Our Core Beliefs for Literacy:
- All students can achieve high standards given sufficient time and support
- All teachers can teach to high standards given the right conditions and assistance
- High expectations and early intervention are essential to success.
- Literacy is the key to lifelong learning
- Literacy instruction must be embedded across the curriculum
- All teachers of all subjects in all grades are teachers of literacy
- Families and members of their communities must be encouraged and supported in taking action to promote student literacy
Literacy in the Early Years
What does Literacy look like in Kindergarten?
Children develop their capacity to think critically, to understand and respect many different perspectives, and to process various kinds of information through:
- communicating thoughts and feelings – through gestures, physical movements, words, symbols, and representations, as well as through the use of a variety of materials;
- literacy behaviours, evident in the various ways they use language, images, and materials to express and think critically about ideas and emotions, as they listen and speak, view and represent, and begin to read and write;
- an active engagement in learning and a developing love of learning, which can instil the habit of learning for life.
What does Literacy look like in the primary classroom?
Most of what primary students know about language comes from listening and speaking with others; being read to by adults and interacting with media texts such as advertisements, television programs, video games, songs, photographs and movies. Because our students come from varied experiential backgrounds, educators at PVNCCDSB are aware of the need to differentiate instruction in order to meet the needs of individuals in their classroom. Students will be encouraged to develop and demonstrate literacy skills in a way which best suits their individual learning style.
Creating a ‘literate learner’ for the 21st century requires that students to be immersed in authentic experiences that engage their interest and allow them to delve deeply into reading, writing, and speaking activities which are anchored in inquiry and focus on critical thinking skills. With support from our educators, even young children can and should be required to explore, inquire, and respond to experiences in a challenging yet developmentally appropriate way.
Literacy – Grades 4-12
Our goal for junior, intermediate and senior students is to guide their development, through collaborative learning experiences, to become critical and creative thinkers, effective meaning makers, and communicators.
Students use language to think critically about ideas and express their thoughts, through writing, listening and speaking. They access, manage and evaluate information in order to think imaginatively while being reflective and using metacognitive skills to become lifelong learners.
Through focusing on literacy across all curriculum areas students demonstrate their critical thinking skills by:
Demonstrating Understanding of text through retelling, summarizing, identifying the main idea and utilizing supporting details.
Making Inferences using stated and implied ideas.
Extending Understanding by making meaningful connections.
Analysing Text by using elements of text to determine meaning.
Responding to and Evaluating Text by making judgements and drawing conclusions.
Demonstrating an Understanding of Point of View by asking questions, identifying perspective and suggesting alternative points of view.