Page 18 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 2007 (Revised)

understand that reading is a process of constructing meaning and equips them with the strategies that good readers use to understand and appreciate what they read.
Writing
Writing... provides students with powerful opportunities to learn about themselves and their connections to the world. Through writing, students organize their thoughts, remember important information, solve problems, reflect on a widening range of perspectives, and learn how to communicate effectively for specific purposes and audiences. They find their voice and have opportunities to explore other voices. By putting their thoughts into words and supporting the words with visual images in a range of media, students acquire knowledge and deepen their understanding of the content in all school subjects.
Ministry of Education, Literacy for Learning, 2004, p. 79
A central goal of the Writing strand is to promote students’ growth as confident writers and researchers who can communicate competently using a range of forms and styles to suit specific purposes and audiences and correctly applying the conventions of language – grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation. These conventions are best learned in the context of meaningful and creative writing activities that allow students to develop the ability to think and write clearly and effectively.
Writing, from initial musings to final publication, is a complex process that involves a range of complementary thinking and composing skills, as well as other language processes, including reading, speaking, and listening. As writers compose, they consider their audience; make decisions about form, style, and organization; and apply their knowledge of language use. To develop these competencies, students need a supportive classroom environment, with opportunities to extend and refine their skills in using the writing process and doing research. At the secondary level, teachers continue to teach and model effective strategies and skills, as well as provide appropriate scaffolding for students who are building skills and working towards independence. Students need opportunities to apply these skills and to write daily, in many forms and genres, for a variety of purposes and audiences, and within different time constraints. The forms and genres explored may include essays, reports, short stories, poetry, scripts, journals, letters, biographies, children’s stories, articles, reviews, précis, explanations, instructions, notes, procedures, résumés, and advertisements. Because postsecondary institutions and employers require clear, well-organized writing, on demand and within strict timelines, students also need to learn and practise strategies for writing effectively and correctly in the context of in-class writing assignments and test situations.
Students benefit from opportunities to produce writing that is interesting and original and that reflects their capacity for independent critical thought. Writing activities that students find meaningful and that challenge them to think creatively about topics and concerns that interest them will lead to a fuller and more lasting command of the essential skills of writing.
The overall expectations in this strand focus on the elements of effective writing (ideas/content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, language conventions, and presentation) and on the stages of the recursive writing process (planning for writing, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading, and publishing). In the specific expectations, the examples and teacher prompts refer to writing forms and language conventions that are appropriate for instruction in the given course. The forms and conventions noted are not, however, the only ones that may be taught in the course, nor are they exclusive to the
THE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH
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