English, Grade 10, Applied Curriculum Policy:

English, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10, 2007 (Revised)

Course Description:
This course aims to enhance students’ oral communication, reading, writing, and media literacy skills essential for success in secondary school and everyday life. Students will analyze and create a variety of informational, literary, and graphic texts. A key focus will be on consolidating strategies and processes that enable students to interpret texts and communicate clearly and effectively. This course is designed to prepare students for the mandatory Grade 11 college or workplace preparation course.

Chapters and Descriptions:

• Listening for Understanding
  In this unit, students will learn how to “listen to understand” by identifying and using strategies for different listening purposes. They will apply their active listening skills to create a mock interview. The unit includes two oral presentation tasks: one focused on persuasion and the other on informing. Additionally, students will work on recognizing bias to enhance objectivity in their presentations.
• Exploring Short Stories
  Students will study short stories, beginning with a review of plot construction. They will practice inferring meanings by predicting plot outcomes, analyzing diction, and understanding how various elements of fiction work together to create effective narratives. The unit concludes with students writing their own short story after examining models presented in class
• Examining Novels
  This unit focuses on novels and the moral dilemmas they present, encouraging students to engage as consumers and independent thinkers. Building on the previous unit’s short fiction, discussions will delve into the issues raised by the novel’s author. Students will utilize key terms to discuss the novel’s complexities and conclude by writing an opinion article that reflects their stance on the themes explored in the novel.
• Understanding Graphic Novels
  Students will choose one of two graphic novels to study, applying insights from previous units to this genre. Emphasis will be placed on the physical properties of the graphic novel, including how color, cell shape, symbolism, and graphic elements like maps and photographs enhance storytelling. As the selected graphic novels are based on true stories, the intersection of fiction and non-fiction will also be explored.
• Analyzing Media
  In the final unit, students will examine various forms of advertising to understand how both simple and complex media texts are crafted for specific purposes and audiences. They will analyze how these media convey both overt and implied messages. For their culminating task, students will create a media campaign for their hometown.