Obstacles and opportunities for literacy teaching: A case study of primary core French classrooms in Ontario.

Abstract

More and more, Canadian educators are being told that literacy development can occur across subject areas of the curriculum. Few studies have focused on whether this applies to core French as a second language (CF). This article reports on a study investigating the literacy teaching practices of Ontario primary core French teachers (n = 3), focusing  mainly on the practices of Christine, whose activities, strategies and perspectives highlight the potential for CF instruction to echo literacy principles taught in homeroom English (L1) classrooms, and for both languages to benefit. Context-specific constraints identified by all participating teachers will also be discussed.