Page 5 - English OLC Literacy Course 12 (2003)

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Introduction
The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course (OSSLC) is a full-credit Grade 12 course that will be offered as part of the English program in Ontario secondary schools starting in the 2003–2004 school year. This document is designed for use in conjunction with The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 1999; The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2000; and The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 to 12: Program Planning and Assessment, 2000.1 The latter document contains information relevant to all secondary school courses and disciplines represented in the curriculum; however, the present document outlines aspects of assessment policy that are unique to the OSSLC.
Purpose of the Course
To participate fully in the society and workplace of the twenty-first century, today’s students will need to be able to use language skilfully and confidently.The Ontario curriculum recog- nizes the central importance of reading and writing skills in learning across the curriculum and in everyday life, and prepares students for the literacy demands they will face in their postsecondary endeavours.To ensure that they have the essential competencies in reading and writing that they will need to succeed at school, at work, and in daily life, students in Ontario must demonstrate those skills as a requirement for graduation.
The standard method for assessing the literacy skills of students in Ontario for purposes of meeting the literacy requirement for graduation is the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), implemented in the 2001–2002 school year. The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Course has been developed to provide students who have been unsuccessful on the test2 with intensive support in achieving the required reading and writing competencies, and with an alternative means of demonstrating their literacy skills.
The reading and writing competencies required by the OSSLT form the instructional and assessment core of the course. (The comparison chart on pages 4–5 shows how the course incorporates and builds on the requirements of the test.) Students who successfully complete this course will have met the provincial literacy requirement for graduation, and will earn one credit.3 The credit earned for successful completion of the OSSLC may be used to meet either the Grade 12 English compulsory credit requirement or the Group 1 additional compulsory credit requirement (see Ontario Secondary Schools, Grades 9 to 12: Program and Diploma Requirements, 1999, pp. 8–9).
1. All curriculum documents are available both in print and on the ministry’s website, at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca.
2. Students who have been eligible to write the OSSLT at least twice and who have been unsuccessful at least once are eligible to take the course. If they are successful on the test, they are not eligible to take the OSSLC (except under special circumstances, at the principal’s discretion).
3. The OSSLC may be offered as a full-credit course or as two half-credit courses. (For policy guidelines on half-credit courses, see The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2000, p. 5.) If delivered as two half-credit courses, each half-course must incorporate expectations from all three strands in the same proportions as in the full-credit course. To meet the literacy requirement for graduation, students must successfully complete both half-credit courses.