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.
In grade 8, students are encouraged to explore issues related to personal identity and community concerns as they interact with increasingly complex and challenging texts. Students are asked to critically analyse and evaluate perspectives in texts and the influence of media on their lives. They are asked to write about and discuss topics of relevance that matter in their daily lives. In the language expectations the use of knowledge, skills, and strategies are used to facilitate learning in other subjects areas as a tool to help students understand real world applications in order to participate in society.
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 
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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.
- Create a poster for a "knock-off" of a popular product. How can you take it and reinvent it?
- Identify the topic, purpose, and audience in one of these articles or videos on dance and how movement relates to language.
- Pick one of the people interviewed in the videos. Devise five questions you would ask them to learn more about their experiences.
- List three music artists that you like and explain why/how they have had an impact on you.
- Use a graphic organizer to state the main idea, supporting arguments, and the author’s purpose and point of view.
- Create your own definitions for 20 of the words in the vocabulary list.
- Organize one of the topics into a KWL chart.
- Compare and appraise media techniques used within the articles and videos in a graphic organizer.
- Create a word cloud of high-frequency words using notes from throughout your observations on debates.
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.
audience
blog
comprehension
concept map
conventions
critical literacy
critical thinking
culture
diversity
editing
elements of text
graphic novel
homonym
homophone
hyperbole
hyperlink
idiom
imagery
inclusive language
inferring
irony
media
metacognition
paraphrase
point of view
revising
stereotype
storyboard
summarizing
synonym
syntax
synthesis
text
voice
webcast
web page
webquest
website
zine
