Outline of Course Content
Unit 1: Food and Nutrition | 15 hours |
Unit 2: Advertising | 20 hours |
Unit 3: Informational Technology and Business | 20 hours |
Unit 4: Pollution and Business | 15 hours |
Unit 5: Risk-Taking | 15 hours |
Unit 6: Charity and Social Change | 20 hours |
Unit 7: Culminating Task | 4 hours |
Final Examination | 1 hour |
| Total: 110 hours |
UNIT OVERVIEWS
Unit 1: Food and Nutrition
Time: 15 hours
Students will review vocabulary related to foodand nutrition and will be asked to apply new vocabulary to their homework practice and formal assessments. Students will consider questions such as “Whatdoes a healthy diet look like?” and “How do different foods affect ourbodies?”. They will also be asked to take into account the socio-cultural experience of food and nutrition by considering the questions “Do you eat tolive or live to eat?” and “Can food be considered art?”. In this unit, students will develop, reinforce, and use skills such as: previewing a text, interpreting a visual chart, identifying the main idea and details of alistening and reading, and comparing information from different sources(videos, articles, recipes). Students will examine the qualities of aninformational text (headings, appendices, images) and read excerpts from Canada’s Food Guide. Students will use previewing strategies (predictingcontent, activating prior knowledge via discussion forums posts, using visualimages and markers to prepare for comprehension) to aid them in their readingand listening comprehension. Grammar instruction will focus on the use ofcomparative and superlative adjectives, understanding and applying cause andeffect when analyzing foods and diets, reading and writing words in a list, andtransitional words and phrases when reading and writing recipes. They will havean opportunity to practice using course formats such as discussion boards,homework, external links, videos, assignments, and quizzes.
Unit 2: Advertising
Time: 20 hours
Students will learn about advertising through avariety of reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises. Students willconsider questions such as “How can advertisers change our behaviour?” and “Areadvertisements helpful or harmful?”. They will explore the socio-culturalimplications of advertising by considering the question “Is it ethical toadvertise to children?”. Students will learn about various advertising techniques and will begin to engage in critical thinking exercises and media analyses to establish the difference between fact and opinion of an advertising claim. They will continue to develop, reinforce and use skills such as: previewing a text, notetaking, using a graphic organizer, using context to understand meaning, and reading and listening for main ideas and details.Writing and speaking skills will include revising and editing, writing acomplete opinion paragraph and giving a presentation about a topic inadvertising. Students will learn how to form the past perfect (He had just arrived;They used to eat at that restaurant) and to use adverbs (verb+two adverbs;adjective+ily). They will also learn about question forms in a variety oftenses, including negation and be introduced to tag questions (“You likes trawberries, don’t you?”). They will also learn how to form the past tense of irregular verbs (sweep/swept, sleep/slept). Students will be asked to perform a small media analysis of an advertisement, as well as construct an advertisementof their own.
Unit 3: Informational Technology and Business
Time: 20 hours
Students will consider the theme of information technology through a variety of reading, writing, listening and speaking activities. Students will consider questions such as “Would you prefer to gethelp from a person or a machine?” and “How do businesses use IT to sell moreproducts?”. In the context of these themes, students will develop, reinforce and use skills such as: reading and recognizing different text types; using title and visual aids to predict content; reading and listening for main ideas and details; using a T-chart to take effective notes on advantages and disadvantages of IT; and listening for intonation to identify a speakers interest in a topic. Writing and speaking skills will include: planning,editing and rewriting paragraphs of different genres; writing a summary paragraph; expressing and asking for reasons to explain why something happened; and planning a presentation. Students will learn and use new vocabulary related to the theme of informational technology. They will learn to form a variety of compound sentences to improve their writing skills (main clause + one subordinate clause [e.g., I saw lots of people when I got near the school.]), as well as learn to use proper punctuation when reporting direct and indirect speech. Students will be asked to imagine a new IT product that businesses or consumers could use.
Unit 4: Pollution and Business
Time: 15 hours
Students will explore the impact large-scale businesses have on our environment by considering questions such as “What arethe effects of big business on our ecosystems?” and “Should companies be responsible for protecting the environment?”. They will read and listen to avariety of texts related to the theme of business and pollution and will consider the impact of big business on our global environment and society, as well as various activist efforts that oppose large-scale business. In thecontext of these questions, students will develop, reinforce and use skillssuch as: previewing a text, predicting content, reading and listening for mainideas and details, skimming for main ideas and gaining prior knowledge through looking at pictures, headings and captions. Students will read and listen to avariety of materials such as climate change posters, brochures and websites and environmental justice poetry. Students will then be asked to write and performa persuasive speech about an environmental cause they believe in. They will be guided through this process with the aid of graphic organizers to plan before writing and speaking, reading and listening to examples of persuasive speech, using notes to present, and revising and editing. Grammar instruction willfocus on collective noun verb agreement, relative and indefinite pronouns, andverbs (know, think, feel, hope believe “I believe that...”).
Unit 5: Risk-Taking
Time: 15 hours
Students will learn about the theme of risk-taking through a variety of reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises about different individuals’ risk-taking experiences. Students will consider questions such as “What risks are good to take?” and “How canrisk-taking benefit our lives and our society?”. In the context of these questions, students will develop, reinforce and use skills such as: previewing a text, predicting content, reading and listening for main ideas and details,and organizing information from a text in a graphic organizer. Writing and speaking skills will include planning before writing, revising and editing, using topic sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding sentences to construct a series of narrative paragraphs about a risk-taking experience in their own lives. Students will learn and use new vocabulary related to the theme of risk. They will learn to use modals (should, could, would), gerundswith verbs of like/dislike, and the simple use of infinitives with wouldlike/ask/tell (e.g., I would like to go to the concert. The teacher asked me to study hard.)
Unit 6: Charity and Social Change
Time: 20 hours
Students will begin considering the impact of altruism and social change by exploring questions such as “What does a peaceful society look like?” and “Who should we help most in a society?”. They will read biographies and accounts of Canadian and international social changemakers world (such as Tommy Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr., and The Famous Five) and be asked to consider the question “How does social change happen?”. They will be encouraged to reflect on and locate their own unique beliefs on a diversity of social justice topics and will be asked to plan or report on a small campaign for a social justice issue of their choosing. They will read and listen to a variety of texts that will aid them in creating a social justice campaign and consider and identify the characteristics of social media, blogs, websites,and advertising campaigns. Grammar instruction will focus on phrasal verbs(give up, take off, hang around), the simple passive form (The book was foundin the desk yesterday. Ferraris are made in Italy.) and type 1/probable conditional (e.g., If you smile, people will think you are friendly).
Unit 7: Culminating Task
Time: 4 hours
In the first part of their culminating task, students will create a literacy portfolio in which they edit and revise previously submitted assignments or activities. Students will also submit tasks from their notebooks that are completed throughout the length of the course and reflect on how all of their portfolio pieces demonstrate growth in their language abilities and what strategies they can use moving forward in their studies. In the second part of their final task, students will be asked to consider how the topics and concepts covered in the course are connected and interrelated to one another. They will be asked to submit a personal reflection(series of paragraphs and images) on how their thinking has changed regarding two topics covered in our course and explain how they will apply this new knowledge to their personal lives, academic studies and possible future careers.
