BY PAUL JUNOR
The announcement by the Ontario Ministry of Education that it had updated the Grade 1-8: Language Arts curriculum caught many education stakeholders by surprise. The introduction to the changes in the curriculum reveals that they were made as a result of the Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read Inquiry report in 2019. The OHRC’s report made 157 recommendations to the Ministry of Education, school boards and faculties of education with respect to steps that can be taken to tackle deep issues that impact the right to learn to read.
The Ministry of Education released a response on March 11th, 2022, in which it outlined that it will be implementing immediate steps to improve student literacy and making longer-term reforms to modernize the way reading is taught and assessed in schools with a focus on phonics. The following steps were initiated to improve literacy outcomes and support learning recovery:
- Revising the elementary language curriculum and the Grade 9 English course with scientific, evidence-based approaches that emphasize direct, explicit and systematic instruction and removing references to unscientific discovery and inquiry-based learning, including the three-cueing system, by 2023
- Revising the elementary francais, Actualisation du français, Programme d’appui nouveau arrivants, and the Grade Francais curriculum by September 2023
- Releasing a science-based guide for education in spring 2023 that will support effective early reading instruction
- Collaborating with partners, including faculties of education, on professional development for educators to ensure they are learning science-based reading instruction methods
- Beginning development of a French-language reading intervention program
- Engaging with parents and sector partners on a longer-term response and developing accessible, parent-friendly resources on literacy skills
New strands that are introduced in the revised curriculum include:
- Strand A. Literacy Connections and Applications
- Strand B. Foundations of Language
- Strand C. Comprehension and Responding to Texts
- Strand D, Composition: Expressing Ideas and Creating Texts
In addition, the curriculum includes new instructional approaches to language such as:
- Evidence-based systematic and explicit instruction
- Multimodal literacy instruction
- Oral communication instructional practices
- Universal Design for Learning and differentiated instruction
- The tiered approach to language and literacy instruction
There are guiding principles and subject-based instructional strategies for students with special needs and students with disabilities. In addition, in order to help English language learners there are research-informed pedagogy to support students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. The essential role that the library learning commons and teacher-librarians play in the overall literacy process is emphasized. As well, there is the alignment of cross-curricular learning with newly released curricula to take into consideration mathematics and science and technology.
Finally, with respect to assessment and evaluation, the achievement chart is revised to ensure that it reflects the new learning areas in the updated curriculum.
The Ontario government hopes that these significant changes to the elementary school curriculum will address longstanding and systematic issues that have created: challenges, obstacles and impediments for many students in Grades 1-8. Many education stakeholders have expressed concerns that the government seems to have made these significant alterations without proper consultations and this could potentially impact its implementation.
There is cautious optimism that the Ministry of Education will release the upcoming future: workshops, training, resources and materials over the summer to help teachers prepare for the school year 2023 -2024. If this is not done, then Ontario teachers will not be prepared to provide the best quality lessons to students in September.
