Page 67 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2007 (Revised)

Grade 11, College Preparation
3. Reading With Fluency
4. Reflecting on Skills and Strategies
THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | English
Elements of Style
2.3 identify a variety of elements of style in texts, including increasingly complex texts, and explain how they help communicate meaning and enhance the effectiveness of the texts (e.g., the choice of words in a letter to the editor can reveal the attitude of the author; the behaviour of a character in the early scenes of a drama can foreshadow the ending of the play; rhetorical questions can help to engage the reader’s interest when used to introduce the topic or thesis of a report or essay; similes and metaphors can add layers of meaning to descriptions of setting or of characters in a short story)
Teacher prompts: “What effect does the lack of variety in sentence lengths and types have in this passage of the text? Does it effectively convey the narrator’s sense of boredom and monotony?” “Can you identify the elements that help to create the dark and ominous mood of this poem?” “Why is non-standard Canadian English used in this text?”
By the end of this course, students will:
Reading Familiar Words
3.1 automatically understand most words in
a variety of reading contexts (e.g., words in grade-level texts and independent reading
texts and resources; terms associated with co- operative education courses and placements; terms used in workplace literature and Revenue Canada forms)
Teacher prompt: “What strategies do you use to find out whether or not you will be able to read a text independently?”
Reading Unfamiliar Words
3.2 use appropriate decoding strategies to read and understand unfamiliar words (e.g., use knowledge of word order and of the relation- ships between words to guess the meaning of a new word; look for familiar words within unfa- miliar words; use knowledge of roots, prefixes, and suffixes to predict meaning)
Teacher prompts: “What did you see in this
word that helped you to connect it to a word you already knew?” “Do you remember see- ing part of this word in a term used in your biology textbook? Could it mean something similar here?”
Developing Vocabulary
3.3 identify and use a variety of strategies to expand vocabulary (e.g., use a thesaurus to find synonyms for new words encountered while reading, and record them in a reading log; use an etymological dictionary to identify the origi- nal and evolving meaning of words)
Teacher prompt: “Which abstract words in this report could be changed to concrete words to make the meaning clearer? What strategies would you use to help identify the appropriate synonyms?”
By the end of this course, students will:
Metacognition
4.1 describe a variety of strategies they used before, during, and after reading; explain which ones they found most helpful; and identify appropriate steps they can take to improve as readers (e.g., create a mind map of strategies, using colours, symbols, or different fonts to illustrate the usefulness of the strategies and their mastery of them; select one strategy that they found helpful when reading challeng- ing texts and describe how they used it)
Teacher prompts: “When did you find it more helpful to visualize the information in a text – when you were trying to understand the behaviour of a character or when you were reading a set of instructions?” “How did the fishbone diagram help you clarify the rela- tionships among ideas in the essay?”
Interconnected Skills
4.2 identify a variety of their skills in listening, speaking, writing, viewing, and representing and explain how the skills help them read more effectively (e.g., write a journal entry directed to the writer of a novel they have read, explaining how they put all of these skills to use to help them understand the work)
Teacher prompts: “What lessons have you learned from listening attentively when others speak that will make you a better reader?” “How might creating a promotional trailer for a play help you clarify your interpretation of the text?”
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