The aim of the Saskatchewan Core French curriculum is to help students understand, use, and appreciate the French language. Students will use the language confidently and correctly in familiar contexts and authentic situations, develop the strategies that will help them acquire the language, and develop an appreciation of Francophone cultures.

In Levels 1 to 5 of the Core French curriculum, students begin by developing a level of comfort by first becoming familiar with the oral aspects of the French language in experiential contexts before proceeding to using it in its written forms. Basic competence in learning French may lead to students' desire to further their French language studies.

The renewed Core French Curriculum uses a literacy-based approach. In order to achieve the learning outcomes, students will learn a wide variety of language skills and strategies. Effective language teachers use a large range of instructional approaches to help students move from teachersupported and guided lessons to independent learning. Teachers model and discuss key procedural and metacognitive strategies for language learning and thinking. Students need to learn how to select and use strategies before, during and after viewing, listening, reading, representing, speaking, and writing.

In order to be successful, students need to learn and use thinking and learning skills and strategies on their own. In order to help students gain control over a repertoire of key skills and strategies, the skills and strategies need to be explicitly taught and practiced using a model such as the following:

• Introduce and explain the purpose of the skill or strategy.
• Demonstrate and model its use.
• Provide guided practice for students to apply the skill or strategy with feedback.
• Allow students to apply the skill or strategy independently and with others.
• Reflect regularly on the appropriate uses of the skills or strategies and their effectiveness.
• Assess the students' ability to transfer the repertoire of skills and strategies with less and less teacher prompting over time. Taken from (Saskatchewan English Language Arts, 2010).

In effective second language instruction, teachers initially provide a lot of support to help students grow in their knowledge and use of the French language, but as their proficiency increases they are able to withdraw some support. Known as scaffolding, this approach allows teachers to gradually release responsibility to students through the use of modeling, shared practice, guided practice and independent practice.

The following are the steps a Core French teacher would use with an oral activity:

1. The teacher models the language authentically while students observe and try to understand.
2. The teacher and students work together. The teacher models the language and helps students complete the activity.
3. Students are invited to complete the activity while the teacher observes them.
4. Students work independently by adapting the teacher's model as the teacher observes.

Copyright Pearson Education Canada « Effective Literacy Practices in FSL: Making Connections » used with permission.

Exploring aural, visual, and written text in Core French should be about understanding the text. Effective text users call upon a number of strategies that help them understand. Applying these strategies allows them to become independent text users. The strategies that follow are used before, during, and after exploring a text. They should be introduced in a progressive manner and they are effective with all of the Core French learning outcomes.

1. Ask Questions – the teacher models this strategy by asking questions that verify student comprehension, activate prior knowledge, and develop their language use.
2. Make Predictions – After using questioning to identify the context and personalize the topic by linking it to prior experience, students can begin to make predictions about the meaning of the text. They will be based on exploration of the title, visuals, and familiar vocabulary.
3. Monitor and Repair Comprehension – When a teacher explores a text in Core French it is important to pause and ask students to gauge comprehension. If the responses are not accurate they must repair comprehension by revisiting the text, defining certain words, or emphasizing graphics or other visual clues. Students need these strategies to check and correct their understanding.
4. Make Connections – As students explore text, they develop the ability to link a new text to what they already know. They may also make connections between a text in French and their first language. When they connect prior knowledge to a new text they are more likely to remember new content.
5. Visualize – Visualizing means creating a mental image of a message to bring a text to life and make it more vivid. This allows them to become engaged and motivated as well as enhancing the enjoyment of the experience.
6. Summarize – When students summarize the text they may start by searching for and copying key phrases from a text. The use of graphic organizers, such as charts, webs, and timelines is helpful to extract key information. Even though their vocabulary is limited they can feel a sense of accomplishment.
7. Synthesize - When students synthesize a text they go beyond retelling facts or storylines. They re-organize and transform the information into a new form that demonstrates what they have learned.
8. Analyze and Evaluate – After exploring a text students need to think about it in terms of what it means to them. They could consider how the author presented the content, organized the text or emphasized certain elements and not others. The challenge is to engage in a deeper consideration that is meaningful and linguistically feasible.

Copyright Pearson Education Canada « Effective Literacy Practices in FSL: Making Connections » used with permission.

Effective writers use a number of strategies to help them create a quality product. The strategies that follow can be used in the Core French classroom before, during, and after creating a text or visual representation.

• Make a web or use another graphic organizer to find ideas.
• Talk to someone to find ideas.
• Identify key words to plan writing.
• Do some research.
• Make an outline.
• Follow a model.

• Write a draft copy.
• Use a dictionary to verify spelling.
• Follow a model.
• Put the draft away and come back to it later.

• Look at a checklist.
• Make revisions by either changing removing or adding words, sentences or paragraphs.
• Look at a rubric and check the quality of product.
• Look at some anchor papers and compare writing to them.
• Write or type the final draft.