PEI ELA French Immersion cheat sheet

Genre families and their markers: narrative (plot, character, setting, conflict, resolution), expository (thesis, evidence, explanation), argumentative (claim, grounds, warrant, rebuttal), poetic (line, stanza, meter, rhyme scheme), dramatic (act, scene, stage direction, dialogue).

Text structure patterns signal comprehension questions: chronological, cause-effect, compare-contrast, problem-solution, description, and proposition-support; each has distinct cue words (because, however, similarly, as a result).

Figurative language taxonomy: simile and metaphor compare; personification assigns human traits; hyperbole exaggerates; understatement minimizes; synecdoche substitutes part for whole; metonymy substitutes an associated object.

Sound devices operate at the phoneme level: alliteration (initial consonants), assonance (vowel repetition), consonance (internal/final consonants), onomatopoeia (word imitates sound).

Narrative point of view: first person (I), second person (you), third limited (one character's interiority), third omniscient (multiple minds), objective/dramatic (no interiority).

Theme is an abstract statement about the human condition inferred from the whole text; a topic (love, justice, identity) is not a theme until it makes a claim.

English orthography layers: Anglo-Saxon base words (short, everyday), Latinate vocabulary (formal, academic), Greek roots (science, technical); morphology instruction targets prefixes, suffixes, and Greek/Latin roots.

Sentence grammar essentials: independent clause = subject + finite verb expressing a complete thought; fragments, run-ons, and comma splices are the three common clause-boundary errors.

Krashen's input hypothesis: acquisition requires comprehensible input slightly beyond current competence (i+1); comprehensible input alone does not guarantee accurate production.

Swain's output hypothesis: productive tasks (speaking, writing) push learners to notice gaps and test hypotheses; pushed output plus feedback drives accuracy.

Long's interaction hypothesis: negotiation of meaning (clarification requests, confirmation checks, recasts) makes input comprehensible and promotes intake.

Cummins' BICS/CALP distinction: conversational fluency develops in roughly 1-2 years; academic language proficiency takes roughly 5-7 years and transfers across languages when the first language is developed.

Lyster and Ranta feedback types: explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, repetition; recasts are frequent but often missed by learners, prompts are more likely to push repair.

French immersion program variants: early (entry kindergarten/Grade 1), middle (Grade 4), late (Grade 6-7); total immersion begins with near-100% French, partial immersion roughly 50%.

French-specific transfer traps: English /h/ and /θ/ absent in French; French liaison and elision; grammatical gender; verb morphology carried largely by inflection rather than word order.

Additive bilingualism is the program goal: the first language is a resource, not an obstacle; subtractive models that replace the first language are not recommended.

Three-tier comprehension model: literal (explicit), inferential (implied, requires combining text and knowledge), evaluative/critical (judgment, author's craft, bias).

Close reading sequence: first read for what the text says, second read for how craft produces meaning, third read for intertextual and critical connections.

Literary analysis paragraph structure: claim, textual evidence (quoted and cited), analysis of how the evidence supports the claim, link to the larger interpretation.

Text complexity has three dimensions: quantitative (readability measures), qualitative (levels of meaning, structure, knowledge demands), and reader-task considerations; only the first is formulaic.

Narrative analysis elements: characterization (direct/indirect), setting function, narrative distance, focalization, and structural turning points.

Poetry analysis requires attention to line breaks (enjambment versus end-stop), caesura, volta, and the relationship between sound and sense.

In French texts, register and tense carry interpretive weight: passé simple marks literary narration, imparfait sets scene and habit, passé composé marks bounded events in speech.

Running records and miscue analysis classify errors as semantic, syntactic, or graphophonic; a meaning-preserving substitution indicates a different strategy than a nonsense error.

Process stages are recursive, not linear: prewriting, drafting, revising (content and structure), editing (conventions), publishing; revision and editing are distinct operations.

Six traits framework: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions; presentation is sometimes added as a seventh.

