Curriculum for elementary school. This is what Marion would have been teaching. Marion's first year of teaching was in 1906, and in a letter home she talks about having to learn the new phonics system. So, clearly, she didn't learn the system at McGill Normal School. Click here for textbooks she would have used.  Info courtesy of Canadiana.org microfiche at McGill University.

First Year.

Supplementary readers suitable for all years are provided by the Board. These readers must not be taken out of the schools by pupils.

Short Reading and Silent Reading must be practiced in all grades and can be done best by means of the supplementary readers. Teachers should read in this connection the notes on sight reading and cultivating literary taste in Bright's Graded Instruction in English pp. 75-79.

First Half: Teach the sounds presented in "Steps in the Phonics System: to p. 31. And in the "Modern Phonic Primer" to page 28.  Use the black board freely and let the reading matter in Modern Phonic Primer be taken only as practice after each sound has been taught.
Class Reader to p. 40. Ability to read from black board and from Reader such matter as in introduced p. 40.
Second Half Phonics

Here's an example of what the kids' had to read. It makes Dick and Jane seem like Green Eggs and Ham.
Blow grow show blow low snow crow mow sow flow row throw
Row the boat to the shore. It is time to sow the seed. It will not grow in time of frost and snow. The grass has been mown and is now dry. Did you hear the cock crow? Show me how far you can throw this ball. This bowl is made of clay.

Language Lessons.

Oral Work. From the very first induce students to TALK using full statements in answer to the questions in class work.  Frame questions in that students may use full sentences in answering. Talk about familiar objects, things that interest them, such as animals, trees, plants, games, etc. Tell short easy stories and have pupils reproduced them orally. As soon as pupils begin to read from the book have them tell in their own words what they have read.
Strive to awaken the imagination and kindle the powers of observations and thought.  Every school exercise, the observation work especially, should be a language lesson, so that the work in other subjects may not undo that of the language class. This is not, however, to be construed as advising continuous criticism, but as emphasizing the value of securing exact and correct forms of expression.

Observation Lessons  (Grade Two)

1. In object teaching, those teachers are most successful who distinguish between two kinds of instruction 1) the observation of the object itself and 2)information about the object.
2.  The object itself must be before the class. Any other lesson, however well illustrated by diagrams, pictures, lantern slides, etc. is an information lesson.
3. Select a few objects only. Habits of observation are better cultivated by a thorough examination of a few objects than by a superficial treatment of many. Let there be no hurry in any stage of the process, for when there is no firm grounding of sense of knowledge, all  after-knowledge is limited.  Imagination will be hazy, thought loose and inaccurate, where the preliminary stage of sense perception has been hurried over.
4. Drawing: Children should be encouraged to make simple drawings to illustrate their observations; or clay modellings or other manual occupations may be employed to fix them in their minds.
5. The child's natural power of seeing things as they appear is strong in early years. Later on the power of seeing things as they appear becomes confused with the knowledge of facts - his seeing becomes biased and his drawing power narrowed down to technical knowledge.
6. The drawing must be strictly freehand. Accept a pupil's best drawing no matter how grotesque.