Page 221 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 9–12 | Classical Studies and International Languages

Even students who are at the beginning stages of language learning can participate in role-play activities – for example, by choosing a non-verbal role-play format, or by sticking closely to the script of a simple folk tale or story read in class. For students at more advanced levels of proficiency, a “vocabulary role play”, into which the student must creatively integrate certain vocabulary items, can create an enjoyable challenge.
An important phase in any role-play activity is the follow-up. Debriefing after a role play allows students to analyse the role-play experience and the language used, and to make suggestions for other language choices in future situations.
Sentence Frames. A sentence frame is an open-ended model of a particular sentence pattern into which students can insert various words to complete the sentence. Sentence frames help beginning language learners to develop vocabulary as well as an awareness of sentence structure in the target language. Teachers can introduce sentence frames to focus on various sentence structures such as questions: Where is the ___________ ?; or repeated actions: Every day at 9:00, I ___________ ; every day at 10:00 I ___________ .
Students can compile their frame sentences into individual illustrated books; construct a class pattern book on a shared theme such as favourite school subjects or sports; or create class poems using sentence frames that can be read in rhythm (e.g., I like ___________ , but I don’t like ___________ ).
Surveys and Interviews. Language learners can engage in meaningful oral communication in the target language with each other and with others outside the classroom through the completion of surveys and interviews. Students can collect information on many topics and issues: for example, how classmates spend their time during an average day; languages and countries of origin represented in the school; favourites from the world of music, movies, or television; health and wellness lifestyle choices; steps that classmates and friends are taking to decrease energy consumption; and cultural studies such as traditions for selecting names in the target language or new slang terms popular with peers.
Students need to prepare for, conduct, and follow up on surveys and interviews by formulating questions; using oral interaction to collect data; and organizing, displaying, and interpreting the results. Interviews and surveys provide opportunities for authentic interaction with a wide variety of speakers, as well as occasions for students to investigate behaviours and opinions in order to increase their cultural knowledge of the target language.
Think-Aloud. In the think-aloud strategy, the teacher models out loud the strategies that good readers use when dealing with complex texts, or demonstrates orally various strategies that writers use to think about and organize their writing. The think-aloud strategy gives students a chance to “get inside” the thought processes behind the use of reading and writing strategies.
For example, the teacher reads aloud a brief passage to the class and describes in detail his or her own thinking process when an unknown word is encountered, including using information from context clues and background knowledge that could help in comprehending the new word. Or, when teaching writing, the teacher models aloud the strategies used in writing an employment-search cover letter while composing the letter on a chart, projector, or interactive whiteboard. During this process, the teacher verbalizes for students the step-by-step composition of the letter, while deliberately describing the strategies, vocabulary, and content chosen in the process of writing the letter.
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