TVO Learn is designed to meet each student where they are on their learning journey. Learning Activities are comprehensive and require guided instruction from an adult, while Resources for Learning, Apply the Learning prompts and Vocabulary lists work well to reinforce specific skills or to enable independent exploration of a subject. Use these helpful tips to get the most from TVO Learn.
NOTE: Updates to the Language learning activities are in progress to align with Ontario’s new 2023 Curriculum Documents.
How to Use These Resources
Curriculum Overview
Language development is central to students’ intellectual, social, and emotional growth, and should be seen as a key element of the curriculum. The language curriculum is based on the belief that literacy is critical to responsible and productive citizenship. The curriculum is designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to achieve this goal.
For students, what they know about language comes from listening and speaking with others, being read to by adults, and interacting with media texts such as advertisements, television programs, video games, songs, photographs, and films. Real, purposeful talk is not only an essential component of the language curriculum; it needs to be threaded throughout all subject areas.
The expectations for language build upon the prior knowledge and experience students bring to the classrooms. As students are from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds the base of knowledge, experience, and skills varies from student to student. This not only creates a classroom rich in diversity but also highlights the importance for language instruction to be differentiated to meet the needs of all students.
The language curriculum is divided into four strands:
- Oral Communication
- Reading
- Writing
- Media Literacy
Interested in learning more? View Curriculum PDF
For French resources, please visit idello.org
On this page:
Learning Activities
Learning Activities provide opportunity for deeper exploration of a subject. Organized by grade and topic (or strand), students should be guided through each Learning Activity by an adult. Before clicking on a topic to prepare for or begin this guided instruction, be sure to read these helpful tips about how to get the most out of TVO Learn.
Learning Activities 
Almost there!
To access this learning activity, please visit this page in a desktop or tablet browser.
Resources for Learning
Chosen by TVO educators, these resources support the curriculum outlined above. Review the below list of options along with the activities. Then, read, watch, listen or play to build understanding and knowledge.
Please be aware by accessing the resources below you will be leaving TVO Learn and entering other TVO domains that are subject to different privacy policies and terms of use.
Complete the suggested activities using these resources and other TVO resources.
Apply the Learning
Choose from the following to consolidate learning across all curriculum strands.
- While reading a story, choose a piece of music to go with it. Does the music help you understand the story or poem better? Would you choose to do this again? Why? Why not?
- Look at your favourite cereal box at home, what do you notice about the colours, images, and print on the box? You have the opportunity to change something in the design, what would you do?
- Who do you think is the main audience for Saturday morning cartoons? Do your parents watch them? Who watches sporting events on television in your or your friends’ families? Who seems most interested in car advertisements? Do you think some of these things are interesting to various groups of people?
- Choose an advertisement you would find in a magazine or online. What is this advertisement telling us? Do you believe its messages? What do the heroes and villains look like in the cartoons you watch? What does this suggest?
- In a story, how does a character’s actions help us to know how they are feeling in the story?”
- Think about your favourite book or movie. Create a poster to promote the book or movie so others would be interested to read or watch.
- Think of your favourite game, it could be a board game or card game. You want to invite a friend to play the game with you but they have never played before. To help them, write out the directions for playing the game so they can join in.Organize your idea in sequential order using these words: first, then, next, finally.
- Create your own definitions for 20 of the words in the vocabulary list.
Vocabulary
Review this list of vocabulary associated with the curriculum. Practice spelling, research definitions, and find these vocabulary words when engaging with the TVO resources or completing learning activities.
Students should understand and be able to apply these words in context.
always
around
because
been
before
best
both
buy
call
cold
does
don’t
fast
first
five
found
gave
goes
green
its
made
many
off
or
pull
read
right
sing
sit
sleep
tell
their
these
those
upon
us
use
very
wash
which
why
wish
work
would
write
your