Page 30 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: The Arts, 2010

THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | The Arts
INFORMATION ON THE ACHIEVEMENT CHART
Categories of Knowledge and Skills
The categories represent four broad areas of knowledge and skills within which the sub- ject expectations for any given course can be organized. The four categories should be considered as interrelated, reflecting the wholeness and interconnectedness of learning. The categories help teachers to focus not only on students’ acquisition of knowledge but also on their development of the skills of thinking, communication, and application.
The categories of knowledge and skills are as follows:
Knowledge and Understanding. Subject-specific content acquired in each course (knowledge), and the comprehension of its meaning and significance (understanding).
Thinking. The use of critical and creative thinking skills and/or processes. Communication. The conveying of meaning and expression through various art forms.
Application. The use of knowledge and skills to make connections within and between various contexts.
In all of their courses, students should be given numerous and varied opportunities to demonstrate the full extent of their achievement of the curriculum expectations across all four categories of knowledge and skills.
Teachers will ensure that student learning is assessed and evaluated in a balanced man- ner with respect to the four categories, and that achievement of particular expectations is considered within the appropriate categories. The emphasis on “balance” reflects the fact that all categories of the achievement chart are important and need to be a part of the process of instruction, learning, assessment, and evaluation. However, it also indicates that for different courses, the relative importance of each of the categories may vary.
The importance accorded to each of the four categories in assessment and evaluation should reflect emphasis accorded to them in the curriculum expectations for the course, and in instructional practice.
To further guide teachers in their assessment and evaluation of student learning, the achievement chart provides “criteria” and “descriptors”, which are described below.
Within each category in the achievement chart, criteria are provided, which are subsets of the knowledge and skills that define each category. The criteria identify the aspects of student performance that are assessed and/or evaluated, and serve as a guide to what teachers look for. In the arts curriculum, the criteria for each category are as follows:
Knowledge and Understanding
• knowledge of content (e.g., facts, genres, terms, definitions, techniques, elements, principles, forms, structures, conventions)
• understanding of content (e.g., concepts, ideas, styles, procedures, processes, themes, relationships among elements, informed opinions)
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