Obstacles and Opportunities for Literacy Teaching: A Case Study of Primary Core French in Ontario

Increasingly, 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 mixed method case study investigating the literacy teaching practices and accompanying influential factors of one Ontario primary core French teacher whose activities, strategies and perspectives demonstrate the potential for CF instruction to echo literacy principles taught in homeroom English (L1) classrooms, and for both languages to benefit. Context-specific factors that can encourage and/or hinder literacy teaching in the CF context will also be discussed.