Learning Strategies

Listed below are strategies from the Grade Five FSL Program of Studies that are intended to help students build on their language skills. These strategies are useful when instructing students and working with small groups:

• guess the meaning of an unknown word or expression

• use visual clues (e.g., pictures, gestures, illustrations) and auditory clues (e.g., street noises, intonation, sighs)

• associate a gesture, a symbol or an illustration with a message

• identify cognates and word families

• activate prior knowledge and experiences

• predict what information a text may contain

• activate first-language listening and reading skills

• represent meaning by using mental images, illustrations or graphic representations

• use repetition (e.g., listen again to a text or reread a text that is causing difficulty)

• collaborate with others to build confidence and exchange information

• focus attention on what is known and ignore what is unknown

• repeat a word, an expression, a pattern, a presentation, etc., silently or aloud

• use models to create a similar text

• use reference materials (e.g., vocabulary and expressions posted in the classroom)

• find a different way of conveying a message (e.g., gestures, drawing, pointing to an example, using a different word or expression to approximate meaning)

• collaborate with others to brainstorm, resolve problems, rehearse and communicate messages

• reflect on and articulate, in English, what they have learned and can demonstrate in French articulate their understanding of the grade-specific Knowledge of Language Concepts

• develop and use memory strategies to learn, retain or recall vocabulary or grammatical structures

• combine new learning of vocabulary with previously learned vocabulary

• practice a word, an expression or a grammatical pattern

• repeat a new word or expression, silently or aloud

• repeat a new word silently and associate it with an image

• repeat a new word saying the letters or syllables that make up the word

• use physical actions in conjunction with new vocabulary

• create a rhyme or a song to help remember vocabulary, expressions or grammatical rules.