The English curriculum is organised under 3 interrelated strands: Language, Literature and Literacy. While each strand articulates the essential skills of English, they should be seen as interlinked and interconnected. Together, the 3 strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing...
The English curriculum is organised under 3 interrelated strands: Language, Literature and Literacy. While each strand articulates the essential skills of English, they should be seen as interlinked and interconnected. Together, the 3 strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing. The English curriculum is underpinned by the selection of texts appropriate for the level.
The achievement standards explicitly link together skills drawn from the 3 strands, and map these directly into the sub-strands. Unlike the strands, the achievement standards are organised through the language modes of Speaking and Listening, Reading and Viewing, and Writing. Further information about the connections between the content descriptions and the achievement standards can be found in the ‘Learning in English’ section.
At Foundation, learning in English builds on the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) and each student’s prior knowledge and experiences.
Students make connections between language and context.
Students develop their reading in a text-rich environment through engagement with a range of texts. This range includes literature that expands and reflects their world, and texts that support learning in English and across the curriculum. Students participate in shared reading, viewing and storytelling. Spoken, written and multimodal texts may include traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of stories, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts and dramatic performances.
The range of literary texts comprises the oral narrative traditions and literature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and classic and contemporary literature from a wide range of Australian and world authors, including texts from and about Asia.
Beginning readers start with and practise reading using decodable texts that align with phonic development. These texts systematically introduce words with a limited number of phoneme–grapheme correspondences and add phoneme–grapheme correspondences as proficiency develops. Developing readers engage with some simple and authentic texts that involve straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings from a single perspective, ideas and events close to students’ experiences, a small range of language features including simple and compound sentences, high-frequency words, and other words that can be decoded using developing phonic knowledge.
At Foundation, students create short narrative and informative texts that may include pictorial representations, short statements, performances and short recounts, for a small range of purposes and audiences.
By the end of Foundation, students demonstrate the following skills in English.
When interacting with others, students explore vocabulary used in familiar contexts and how language changes in different contexts.
They share thoughts and preferences.
When speaking to an audience, students deliver short spoken texts, including retelling stories and reporting events, using features of voice.
When listening, reading and viewing, students engage with a range of different types of texts, including decodable and authentic texts, using developing phonic knowledge.
They blend, segment and manipulate phonemes in one-syllable words, and use knowledge of letters and sounds to read consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. They read some high-frequency words and identify boundary punctuation.
When demonstrating understanding of texts, students identify and make connections between characters, settings and events and their own feelings and thoughts.
They identify how types of texts, both print and digital, are organised for purpose and navigation. They compare how textual elements other than language, such as images and sounds, can contribute to meaning.
When creating and sharing short texts, students retell stories and report information, using familiar words and images where appropriate. They share in simple editing processes.
They use words, phrases and punctuation, including capital letters and full stops, from familiar contexts and texts, and from their learning.
They form letters and spell most consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.
