Ontario, Canada

Language/Reading Curriculum in the Fourth Grade

Reading Policy

Ontario’s reading policy is set out in Ontario’s provincial language curriculum for Grades 1 to 8, which was revised in 2006.⁶ District school boards are responsible for the implementation of the provincial curriculum policy at the local level.

Ontario launched a comprehensive literacy strategy following the 2003 publication of the report Early Reading Strategy (Stratégie de lecture au primaire), written by a panel of expert academics, educational administrators, and practitioners.⁷ In 2004, another panel of experts published Literacy for Learning (La littératie au service de l’apprentissage), which focused on students in Grades 4 to 6.⁸ This report outlines a framework “for ensuring that students in Grades 4 to 6 in all publicly funded schools in Ontario receive the strategic instruction and support they need to develop as fully literate readers, writers, talkers, and thinkers.” The report is built on an evolving view of Freebody and Luke’s 2010 Four Resources Model, which emphasizes the reader as an analyzer of texts that represent different views, beliefs, values, and perspectives to serve different interests. The literate reader interprets, critiques, and challenges the messages in the texts and considers alternative meanings, deciding what to think and when to act. The expectations in Ontario’s French language and reading curricula outline the model’s practices of analysis, code breaking, making meaning, and using text. The Ministry of Education supports a tri-level approach to supporting literacy learning in the education system (e.g., district school boards, schools, classrooms) and the development of resources for teachers, principals, school board staff, and parents.

Summary of Provincial Curriculum

The knowledge and skills that students are expected to know and demonstrate are set out in Ontario’s provincial curriculum policy documents. The 2006 revised Ontario language curriculum documents for Grades 1 to 8 are based on the belief that literacy is critical to responsible and productive citizenship and that all students can become literate.⁹ Successful language learners:

• Understand that language learning is a necessary, life enhancing, reflective process
• Communicate (e.g., read, listen, view, speak, write, and represent) effectively and with confidence
• Make meaningful connections with other students, the ideas they encounter in texts, and the world around them
• Think critically with an understanding that all texts advance a point of view that must be recognized, questioned, assessed, and evaluated
• Appreciate the cultural impact and aesthetic power of texts
• Use language to interact and connect with individuals and communities, for personal growth, and for active participation as world citizens

Ontario’s English language curriculum document sets out overall and specific expectations in four broad areas of learning, or strands: Oral Communication, Reading, Writing, and Media Literacy. While reading expectations for the language curriculum for Grades 1 to 8 are described below, all four areas of learning are interrelated. The overall expectations state that students will be able to:

• Read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts using a range of strategies to construct meaning
• Recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning
• Use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently
• Reflect on and identify personal strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and helpful strategies before, during, and after reading a text

Specific expectations are associated with each of the above overall expectations. While the overall expectations remain the same from Grades 1 to 8, the content of the specific expectations differs from grade to grade, reflecting the development of skills, knowledge, and understanding of students through the elementary years.

Like the English language curriculum, the French language curriculum for students in Grades 1 to 8 contains three strands: Oral Communication (Communication Orale), Reading (Lecture), and Writing (Écriture). Media literacy (L’éducation aux médias) is integrated within the three strands.¹⁰ In 2006, the curriculum was revised with the Reading strand divided into prélecture, lecture, and  réaction à la lecture components. While the French language curriculum was developed, implemented, and revised in parallel with the English language curriculum, a distinct feature of the French language education system is the (Aménagement linguistique) policy, which is intended to promote, enhance, and expand the use of the French language and culture in a minority setting in all spheres of activity. With respect to reading, the policy focuses on achieving optimal oral and written language acquisition and on integrating cultural experiences into daily life within the classroom and at school.