Unit 1 | Classroom | Overview

Core Vocabulary Words: ax, board, brush, chair, classroom, dangerous, desk, down, good, have, not, on, safe, scissors, sit, stand, student, table, teacher, up

Supplemental Words: a, an, no, yes

Classroom Rules Conversations - Step 1

The vocabulary of this unit is primarily chosen to facilitate a basic conversation between the teacher and students about expectations for positive classroom participation and behavior.

Students will learn the basic vocabulary necessary to understand a simple conversation about raising hands to ask questions and will be able to ask permission to go to the washroom.

The instructions for all of the Learning Steps for Classroom Rules Conversations are provided on a single page. Review the instructions for best practices for maximizing the potential of this unit's vocabulary words to communicate expectations for safe and productive classroom behavior.

Classroom Card Game - Step 1

The teacher and the students can use this fun logical deduction game to increase students recall of common classroom objectives.

This game is highly repeatable and for most students, can be played again-and-again while remaining fun.

All Learning Steps of the Classroom Card Game activity sequence share the same instructions, as the game rules apply to all Learning Steps.

This sequence of units has been planned based on the assumption that students are relatively new to English, and therefore are still learning the 26 letters of the alphabet used in English. 

As a result, the phonics learning section of the first 13 units focus on teaching 2 letters per unit, which will ensure that your students will have been exposed to all 26 letters by the time they begin Unit 14, which will included more advance phonics learning activities.

Letter Teaching: Use the provided two-sided Letter Teaching Cards to introduce the letters D and T to your students.

The front of each card shows the uppercase and lowercase characters of each letter. The card fronts also have color/shape symbols that communicate whether the letter can appear in words as a beginning consonant, middle consonant, end consonant, or vowel.

The back of each card shows the sounds that each letter is commonly used to represent. In the case of the letter D, the letter is primary understood to represent one sound, so there is only one such symbol on the back of the card.

Use the front side of each card to ask your students to tell you the letter's name and then flip the card over, point at the sound icon, and ask your students to tell you what sound the letter makes.

To read the full instructions, please visit the Letter Teaching Cards page.

Phonics Fish: Playing Phonics Fish will encourage your students to be intentional about learning fundamental phonics knowledge while simultaneously practicing their recall of some of the core vocabulary words that they have learned recently.

This game is a modified version of the classic game Go Fish, except that there are phonics clues on the backs of all of the provided printable game cards.

Front of the Phonics Fish
card for 'ax'

Back of the Phonics Fish
card for 'ax'

Unlike the other phonics activities in this unit, which are focused on the letters D and T, this set of Phonics Fish cards encourages learning about a wider range of letters and phonics sounds in order to give students a broader understand that there are many letters used in English to represent different and specific sounds.

A new set of Phonics Fish cards is provided in most of the units of the first 15 units of this curriculum. However, the gameplay rules for Phonics Fish stay the same in every unit.

For this unit's Phonics Fish card deck, the word used are ax, board, brush, chair, desk, table.

To read the standard game-play rules, please visit the Phonics Fish game instructions.

Letter Recognition: The provided materials will allow for letter recognition development for the letters D and T. Students will be able to practice matching the lowercase and uppercase versions of each letter to increase their quick recognition skills for each letter and also develop their understanding that the lowercase and uppercase versions of each letter are related to each other.

Fronts of the pieces for the Letter
Recognition cards for the letter 'd'

The Letter Recognition cards are designed both as a teaching tool and for independent student learning/exploration.

After matching the uppercase and lettercase letters that they think go together, students can check their work by flipping the cards over to see if the two separate images on the back (in the example below, the 'dog' and the 'desk') create a correct completed image.

Backs of the pieces for the Letter
Recognition cards for the letter 'd'

Although the letters being taught will be different in each unit, all iterations of the Letter Recognition activity use the same type of materials and follow the same set of instructions.

The example words represented by images on the back of each card-pair for this unit are the following:

D: dangerous, desk, down, 
T: table, teacher, turn, turtle

For more information, visit the Letter Recognition Matching activity page.

Phonics Teaching (Optional): Two-sided Phonics Teaching Cards are available for teaching the this unit's phonics sounds. 

However, many of the example phonics words displayed on the backs of these cards won't be taught until later units in this learning sequence, so it may be best to focus on the other phonics activities included with this unit and wait till a later unit to begin utilizing these Phonics Teaching Cards.

However, if your students are already familiar with some of the example phonics words provided on the backs of the Phonics Teaching Cards or if you simply want to use the fronts of the cards to test your students' knowledge of English phonics sounds, visit the Phonic Teaching Cards page to access and download the cards you wish to print and use.

Recommended Action Words/Phrases: down, good, not-good, scissors, sit-down, stand-up, up