Course Description
This course provides an opportunity for Literacy students to practice their reading and writing skills together in a classroom environment under the guidance of ENGU faculty. Students with different levels of reading and writing will continue developing comprehension and decoding strategies, increase sight word recognition and practice their spelling skills, sentence level writing, and write groups of sentences.
Course Content
Reading
- reading simple passages and stories with some fluency and recognizing end punctuation
- using phonic and context clues in reading simple passages
- reading and following simple written directions
- identifying the main idea, characters and events from reading
- stating opinions on readings
- using phonics to decode unknown words
- reading phonically regular words with digraphs and final double consonants
- identifying long vowel sounds and reading regular long vowel words containing diphthongs
Writing and Spelling
- printing or writing complete sentences and short messages
- participating in brainstorming to generate writing
- recognizing the difference between a brainstormed list and complete sentences
- printing or writing sentence answers to questions about reading passages
- using assigned vocabulary words appropriately in sentence writing
- using capitals and end punctuation correctly
Skills and Strategies for Classroom Learning
- identifying short- and long-term personal goals for literacy learning
- working independently, even with some distraction in the environment
- asking for help in an appropriate manner when needed
- attending to and participating in group discussions and activities
- providing and receiving help from classmates in a cooperative manner
- communicating respectfully during group work
- beginning to employ strategies for learning and remembering words
- looking up words for spelling and meaning in a simplified dictionary or glossary
College and Community Resource Skills
- identifying personal needs and accessing appropriate college services and resources (e.g. counseling, women’s centre) with assistance
- maintaining and improving skills in the ENGU 100 level courses
- managing time and arriving punctually
- working as a team
- following oral instructions
- reading words commonly used as safety warnings at job sites (e.g. danger, hazard)
- with assistance, completing basic forms personally identified as relevant
- following simple written instructions
Learning Activities
A combination of instructional methods will be employed in order to balance instructional efficiency with individual student needs and identified goals. Class and small group instruction will be used along with individual assistance.
Means of Assessment
A mastery model of ongoing evaluation will be used. Progress towards course objectives will be monitored on a regular basis by the instructor in consultation with each student, and he/she will receive frequent feedback and informal progress reports. A student will have completed the course when he/she has demonstrated through satisfactory completion of exercises and assignments that the course objectives have been achieved. The following is one example of evaluation components and weighting:
- Weekly Reading Assignments in-class 15%
- 4 Punctuation or Grammar Quizzes 15%
- In-Class Assignments (vocabulary etc.,) 10%
- Weekly Writing Assignments in-class 15%
- Out of class writing 15%
- Midterm 10%
- Final 10%
- Class participation and Attendance 10%
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Assignment
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Grade Percentage
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Weekly Reading Assignments in-class
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15%
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|
4 Punctuation or Grammar Quizzes
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15%
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|
In-Class Assignments (vocabulary etc.,)
|
10%
|
|
Weekly Writing Assignments in-class
|
15%
|
|
Out of class writing
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15%
|
|
Midterm
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10%
|
|
Final
|
10%
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|
Class participation and Attendance
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10%
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|
|
|
Learning Outcomes
The objectives of this course are for each successful student, depending on their level, to:
- practice identifying personal short and long-term goals for literacy learning
- increase his/her sight vocabulary of common words and personally relevant words
- improve his/her phonic skills
- develop an awareness of word context as a decoding strategy
- improve his/her ability to read and understand simple passages, including written instructions and other personally identified functional literacy tasks
- write short paragraphs and messages
- write simple sentences to answer reading comprehension questions
- begin using simplified dictionaries
- develop a prewriting strategy to generate ideas
- improve his/her ability to work independently and to organize personal classroom materials
- identify his/her personal needs in relation to college and community resources and services
- continue to develop the classroom and learning behaviours
- develop classroom and job related time-management skills
- begin to develop interpersonal conflict-resolution strategies appropriate to the classroom context
Textbook Materials
Texts/books available in Literacy library. Any other resources required to be purchased by students (e.g. Students are required to supply a three-ring binder, paper, eraser, pen and pencil.)