Kindergarten English Language Arts
9 units matched to the Manitoba Curriculum. Kids see this subject as “Letters & Words”.
Learning focus
- A1 Oral Language Communication: Learners will apply listening and speaking skills to receive, exchange and develop ideas for various purposes and audiences.
- A2 Language as the Foundation for Reading and Writing: Learners will develop and apply the understanding of the system of language (knowledge and skills) and language comprehension for reading and writing.
- B1 Acquire New Information: Learners will activate, acquire and build background knowledge through inquiry of diverse topics and engagement with multimodal forms of text (e.g., visual, oral, print, digital, experts, Elders).
- B2 Construct Meaning: Learners will understand and apply a variety of comprehension strategies to construct the meaning of text and consolidate new information.
- B3 Think Critically about Multimodal Text and Respond: Learners will recognize, analyze, and respond critically to inequities, bias, and viewpoints in texts and ideas.
- C1 Generate Ideas, Create Plan and Draft/Prototype: Learners will generate ideas, conduct research, evaluate sources, and design a plan to compose multimodal texts (visual, multimedia, oral, written) for a range of purposes and audiences.
- C2 Enhance the Clarity and Artistry of Multimodal Texts: Learners will apply knowledge and understanding of the variables of writing to enhance the clarity, precision and effectiveness of their creations and reflect critically on created text.
- C3 Edit and Publish: Learners will apply knowledge of editing to communicate the text clearly and coherently to an audience, using a variety of media, tools and strategies to publish text.
- D1 Share Ideas and Information: Learners will use a range of multimodal forms of communication (e.g., visual, multimedia, oral and written texts) to share, clarify, and extend ideas/ information for different purposes and audiences.
- D2 Assess and Set Goals: Learners will use metacognition (the ability to think about one’s own thinking) to assess their language skills as listeners, speakers, readers, writers, viewers and representers, supporting their grow as independent learners. Learners will set goals and monitor progress.
Units
Unit 1
Letter Partners
Matching capital (big) letters with their lowercase (small) partners, including look-alikes such as b, d, p and q.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.2 · naming upper- and lowercase letters
Unit 2
First Sounds
Hearing the first sound in a word (b in bus) and linking it to its letter. Say the words out loud together and stretch out the first sound.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.1, ELA.K.A2.3 · identifying first sounds, and linking letters and sounds
Unit 3
Rhyme Time
Hearing rhymes (cat, hat) and spotting a word that doesn't rhyme. Rhyming games build the listening skills behind reading.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.1 · recognizing rhyme
Unit 4
Clap the Beat
Breaking words into syllables (ba-na-na) by clapping. Clap along out loud: one clap for each part you hear.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.1 · clapping the syllables in words
Unit 5
Blend a Word
Listening for the sounds in a word, blending them to read it, and counting the sounds in words.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.3 · using letters and sounds to read and spell words
Unit 6
Sight Words
Recognizing common words such as the, see, can and my, plus colour and number words, by looking closely at their letters.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.A2.3, ELA.K.C3.2 · reading and spelling familiar words
Unit 7
Picture Clues
Using the picture and the first letter to read a word or a short sentence, a key early reading strategy.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.B2.2, ELA.K.A2.3 · using pictures and first letters to work out a word
Unit 8
Book Detectives
How print works: telling letters, numbers, words and sentences apart, reading left to right and top to bottom, counting words, and what authors and illustrators do.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.B2.1, ELA.K.B2.2 · the parts of a book, and how print and pictures carry meaning
Unit 9
Story Order
Putting events in order, and listening to short stories to tell what happened at the beginning, middle and end.
Learning outcome: ELA.K.B2.6 · retelling a story in order
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