Curriculum
GRADES 1–3 CURRICULUM
Grades 1–3 are incredibly important years when students become more fluent in reading, writing and academics — in both English and Mandarin. They continue to grow and discover and develop skills that will help them in later years.
As always, our students spend half of their day in an English-speaking environment and the other half in a fully-immersive Mandarin environment. Phys ed, art and music are incorporated throughout both language programs on a weekly basis.
Our rigorous curriculum promotes interaction between children that builds cooperation, collaboration and leadership skills. We have small class sizes that allow our caring staff to deliver personalized attention enabling our students to learn and excel.
Students are not required to be able to speak Mandarin or English fluently to attend The Shire School up until Grade 4.
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Grades 1–3 are a time when English literacy truly begins to kick-in. Reading and writing skills are further refined and an emphasis is placed on the development of advanced vocabulary and strong spelling and grammar skills, including sentence and paragraph structure. Our students are taught effective speaking and presentation skills and are exposed to all genres of literature. There are guided reading group discussions and students do independent reading as well as participate in our individualized on-line reading program.
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Our Grades 1–3 Mandarin literacy program focuses on vocabulary development. Our students continue to listen to stories and learn more Mandarin characters. In addition, they learn the social usage of Mandarin. Students recite songs and poems, perform journal and story writing, learn pin yin and how to decode unfamiliar characters.
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Mathematics is taught in both languages at The Dalton School. Our enriched math program teaches at an accelerated rate. Students learn the essentials of the four basic operations and work on speed math facts to improve the speed and accuracy of their work. As well, skills such as telling time, understanding money and making change, collecting and interpreting data to graph are all taught. Students work on number patterning, study geometric concepts, and learn to solve story problems in all areas of the math program.
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Social studies and science are taught in both languages and give our students local, national and world perspectives. They learn about everyday structures, energy, our climate, computers, our settlers, ancient civilizations, wind energy, life cycles and the three states of matter. Students are exposed to cultural celebrations, the needs of living things and types of soils – and they study urban and rural communities and perform science experiments.
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Technology is incorporated into many areas of the curriculum. Grade 1-3 students learn all about computers; they are taught how to use online learning resources and are introduced to word processing. Students also have access to educational software such as reading programs, BrainPop and Mathletics as well as keyboarding programs.
