Alberta - English Language Arts 3
Text Forms
Identifying and applying text forms and structures improves understanding of content, literary style, and our rich language traditions.
Guiding question: How can text organization enhance meaning?
Learning outcome: Students relate the form and structure of texts to the communication of ideas and information.
Knowledge
Features that organize, clarify, or enhance messages can be digital or non-digital, including captions and charts.
Understanding
Messages can be organized, clarified, and enhanced using features.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Skills and Procedures
Examine a variety of features that enhance the meaning of messages.
Include a variety of features to help organize, clarify, and enhance personal messages.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Knowledge
Text features can be digital or non-digital, including
- images
- tables of contents
- maps
- graphs
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Skills and Procedures
Examine a variety of text features that provide additional information in a text.
Include a variety of text features to organize, clarify, or enhance personal messages.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Packaging Tricks
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Looking at News
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
Knowledge
Non-fiction texts include
- biographies
- content-area texts
- interactions with people
- land
MediaSmarts Resources
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Looking at News
- So Many Choices!
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Content-area texts refer to texts from subjects such as science, social studies, and fine arts.
Non-fiction texts can have structures that include
- main idea or topic
- supporting details
- linear or cyclical sequencing
- compare and contrast
MediaSmarts Resources
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Looking at News
- So Many Choices!
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Understanding
Non-fiction texts have structures that support the sharing of factual information to explain or describe real people, places, things, or events.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Looking at News
- So Many Choices!
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Skills and Procedures
Compare and contrast ways that non-fiction texts can be organized.
Investigate linear and cyclical sequencing in a variety of non-fiction texts.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Looking at News
- So Many Choices!
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Comprehension
Text comprehension is supported by applying varied strategies and processes and by considering both particular contexts and universal themes.
Guiding Question: How can the development of skills and strategies support comprehension of text?
Learning Outcome: Students analyze text and make connections to personal experiences to support meaning.
Understanding
Critical thinking can be applied to comprehend texts that vary in length or complexity.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Skills and Procedures
Independently read and demonstrate comprehension of texts that vary in length or complexity.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Knowledge
Inferencing involves drawing conclusions based on known facts or evidence.
Inferencing can involve
- making connections
- questioning
- predicting
- Visualizing
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Learning With Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Wacky Media Songs: Consumer Awareness
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Understanding
Comprehension can be enhanced by inferring meanings that are not stated explicitly in text.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Girls and Boys on Television
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Media Stereotypes
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Critically Evaluating Media
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
- Wacky Media Songs: Media Representation
- Wacky Media Songs: Reading Media
- What do Halloween costumes say?
Skills and Procedures
Make inferences by combining background knowledge with information that is not explicitly stated within a text.
Identify connections between the actions, feelings, or motives of a character and evidence in text.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Adversmarts: Understanding Food Advertising Online
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Can You Spot the Ad?
- Co-Co's Adversmarts
- Girls and Boys on Television
- Looking at Advertising: Brands and Mascots
- Looking at News
- Media Stereotypes
- Packaging Tricks
- Representing Ourselves Online
- Rules of the Game
- So Many Choices!
- Teaching Media: Critically Evaluating Media
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
- Wacky Media Songs: Media Representation
- Wacky Media Songs: Reading Media
- What do Halloween costumes say?
Writing
Ideas and information can be articulated accurately and imaginatively through the use of writing processes and an understanding of the author’s craft.
Guiding Question: How can writing craft combined with skills and processes contribute to written expression?
Learning Outcome: Students investigate writing and research processes that support informed written expression.
Knowledge
Questioning can help focus research topics and processes.
Information can be accessed, stored, and shared in a variety of digital and non-digital ways.
Information can be categorized or sequenced to enhance organization.
Organizational tools, such as graphic organizers, can help plan and write about factual information.
MediaSmarts Resources
Understanding
Research processes can support accessing and logically organizing information.
MediaSmarts Resources
- Break the Fake: What's Real Online?
- Looking at News
- Teaching Media: Critically Evaluating Media
- Teaching Media: Media Techniques
- Wacky Media Songs: Finding and Verifying
Skills and Procedures
Access information from a variety of sources to answer questions or expand knowledge.
Organize, categorize, or sequence information using a variety of methods or tools.
Use research to create written text that is appropriate for an audience.
List sources of information used to inform research.