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All English Language Arts courses are designed to help students achieve the Public School Programs’ ELA General and Specific Curriculum Outcomes. These outcomes are organized under the headings of Speaking and Listening, Reading and Viewing, and Writing and Representing. Because all of these language processes are interrelated, teachers usually employ specific learning and assessment strategies that allow them to address a number of outcomes at once.

Grade Ten Courses

ESL 10 Academic 1.0 Credit
This is an Eng 10 course for students who are new to speaking English. ESL 10 students work to achieve the same curriculum outcomes as do Eng 10 students; however, modifications are made to support them as they acquire the skills and confidence to succeed in English. After completing ESL 10, a student may take ESL 11 or Eng 11, depending on which seems more appropriate.
ESL Support is available for all ESL students in grades 10, 11, and 12. This is not a specific course for credit but is arranged to suit a student’s needs and timetable. If you anticipate needing ESL Support, please tell your guidance counselor when you register.

ESL Communication Skills 10 Open 1.0 Credit

This is a credit course available to all ESL students in grades 10, 11 and 12. Students who anticipate needing ESL support should notify their guidance counsellor when they register.

English 10 Plus  Academic  2.0 Credits

English 10 Plus follows the English 10 curriculum but is presented over 220 hours, supporting students who require additional time for developing English language arts skills. English 10 Plus is a two-credit course, providing students with one English credit and one elective credit.

Through English 10 Plus, students will have extended opportunities to develop and strengthen the strategies and skills needed to meet the English Language Arts curriculum outcomes. A key feature of the course will be an emphasis on student-centered, active learning.

English 10 Academic 1.0 Credit
The emphasis for English 10 is on having students write and talk effectively and purposefully. We value students’ willingness to articulate personal responses, to extend their thinking, to listen to and consider the viewpoints of others, and to work towards expressing themselves clearly.
Students are asked to write and talk about individual text in a variety of ways. (“Text” may mean, for example, novels, short stories, poems, essays, plays, film/video, artwork, or photographs.) While students are encouraged to be thoughtful and observant about the choices that a creator of a text has made, the emphasis is not on studying, say, “the” novel as a form, but on seeing how “a” novel might relate to the students’ own lives.
Because English 10 must be flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of students’ backgrounds, abilities and interests, students are given the chance to make some choices in selecting topics or works to explore. For example, while some literature is studied collectively as a class, students are also required, with their teacher’s guidance, to choose and read independently books that are suited to their individual abilities and interests. Students are sometimes invited to respond to text by representing their thoughts in such forms as visual art, drama, music, or video.

English 10 IB Prep  Academic  1.0 Credit

Candidates must be motivated, avid readers (or students willing to become active readers) who are capable writers. this course focuses on modern tragedies, Shakespearean texts, poetry, epic poems and plays, and the elements of literary criticism.

Prerequisite: acceptance to IB through application
 

English/Communications 11 Graduation 1.0 Credit
English/Communications courses are intended for students who may not be university bound but need to work on their development as readers, writers, and language users. ECM courses are intended to prepare students for lifelong learning by engaging them in practical and interesting learning experiences closely related to their lives and to the world they will experience as adults. There is flexibility within the ECM program to allow students to move to academic courses where that seems appropriate.

ESL 11 Academic 1.0 credit
Please refer to ESL 10 above. After completing ESL 11, students will enroll in Eng 12.

English 11 Academic 1.0 Credit
Please refer to the English 10 description, as English 11 extends and develops the Grade Ten experience.
Students in this course will continue to read, write, view and speak in a variety of contexts to help them develop their own thoughts and to communicate those thoughts effectively to others.

Advanced English 11 Advanced 1.0 Credit
At the advanced level, the students are required to deal with sophisticated texts and to involve themselves in tasks that work towards the upper end of the Public School Programs’ English Language Arts Outcomes. This is a very demanding course, which includes both contemporary and non-contemporary literature as well as awareness of the development of the language itself. The usual emphasis on writing and speaking is continued here, with an increased emphasis on the development of argument. Students’ willingness to participate in formal and informal presentations and in class discussion generally is important.

English/Communications 12 Graduation 1.0 Credit
Please refer to English/Communications 11 above.
English/Communications 12 students write the Nova Scotia Exam.

English 12 Academic 1.0 Credit
This course is a continuation of the kinds of writing and speaking done in English 10 and 11, with more attention paid to the style of the literature studied as well as the development of a student’s own writing style. Students are given increased opportunities to demonstrate their ability as thoughtful, critical readers/viewers of literary and other text. Effective argument is emphasized, in both speech and writing. English 12 students write the Nova Scotia Exam.

Advanced English 12 Academic 1.0 Credit
Advanced English 12 extends the approaches outlined above for Advanced English 11 (although Advanced English 11 is NOT a prerequisite for Advanced English 12). This is a very demanding course, which requires an intensive study of a variety of contemporary and non-contemporary works. Students will read extensively and will do a substantial amount of both critical and imaginative writing. There is an emphasis on the development of sustained argument similar to that in Advanced English 11. Independent study is an important component of this course, as is the student’s participation in both formal and informal presentations and in class discussion generally. Advanced English 12 students write the English 12 Nova Scotia Exam.

African Heritage Literature 12 Academic 1.0 Credit
This elective offers grade 12 university preparatory students a perspective of the Black experience through a variety of literature. The course speaks eloquently both to those students whose Black culture is represented and to those students who are not of that culture but who express a desire to discover and understand the Black experience. Students will be exposed to, and gain familiarity with, the basic skills and fundamentals of an academic university preparatory course. Students will engage in independent reading with follow-up project work in the form of, for example, essays and class presentations.
NOTE: This course does NOT fulfill the mandatory English 12 requirement.
Prerequisite: English 11.
(This course will be offered only if there is sufficient enrollment.)

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