I'm just wrapping up a paper which has me evaluating the K-9 Program of Studies for English Language Arts in Alberta. I have to say that, despite the sheer size of the document, it's a rather interesting read. My assignment was to look it over and note the ways in which it does and does not correspond to Luke & Freebody's "Four Resources" literacy framework (those being encoding/decoding, comprehension, real-world use, and critical evaluation) and I have to say that I'm a little surprised at what I saw. What particularly stands out for me is the way in which encoding and decoding are barely addressed, especially given the largely traditional climate of the province. If you're unsure what I mean by that term, encoding and decoding refers to the building block type stuff. Phonics, spelling, simple sentence construction, etc; the kinds of things that teaching reading and writing were all about for centuries. Looking at the program of studies (last revised in 2000, near as I can tell), it is very strange to me the attitude that is taken. It seems almost to be saying that by practising writing, good spelling and grammar will evolve naturally. Now, I don't know about you people, but I know plenty of folks who are constantly writing and can only spell just well enough to make the meaning apparent. The program references things like "the artistry of language" being the motivator for proper spelling and grammar. While personally I will admit to enjoying reading well written and properly spelled things, this is an aesthetic judgement that I don't believe we should think people will jump to without any kind of guidance. Particularly when we can look to countless poets who throw off grammatical convention in their work and produce things of great beauty, I don't know how we can take "artistry" seriously as a motivator for learning grammar.

Luckily, a further part of the assignment is to find ways to modify some of the outcomes the program of study sets in order to better address the four resources. This means that I've had some time to think on ways to sneak in some of the things it has omitted. I'm very glad that this course has given me the chance to look at the curriculum I'll be trying to adapt to my own classroom in (provided I can get a job) fall of 2013. In the time I've spent in the education program so far, it's probably the most useful thing I've done. I'll try and write a bit more by the end of the weekend. Maybe something about the WestCAST (Western Canadian Association for Student Teaching) conference and the workshop I've been asked to help put on? Who knows?