English Language Arts 1

Unit 1: Story and Text

Big Idea: stories have parts we can name, fun word-tricks and pictures that make them come alive, and special words we use to talk about them. Noticing the setting, characters, and events of a story; spotting literary elements and devices; and using vocabulary to talk about texts.

• Where and when a story happens
• Who a story is about
• What happens in a story

• Words that sound nice together
• Pretend words that paint a picture
• Rhymes and repeating sounds
• Pictures that add to the story
• Colours that show a feeling
• Pictures that stand for an idea

• Book words: title, author, character

Unit 2: Strategies and Processes

Big Idea: growing readers, talkers, thinkers, and writers each use their own toolkit of little tricks. Using reading strategies to figure out a story, oral language strategies to talk and listen well, metacognitive strategies to notice your own thinking, and writing steps to make a piece of writing.

• Guessing from pictures
• Reading it again
• Telling the story back in my own words
• Finding the big idea and small clues
• Sounding out a word
• Words I just know by looking
• Checking that reading makes sense
• Fixing a reading mistake

• Using a voice others can hear and understand
• Looking and listening to the speaker
• Waiting for my turn to talk
• Asking a question about the topic
• Telling how it reminds me of my own life
• Adding an idea that fits the discussion

• Thinking back on what I did
• Asking myself "does this make sense?"
• Picking something to get better at
• Checking my own work

• Adding or changing an idea
• Fixing letters and spaces
• Thinking about who will read it

Unit 3: Language Features, Structure, and Conventions

Big Idea: print has rules, words are made of sounds, letters have shapes, and sentences follow a pattern — these small building blocks make reading and writing work. Noticing how print works on a page, hearing the small sounds inside words, forming letters, building a simple sentence, and using capitals and end marks.

• Where reading starts and which way it goes

• Letters, words, and spaces

• Hearing the small sounds in words

• Making each letter the right way

• What makes a simple sentence

• Ending a sentence with a mark
• Starting with a capital letter