Language/Reading Curriculum in the Fourth Grade

Reading Policy

Formal reading instruction begins at age 6, although aspects of using language are introduced as part of preschool education. One of three major priorities throughout the six years of primary education, reading instruction focuses on comprehension, writing, and communication, with an emphasis on topics that are relevant to students. The objectives of the reading curriculum include:

Progressively developing a broad range of technical abilities and comprehension strategies that gradually foster an autonomous approach to reading acquisition in the context of various supports and situations
Making reading spaces available for students so they can enjoy the variety and the richness of books
Considering learning to read as a complex process that focuses on reading strategies and appropriate acquisition approaches, which allow students to explore literal, inferential, and personal meaning from a text in a social constructivist setting

Summary of National Curriculum

The core skills (les socles de compétences) define the basis of reading instruction for every school, but instructional methodology and classroom activities vary depending on the type of school. The core skills define reading as the construction of meaning as a recipient of a written message (e.g., fairy tale, short story, novel, play, poem, fable, song, letter, article, instructions).⁴ Meaning, in turn, is determined by the interaction among the message (particularly its dominant purpose and structure), the reader (including his or her previous knowledge [e.g., linguistic, literary, artistic, and historical knowledge] and emotional disposition), and context.

Activities involving reading often are incorporated within French (as mother tongue) lessons. The goal of these lessons often is to develop cross-curricular competencies within the reading domain that concern information processing, a necessary skill in a variety of subjects. These competencies include:

Rereading texts to strengthen comprehension
Analyzing texts to find main ideas, link them together, and understand their importance
Analyzing texts to form hypotheses and extract explicit and implicit meanings
Synthesizing texts to summarize main ideas

With respect to reading, the core skills primarily emphasize the processes implemented prior to the reading activity; elaboration of the first comprehension strategies; general structure of a text (e.g., typology and organizing signs); and interactions between verbal and nonverbal elements. The core skills include seven competencies specific to reading, with subcompetencies defining the standards more precisely for each grade level:

Directing one’s reading according to context—This competency is organized into six subcompetencies involving preparing and managing reading activities, including selecting an appropriate document for a reading project; anticipating a document’s content by considering internal and external indicators; understanding the author’s intentions; adapting the strategy for a reading project to the document type and the time available; and defining an appropriate reading speed.
Meaning building—This competency is organized into 11 subcompetencies that outline strategies to develop an “expert” reading approach via processes by which readers can understand text and react appropriately. These subcompetencies include extracting explicit information, inferring implicit meaning, and checking hypotheses.
Determining the organization of a text—This competency focuses on the text structure (e.g., narration, description, dialogue) and the global organization of the text (e.g., layout, sections, textual organizers). Its nine subcompetencies focus on selecting the strategies that are most appropriate to the type of text concerned.
Detecting the cohesion factors between sentences and groups of sentences throughout a text—This competency focuses on the relationships between textual components and the skills needed to increase reading fluidity and text comprehension. Its four subcompetencies include identifying syntactic factors; chronological marks; anaphora; and pronouns.
Taking grammatical units into account—This competency is divided into two subcompetencies, one pertaining to punctuation and grammatical units (i.e., organization and syntactic structure) and the other pertaining to the recognition of grammatical indicators of nouns and verbs (e.g., gender, singularity or plurality, tense). These subcompetencies are important in the reading process because the reader must be able to detect the influence of grammar on a text.
Processing lexical units—This competency consists of four subcompetencies comprising strategies to clarify the meaning of a word: suggesting hypotheses or using the context, using a dictionary, identifying synonyms and antonyms, and identifying different word components (e.g., root, prefix, suffix).
Detecting interactions between verbal and nonverbal elements—This competency encourages the use of nonverbal elements to clarify reading (e.g., illustration, scheme, typography, keys).

While the definitions of the reading competencies are relatively specific, the divisions between them are theoretical because the competencies must be processed together in learning activities. The teaching methods recommended in the core skills and other curricular documents focus on integrating the reading competencies through activities that are intrinsically interesting for the learner.

At the end of the first phase of primary education (Grade 2), most of the subcompetencies have begun being developed during reading lessons. At the end of the second phase of primary education (Grade 6), most of the subcompetencies are assessed for the purpose of certification, ensuring mastery of the skills that were introduced in the first phase and their enrichment in the second phase. At the end of primary education, students should have mastered the skills that help them become autonomous readers with the ability to adopt efficient reading strategies in various reading situations. Beyond the fulfillment of these competencies, motivation in reading also is emphasized.

Belgium (French)