St. Lawrence Academy is working to offer students an excellent french education.

Our curriculum follows the Ontario Ministry of Education expectations for both English and French, and we use this as the baseline from which we enrich our program.

The French portion of the day uses the AIM (Accelerative Integrated Method) program.

In just 189 hours of classroom instruction, the Accelerative Integrated Methodology (AIM) will enable your students to develop a working proficiency in the target language.

AIM brings true transformation to the experience of teaching and learning a second language by using these key strategies:

• Gestures are used to introduce and reinforce vocabulary and enable a target-language only environment. These visual and kinesthetic props allow new words and associated grammar to pass directly to meaning, so there is no need to translate back into the first language.
• Useful, key words are taught first. The most useful and highest-frequency words have been carefully selected and are introduced within the first few hours of instruction, giving students the tools they need to communicate from the very first class.
• Content-based instruction has been carefully designed to create an Immersion-like experience where students focus on task-based activities relating to dramatic arts and literacy.
• An inductive, contextualized approach to grammar ensures abstract grammar concepts are taught in a meaningful way. Grammar raps help students understand language patterns. Students are amazed to discover that grammar can be both cool and fun!
• Cooperative learning activities get students working with each other, speaking and writing creatively in the target language.
• The highly participatory and active learning environment in an AIM classroom ensures students of all abilities and learning styles are supported.