Grade 9 English Language Arts: how to help at home
What your child learns in Grade 9 english language arts in the Nova Scotia Curriculum, and simple things to try at home.
The Big Ideas this year
- Speak and listen to explore, extend, clarify, and reflect on thoughts, ideas, feelings, and experiences.
- Communicate information and ideas effectively and clearly, and respond personally and critically.
- Interact with sensitivity and respect, considering the situation, audience, and purpose.
- Select, read, and view with understanding a range of literature, information, media, and visual texts.
- Interpret, select, and combine information using a variety of strategies, resources, and technologies.
- Respond personally to a range of texts.
- Respond critically to a range of texts, applying understanding of language, form, and genre.
- Use writing and other ways of representing to explore, clarify, and reflect on thoughts, feelings, experiences, and learnings, and to use imagination.
- Create texts collaboratively and independently, using a variety of forms for a range of audiences and purposes.
- Use a range of strategies to develop effective writing and other ways of representing and to enhance clarity, precision, and effectiveness.
Easy ways to practise english language arts at home
- Read what they are interested in: graphic novels, sports pages, series. Then talk about it.
- Ask for the main idea and one piece of evidence from the text.
- Have them write real messages: a thank-you note, a short review, a note to a relative.
- Read their writing aloud to them; they often spot their own mistakes by ear.
What each unit covers
Word Detective
Using prefixes, suffixes and Latin and Greek bases to work out new words, choosing a meaning from the sentence around a word, and subject words like product, mass and scale.
Forms & Features
Knowing what each text form does, how features such as an index, footnote or caption help readers, how signal words show a text's pattern, and how images, colour and design shape meaning.
Close Reading
Reading original short passages and answering questions about theme, tone, word choice, structure and the author's purpose, using evidence from the text.
Literary Elements
Recognizing devices such as irony, symbolism, motif, allusion and foils in short excerpts, and describing tone and mood.
Literary Devices
Spotting allusion (a reference to something well known), analogy, juxtaposition (contrasts side by side) and flashback in short original excerpts, and explaining why a writer chooses them.
Voices & Perspectives
How point of view and background shape a text, why oral traditions and the protocols around them matter, and asking whose voices are present or missing. This unit introduces ideas only; teachers and local First Peoples communities lead deeper learning.
Argument & Rhetoric
Spotting ethos, pathos and logos, common fallacies such as straw man and false dilemma, loaded language and bias, and judging whether a source or media message can be trusted.
Digital Smarts
Telling misinformation from disinformation, checking sources before trusting them, managing passwords and privacy, spotting phishing, and citing and using other people's work respectfully.
Language & Style
How word choice shapes feeling (connotation and denotation), how English changes and borrows words, formal and informal register, concise and varied sentences, and devices such as anaphora and rhetorical questions.
Grammar & Style
Semicolons, colons, dashes, commas and apostrophes, subject-verb agreement, pronoun case, misplaced modifiers, run-ons and fragments, and choosing a formal or informal register.
Revise & Edit
Making sentences more concise, choosing transitions, fixing unclear pronouns and tense shifts, catching errors a spell-checker misses, and Canadian spelling such as colour, centre, practise and licence.
What the report card levels look like at home
- Minimal
- Just getting started with this idea. Short, regular practice with lots of support helps most.
- Satisfactory
- Understands parts of it and is building confidence. Keep practising the tricky parts.
- Good
- Has it! Mixed review now and then keeps it strong.
- Very good to excellent
- Applies it confidently, even in new or harder situations. Try challenge mode and real-life problems.
Your child’s teacher decides the level on the report card. Read the Nova Scotia report card guide.
Common questions
Read what they are interested in: graphic novels, sports pages, series. Then talk about it. Ask for the main idea and one piece of evidence from the text. Keep sessions short, about 10 to 15 minutes, and stop on a success.
The Nova Scotia Curriculum Grade 9 english language arts units include word detective, forms & features, close reading, literary elements, literary devices, voices & perspectives.
Free printable Grade 9 english language arts practice sheet
Questions from every unit, with an answer key.