Page 79 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9-12: Health and Physical Education, 2015 - revised

are reading to learn in health and physical education. In addition, there are many works of fiction that can be used to illustrate key concepts in health and physical education, such as resilience, healthy living, and active living. Teachers of English could assign works of fiction that model concepts from the health and physical education curriculum in order to provide opportunities for meaningful discussion about healthy, active living.
The Ministry of Education has facilitated the development of materials to support literacy instruction across the curriculum in Grades 7−12. Helpful advice for effectively addressing the literacy demands of different curriculum areas, including health and physical education, may be found in resource materials available in the literacy domain of the EduGAINS website, at www.edugains.ca/newsite/literacy/index.html.
Critical Thinking and Critical Literacy
Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Critical thinking includes skills such as questioning, predicting, analysing, synthesizing, examining opinions, identifying values and issues, detecting bias, and distinguishing between alternatives. Students who are taught these skills become critical thinkers who can move beyond superficial conclusions to a deeper understanding of the issues they are examining. They are able to engage in an inquiry process in which they explore complex and multifaceted issues, and questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers.
Students use critical-thinking skills in health and physical education when they assess, analyse, and/or evaluate the impact of something and when they form an opinion and support that opinion with a rationale. In order to think critically, students need to ask themselves effective questions in order to: interpret information; analyse situations; detect bias in their sources; determine why a source might express a particular bias; examine the opinions, perspectives, and values of various groups and individuals; look for implied meaning; and use the information gathered to form a personal opinion or stance, or a personal plan of action with regard to making a difference. In the health and physical education curriculum, the living skills expectations address both critical thinking and creative thinking skills, and students have opportunities to apply these skills in a variety of contexts and situations across the curriculum.
Students approach critical thinking in various ways. Some students find it helpful to discuss their thinking, asking questions and exploring ideas. Other students may take time to observe a situation or consider a text carefully before commenting; they may prefer not to ask questions or express their thoughts orally while they are thinking.
Critical literacy is the term used to refer to a particular aspect of critical thinking. Critical literacy involves looking beyond the literal meaning of a text to determine what is present and what is missing, in order to analyse and evaluate the text’s complete meaning and the author’s intent. Critical literacy is concerned with issues related to fairness, equity, and social justice. Critically literate students adopt a critical stance, asking what view of the world the text advances and whether they find this view acceptable, who benefits from the text, and how the reader is influenced.
Critically literate students understand that meaning is not found in texts in isolation. People make sense of a text, or determine what a text means, in a variety of ways. Students therefore need to take into account: points of view (e.g., those of people from
SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR PROGRAM PLANNING
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