Comparing BC's Transformed Curriculum (Language Arts)

At our September in-service Delta Kindergarten and K/1 teachers spent some time working with the new language arts transformed curriculum drafts that were released in August.  To help teachers process the new curriculum we worked with one pagers for both the new and current curricula (English and French Immersion). We spent the bulk of our time comparing the big ideas which is why the first page of each document just has the big ideas (goals from IRP docs) listed. The second page of each document has all the detail including the pop-ups/elaborations added from the newest drafts so that teachers can see all the detail in one place and easily cross reference different pieces. Not all of the transformed English Language Arts curriculum fit on the one page so the overflow definitions are included in a glossary page.

Transformed Kindergarten English Language Arts (08/2015)

Transformed English Language Arts Glossary (08/2015)

Kindergarten English Language Arts (2006)

Transformed French Immersion Kindergarten Language Arts (08/2015)

French Immersion Kindergarten Language Arts (1997)

Teaching Oral Language in Kindergarten

Teachers in Delta are inquiring into the ways they support language acquisition. The inquiries are collaborations between Kindergarten classroom teachers, and in many cases the ELL specialist teachers who support their students. The project also includes French Immersion teachers.

The purpose of the inquiry is to deepen our capacity to provide responsive in-class support to all of our language learners in Kindergarten. We have used district funds to release teachers to come together with their school teams to:

       1. Establish shared understandings between Early Childhood and Second Language specialists;
       2. Co-plan how they will collaborate to support language learning and;
       3. Share their school based inquiries with other teachers.

We are using a blog to both share information and document the professional learning of the participating school groups. Our materials and process can be viewed at the following link

Teaching the Acquisition of Language in Kindergarten Blog