First Peoples oral histories are valid evidence of ownership of the land within Canadian law. The Supreme Court of Canada recognizes that First Peoples oral tradition is as important as written documents in considering legal issues. See resource disputes (e.g., Delgamuukw or Xeni Gwetin), treaties and title cases (e.g., Nisga’a), and environmental impact studies (e.g., Puntledge River Dam, Berger Inquiry).

Within a type of communication, the writer, speaker, or designer chooses a form based on the purpose of the piece. Common written forms include narrative, journal, procedural, expository, explanatory, news article, e-mail, blog, advertisements, poetry, novel, and letter.

literary or thematic categories (e.g., science fiction, biography, satire, memoir, poem, visual essay, personal narrative, speech, oral history)

stylistic choices that make a specific writer distinguishable from others, including diction, vocabulary, sentence structure, tone

avoiding common usage errors (e.g., double negatives, mixed metaphors, malapropisms, and word misuse)

common practices of standard punctuation, capitalization, quoting, and Canadian spelling

Texts use various literary devices, including figurative language, according to purpose and audience.

There are many strategies that readers use when making sense of text. Students consider what strategies they need to use to “unpack” text. They employ strategies with increasing independence depending on the purpose, text, and context. Strategies include but may not be limited to predicting, inferring, questioning, paraphrasing, using context clues, using text features, visualizing, making connections, summarizing, identifying big ideas, synthesizing, and reflecting.

includes speaking with expression; connecting to listeners, asking questions to clarify, listening for specifics, summarizing, paraphrasing

• thinking about one’s own thinking, and reflecting on one’s processes and determining strengths and challenges
• Students employ metacognitive strategies to gain increasing independence in learning.

There are various writing processes depending on context. These may include determining audience and purpose, generating or gathering ideas, free-writing, making notes, drafting, revising, and/or editing. Writers often have very personalized processes when writing. Writing is an iterative process.

elements of the text that are not considered the main body. These may include typography (bold, italic, underlined), font style, guide words, key words, titles, diagrams, captions, labels, maps, charts, illustrations, tables, photographs, and sidebars/text boxes.

how text is organized

the intended purpose of a text

for example, circular, iterative, cyclical

First Peoples stories often have protocols for when and where they can be shared, who owns them, and who can share them.

Within a type of communication, the writer, speaker, or designer chooses a form based on the purpose of the piece. Common written forms include narrative, journal, procedural, expository, explanatory, news article, e-mail, blog, advertisements, poetry, novel, and letter.

literary or thematic categories (e.g., adventure, fable, fairy tale, fantasy, folklore, historical, horror, legend, mystery, mythology, picture book, science fiction, biography, essay, journalism, manual, memoir, personal narrative, speech)

intonation, enunciation, volume, pacing, expression, purpose, diction, acoustics

stylistic choices that make a specific writer distinguishable from others, including diction, vocabulary, sentence structure, and tone.

examples include figurative language, parallelism, repetition, irony, humour, exaggeration, emotional language, logic, direct address, rhetorical questions, and allusion

avoiding common usage errors (e.g., double negatives, mixed metaphors, malapropisms, and word misuse)

common practices of standard punctuation in capitalization, quoting, and spelling of Canadian and First Peoples words

Texts use various literary devices, including figurative language, according to purpose and audience.

formal acknowledgements of another person’s work, idea, or intellectual property