Page 218 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 9–12 | Classical Studies and International Languages

Appendix C: Instructional Strategies
THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 9–12 | Classical Studies and International Languages
Pre-reading activities can include brainstorming, making predictions about the text, or posing questions to be answered from the text. Students then read/reread the text, using a combination of silent, pair, and group reading.
During reading of the text, the teacher can provide mini-lessons to individual students on a particular grammatical structure, vocabulary item, or content question related to the text. The individual coaching that takes place in guided reading allows the teacher to focus on the needs of individual students in developing reading skills and strategies.
After reading, the teacher structures response tasks to match the reading proficiency level of the group. For example, students can revisit the predictions made before reading the text; identify and describe characters; compile a chart of adjectives to describe characters’ feelings at various points in a story; or compare the theme of the story with that of another the group has read.
Guided Writing. In guided writing, teachers provide direct instruction on aspects of the writing process, as well as supplying direct supports for language learners writing in the language of study. These supports may include furnishing sentence starters or words to include in writing, providing a paragraph or essay outline to help students structure their writing, or presenting models of successful writing in various genres or forms.
During a guided-writing activity, the teacher first provides pre-writing activities, such as a group brainstorm on what should be included in a piece of writing. The teacher then takes students through the process of producing a piece of writing by first modelling the process in a think-aloud and
then perhaps creating a shared piece of writing with the whole class. Students then engage in their individual writing process, while the teacher may provide focused mini-lessons to small groups or individuals who are having difficulty with particular aspects of the writing. During the guided-writing process, the teacher will also provide opportunities for students to engage in peer editing, self-editing, and revision of their writing.
Information-Gap Communication Games. In these activities, often done in pairs, students share information with each other in order to solve a problem or arrive at a decision. In information-gap activities, students exchange new information, rather than responding to questions in class about material they have already covered.
Information-gap activities can focus on cultural concepts, vocabulary items, or linguistic elements currently being studied by the class. For example, in pairs, students can construct a timeline of historical events, with one-half of the historical events randomly assigned to each student. It is essential that partners do not show their information to each other. Instead, they must use their oral communication skills in the target language to convey information to their partner in order to reconstruct the entire timeline. These games are sometimes called barrier games, because student pairs may use a physical barrier such as a file folder to hide their information from each other.
Further examples of information-gap games include the following: one student puts in order a series of pictures on a grid that a partner cannot see, and communicates orally to the partner how to order another set of the same pictures to match the first student’s order; or one student, using a map, gives directions to a partner about how to find various points of interest in their city or town that are not marked on the partner’s map.
Jigsaw. Jigsaw is a cooperative group activity in which one segment of a learning task is assigned to each member of a small group – the “home” group. All home group members then work to become an “expert” in their aspect of the task in order to teach the other group members. Jigsaw activities
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