Subjects

English Language Arts (ELA):  

  The Language Arts program is about communication: oral, written and media (art, film, etc.).  Students practice receiving  (listening, reading, and viewing) and producing information (speaking, writing, and representing). Over the course of the year we will be working with various kinds of literature: poetry,  stories, and informational texts. We will be using big books, trade books, and books especially written for students learning to read.
   Formal reading and writing instruction starts this year. This takes a lot of concentration and hard work on the part of students. For this reason, I like to work on reading and writing when students are at their freshest: first thing in the morning.
   In French Immersion, our ELA time is 75 minutes per day, except on library day when we use part of our time for borrowing library books.
 On three days of the school cycle, we will be concentrating on reading activities. Lessons will usually start with Read Aloud. I will read a poem and a story to students.  The poem's rhyming help students learn about sounds and how words work. I also use poems to talk about images and feelings evoked by the words the poet used. I use stories to model good oral reading, using decoding strategies, and using comprehension strategies. Students can then apply them in their own reading more easily. 
  Once I have evaluated students' reading, I will be meeting them in reading groups. Each group will work at a common reading level or a common strategy.  Other students will be working on various literacy centres: reading to self, listening centre, word work, and writing. These will be introduced gradually.
   On two days of the cycle, we will be focusing on writing. We will spend some time doing word work: learning about letters and their sounds, word families, and other interesting information about the English language. Students will be learning how to write independently: telling stories in pictures, adding print to pictures, stretching words to hear the sounds, using charts to support their writing. Later we will talk about conventions of print.  We will practice writing personal narratives, lists, how to instructions, reports, and speech bubbles.  We try to end each writing day with a sharing time.
   On the day we have a 35 minute period, we will be working with a program called Second Step. It is a program that teaches social skills. I integrate some of our speaking, listening, and writing outcomes into this segment.

Mathematics: 

  Mathematics can be defined simply as the science of patterns. David A. Sousa, in his book How the Brain Learns Mathematics, paraphrasing K. Devlin, explained that patterns "include order, structure, and logical relationships, and go beyond the visual patterns found in tiles and wallpaper to patterns that occur everywhere in nature."  For example, patterns can be found in the spots on a leopard's skin, how people vote, the relationship between the words that make up a sentence, and the sequence of sounds in music. Seen this way, I feel that mathematics is everywhere, not just in my classroom.  Perhaps you could take some time to discover where math occurs in your lives and share it with your child.
   The grade one math curriculum includes 3-D objects and 2-D shapes (geometry), patterns, measurement, counting, developing number sense, number operations, mental math and problem solving of various kinds.  
   We will first work hands-on using different kinds of manipulatives (blocks, counters, etc.) when we start a new concept. As students gain mastery, we move on to using representations (pictures, diagrams), and lastly, students use symbols (numbers, signs) once they have built a solid understanding of the concept. We will be using games to practice and review concepts learned.

Français:   

 I will be speaking French in all subjects and all day except during English Language Arts. Grade one students are expected to speak as much French as they can. Early in the year, this is mostly during structured activities. They are expected to ask certain questions in French (permission to go for a drink of water, for example). Gradually, I expect them to use more and more French at all time. 
  Activities will be theme related. I will be reading books and students will learn songs and poems, new vocabulary and sentence structures, play games, draw, act, and write. At times, students will be required to make short presentations to the class; for example, to talk about a drawing or act in a puppet show.  We will be practicing printing, especially lower case (small letters).  I have included a guide on the correct formation of letters in the Opening Day Conference envelope.  Students will be expected to use capitals and small letters where they belong.  
  Students will be introduced to some reading and writing activities over the course of the year. Generally, early in the year, we focus on oral expression. As the year progresses, we will integrate more reading and writing activities.  By the end of the year, students will be writing a few sentences in French, using models combined with phonetic spelling. They will also be reading short texts they or class have written.


Health: 

The units for the year are: Habits for Health, Safety, Dental Health, Food and Nutrition, Emotional Well-Being

Art: 
  
    I will be using lessons on drawing from Mona Brookes' book Drawing with Children to start us off.  The lessons teach students how to look for basic elements of shape when drawing.  We will also be exploring other media to complete our projects once our drawings are done.  Oil pastels, paints, modelling clay and markers are some of the media we will be using.