading and Writing Informational Texts
Students reinforce their practice of literacy strategies learned in Unit 1 and apply these strategies to understand a variety of informational texts, including news reports, opinion pieces, and information paragraphs.
Unit 4 Reading and Writing Graphic Texts
Students will engage with a variety of graphic text forms and apply the literacy skills learned in new contexts.
Unit 5 Demonstrating Success in Reading and Writing
Students create an anthology of “best works” by selecting examples of reading and writing tasks.
