Page 53 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 9 AND 10 | Canadian and World Studies

emphasis in different subjects, but in all subjects, literacy needs to be explicitly taught. Literacy, mathematical literacy, and inquiry/research skills are critical to students’ success in all subjects of the curriculum and in all areas of their lives.
Many of the activities and tasks that students undertake in the Canadian and world studies curriculum involve the literacy skills relating to oral, written, and visual communication. For example, they develop literacy skills by reading, interpreting, and analysing various texts, including diaries, letters, government legislation and policy documents, interviews, speeches, treaties, information from non-governmental organizations, news stories, and fiction and non-fiction books. In addition, they develop the skills needed to construct, extract information from, and analyse various types of maps and digital representations, including topographic, demographic, thematic, annotated, choropleth, and geographic information systems (GIS) maps. In all Canadian and world studies courses, students
are required to use appropriate and correct terminology, including that related to the concepts of disciplinary thinking, and are encouraged to use language with care and precision in order to communicate effectively.
The Ministry of Education has facilitated the development of materials to support literacy instruction across the curriculum. Helpful advice for integrating literacy instruction in Canadian and world studies may be found in the following resource materials:
• Me Read? And How! Ontario Teachers Report on How to Improve Boys’ Literacy Skills, 2009 • Think Literacy: Cross-Curricular Approaches, Grades 7–12, 2003
The Canadian and world studies program also builds on, reinforces, and enhances mathematical literacy. Many courses in Canadian and world studies provide students with opportunities to reinforce their mathematical literacy in areas involving computational strategies and data management and, in particular, the ability to read and construct graphs. For example, students exploring trends in geography might need to interpret population pyramids or climate graphs as well as data related to economic development and/or quality of life. Calculations and graphing are often used in field studies: students engaged in a field study focusing on traffic congestion, for example, may need to develop methods of gathering data on the vehicle count per minute for selected times of day and then might construct graphs to communicate their findings. In addition, student may use
their mathematical literacy skills when interpreting data from various types of maps
and when creating maps to communicate their findings.
Inquiry and research are at the heart of learning in all subject areas. In Canadian and world studies courses, students are encouraged to develop their ability to ask questions and to explore a variety of possible answers to those questions. As they advance through the grades, they acquire the skills to locate relevant information from a variety of print and electronic sources, such as books, periodicals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, interviews, videos, and relevant Internet sources. The questioning they practised in the early grades becomes more sophisticated as they learn that all sources of information have a particular point of view and that the recipient of the information has a responsibility to evaluate it, determine its validity and relevance, and use it in appropriate ways. The ability to locate, question, and validate information allows a student to become an independent, lifelong learner.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR PROGRAM PLANNING IN CANADIAN AND WORLD STUDIES
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