Page 13 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 2007 (Revised)

THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 9 AND 10 | English
Half-Credit Courses
The courses outlined in the Grade 9–12 English curriculum documents are designed as full-credit courses. However, with the exception of Grade 12 university preparation and university/college preparation courses, they may also be delivered as half-credit courses.
Half-credit courses, which require a minimum of fifty-five hours of scheduled instruction- al time, must adhere to the following conditions:
The two half-credit courses created from a full course must together contain all of the expectations of the full course. The expectations for each half-credit course must be drawn from all strands of the full course and must be divided in a manner that best enables students to achieve the required knowledge and skills in the allotted time.
A course that is a prerequisite for another course in the secondary curriculum may be offered as two half-credit courses, but students must successfully complete both parts of the course to fulfil the prerequisite. (Students are not required to complete both parts unless the course is a prerequisite for another course they wish to take.)
The title of each half-credit course must include the designation Part 1 or Part 2. A half credit (0.5) will be recorded in the credit-value column of both the report card and the Ontario Student Transcript.
Boards will ensure that all half-credit courses comply with the conditions described above, and will report all half-credit courses to the ministry annually in the School October Report.
CURRICULUM EXPECTATIONS
The expectations identified for each course describe the knowledge and skills that stu- dents are expected to develop and demonstrate in their class work, on tests, and in vari- ous other activities on which their achievement is assessed and evaluated.
Two sets of expectations are listed for each strand (or broad curriculum area) of every course – overall expectations and specific expectations. The overall expectations describe in general terms the knowledge and skills that students are expected to demonstrate by the end of each course. The specific expectations describe the expected knowledge and skills in greater detail. The specific expectations are grouped under numbered headings, or “sub- organizers”, each of which indicates the overall expectation to which the group of specific expectations corresponds. Each expectation in a group is identified by an “expectation tag” (a subheading) that describes the particular aspect of the overall expectation to which the specific expectation refers (see the illustration on page 13).
Taken together, the overall and specific expectations represent the mandated curriculum. In the core English curriculum (the compulsory courses offered in every grade), the over-
all expectations outline standard sets of knowledge and skills required for effective listen- ing and speaking, reading, writing, and viewing and representing. They encompass the types of understanding, skills, approaches, and processes that are applied by effective communicators of all ages and levels of development, and are therefore described in con- stant terms from grade to grade. The English curriculum focuses on developing the depth
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