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OLC4O Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course
Open Course
Ministry of Education Course Title: Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course
Course Code: OLC4O
Grade Level: 12
Prerequisite: Students who have been eligible to write the OSSLT at least twice and who have been unsuccessful at least once are eligible to take the course.
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 (OSSLT). 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 portfolio containing a record of their reading experiences and samples of their writing.
Overall Curriculum Expectation - all units are interrelated
Building Reading Skills
By the end of this course, students will:
- demonstrate the ability to read and respond to a variety of texts;
- demonstrate understanding of the organizational structure and features of a variety of informational, narrative, and graphic texts, including information paragraphs, opinion pieces, textbooks, newspaper reports and magazine stories, and short fiction;
- demonstrate understanding of the content and meaning of informational, narrative, and graphic texts that they have read using a variety of reading strategies;
- use a variety of strategies to understand unfamiliar and specialized words and expressions in informational, narrative, and graphic texts.
Building Writing Skills
By the end of this course, students will:
- 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;
- use knowledge of writing forms, and of the connections between form, 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
By the end of this course, students will:
- demonstrate understanding of the importance of communication skills in their everyday lives – at school, at work, and at home;
- demonstrate understanding of their own roles and responsibilities in the learning process;
- demonstrate understanding of the reading and writing processes and of the role of reading and writing in learning;
- demonstrate understanding of their own growth in literacy during the course.
Unit Descriptions:
Unit 1 Building Reading Skills
In this unit, students will make steady progress in flourishing strong reading skills that will later help them not only in the other parts of the course but will also gear them up to evaluate and understand different types of texts.
Unit 2 Building Writing Skills
This unit focuses on developing good writing skills in students by making them learn new strategies that can be used when writing texts. Students will gain adequate knowledge throughout this unit in order to write skillfully.
Unit 3 Understanding & Assessing Growth in Literacy
This unit will get the students ready to practically communicate and actively participate in activities that will help them develop vastly in all ways. This unit will also consolidate on concepts from Unit 1 & Unit 2.
Oral communication describes any type of interaction that makes use of spoken words, and it is a vital, integral part of the business world, especially in an era dubbed the information age. In a professional setting, effective oral communication is important because it is built on transparency, understanding and trust. Student oral communication skills can boost morale, encourage improved performance and promote teamwork.
Students will be taking part in the following oral business situations in this unit:
★ staff meetings, business meetings and other face-to-face meetings.
★ personal discussions.
★ Formal Presentations.
★ telephone calls.
★ informal conversation.
★ public presentations such as speeches, lectures and conferences, teleconferences or videoconferences.
★ interviews.
Unit 5 Informational Texts
In this unit, students will be learning about the kinds of informational texts that businesses use everyday in the workplace. Business depends on it in oral communication as guides and in written communication as aides. Students will be learning about and creating a variety of informational texts including newspaper articles, reports for encyclopedias, brochures, biographies, textbooks, and how-to books. They will also be focusing on manuals.
Unit 6 Key Business Issues
In this second to last unit, students will combine their learned skills and develop their thoughts and viewpoints on the Key Business Issues currently affecting business. Theses include:
➔ Development of Good Customer Service;
➔ Dealing with Difficult Customers;
➔ Mental Health and Anxiety in the Workplace;
➔ Assessing and dealing with at work conflicts;
➔ Brand Loyalty;
➔ Aligning business strategies;
➔ Growth and Decline Issues in a business;
Unit 7 Theses and Dissertation
The purpose of this unit is to review with students the skills required to be able to develop theses and write well on topics in Business English. To this end, students will be reviewing the top 3 skills required in terms of developing your theses and dissertation skills.
These include:
★ Strong written communication skills.
★ Honed critical thinking skills.
★ Developed research skills.