Argumentative writing requires a defensible claim, relevant and sufficient evidence, reasoning that links evidence to claim, acknowledgment of counterclaims, and a conclusion that follows from the argument.

Informative/explanatory writing requires a controlling idea, logical organization with headings or transitions, accurate elaboration, and domain-specific vocabulary defined for the reader.

Narrative writing requires establishing a situation, developing characters and conflict, using pacing and sensory detail, and providing a reflective or resolved ending.

French conventions that differ from English: the guillemets « » for quotation, the espace insécable before ; : ! ? and inside guillemets, the virgule before the coordinating conjunction in longer clauses, and agreement of the past participle with a preceding direct object.

French verb agreement rules: passé composé with être agrees with the subject; with avoir agrees only with a preceding direct object; pronominal verbs agree except before a following direct object.

Rubric-scored writing tasks reward observable evidence: score against stated criteria, use anchor papers to calibrate, and separate convention errors from content quality when the rubric does so.

Oral proficiency descriptors commonly reference fluency, accuracy, range, coherence, and interaction; a single global impression score is less reliable than analytic scoring.

Interactional moves: turn-taking, backchanneling, repair initiation, and topic management; these are learned skills, not automatic byproducts of vocabulary knowledge.

Comprehensible output in speech requires planning time and rehearsal; unprepared oral tasks measure fluency, prepared tasks measure accuracy and range.

Listening in immersion involves segmenting the speech stream: liaison, enchaînement, and elision blur word boundaries, so dictation and transcription tasks build perception.

Register shifts in French speech: tu/vous, on for nous in informal speech, and the disappearance of ne in negation in spoken French versus written French.

Oral assessment formats: interview, picture description, role-play, presentation, and discussion; each samples different functions and should be matched to the target construct.

Feedback on oral errors should be selective and consistent: focus on errors that impede meaning or target the lesson's focus, and avoid interrupting fluency tasks for form.

Assessment types: diagnostic (before instruction), formative (during, informs teaching), summative (after, certifies learning); the purpose determines the design, not the format.

Validity is the degree to which an assessment measures the intended construct; reliability is consistency of scores; a test can be reliable and invalid but not valid and unreliable.

Backward design: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then plan learning experiences; assessments are designed before activities.

Differentiation can vary content, process, product, or environment, and is grounded in readiness, interest, and learning profile; it is not a set of fixed ability groups.

Response to intervention tiers: Tier 1 universal instruction, Tier 2 targeted small-group support, Tier 3 intensive individualized intervention; movement between tiers is data-driven.

Accommodations change access (extra time, glossaries, read-aloud) without changing the construct; modifications change the construct or expectations and affect score interpretation.

In immersion, assess content separately from language where possible; conflating the two penalizes learners twice for one error and muddies the score's meaning.

Progress monitoring uses brief, repeatable measures (oral reading fluency, curriculum-based measurement) to track growth rather than to rank students.

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) plans four elements: content, communication (language), cognition (thinking demands), and culture; each lesson states both a content objective and a language objective.

Language objectives name the function (describe, compare, justify) and the form (specific structures or vocabulary) students will use to demonstrate content learning.

Scaffolding types: modeling, bridging (activating prior knowledge), contextualization, schema building, and text representation; scaffolds are temporary and removed as competence grows.

Bilingual grammar transfer should be planned, not incidental: compare structures explicitly (adjective placement, negation, question formation) so learners see both systems.

Curriculum alignment requires matching standards, learning objectives, activities, and assessment evidence; a mismatch between objective and assessment is the most common planning flaw.

Unit planning sequences from modeled to guided to independent practice, with formative checkpoints before the summative task.

Vocabulary planning distinguishes tier 1 (everyday), tier 2 (general academic, high utility), and tier 3 (domain-specific) words; tier 2 words are often the highest-leverage target in immersion content classes.

Literacy across the curriculum: every content area has discipline-specific text structures and vocabulary that must be taught explicitly, not assumed to transfer from language arts.