Page 106 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 2007 (Revised)

WRITING SKILLS
OVERALL EXPECTATIONS
By the end of this course, students will:
1. Developing and Organizing Content: generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended purpose and audience;
2. Using Knowledge of Form and Style: draft and revise their writing, using a variety of informational, literary, and graphic forms and stylistic elements appropriate for the purpose and audience;
3. Applying Knowledge of Conventions: use editing, proofreading, and publishing skills and strategies, and knowledge of language conventions, to correct errors, refine expression, and present their work effectively;
4. Reflecting on Writing Skills and Strategies: reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful at different stages in the writing process.
SPECIFIC EXPECTATIONS
1. Developing and Organizing Content
By the end of this course, students will:
Identifying Topic, Purpose, and Audience
1.1 identify the topic, purpose, audience, and appropriate writing form for specific writing tasks (e.g., a poster to promote a favourite musi- cal artist to the class; a letter to the editor expressing a point of view about a current issue in the community; a study sheet summarizing the information on traffic signs in a driver’s manual)
Teacher prompts: “What is the purpose of your writing – to inform? to persuade? to entertain?” “What form will best suit your purpose? Why?” “Who is the intended audi- ence for your writing? How will your target audience influence your writing?”
Generating and Developing Ideas
1.2 generate and focus ideas for potential writing tasks, using a variety of strategies and resources (e.g., watch a short video clip related to a topic before reading a news article about the topic; in a small group, brainstorm and discuss possible approaches to a topic; identify key words to narrow a topic for an Internet search; use graphic organizers such as a fishbone dia- gram or T-chart to explore and connect ideas)
Teacher prompts: “What approaches to this topic are possible?” “What ideas were emphasized in the video?”
Research
1.3
locate and select information to support ideas for writing, using a variety of strategies and print and electronic sources (e.g., use an elec-
tronic catalogue in the library or an Internet search engine to locate information from text- books, encyclopaedias, magazines, CD-ROMs, and websites; use highlighting, note making, paraphrasing, and summarizing to gather and record relevant information; record sources used and information gathered in a form that makes it easy to understand and retrieve)
Teacher prompts: “What sources of informa- tion have you already used” “What key words are you using for your search?” “What information have you found so far?”
Classifying Ideas
1.4 sort and classify ideas and information for their writing in a variety of ways that allow them to manipulate information and view their data from different perspectives (e.g., use cue cards for each of the 5W’s to classify information for a biography; use a graphic organizer to show relationships between and among different types of information on a topic; in a small group, use headings to group data collected from an online source)
WRITING SKILLS
105
Literacy Skills: Reading and Writing
ELS2O