The texts selected for instruction, which the students will be able to read largely by themselves, include:
- a variety of texts (e.g., descriptive texts, texts that compare and contrast, and texts with a sequence of events), including both print and electronic texts;
- short junior novels (chapter books), which may have chapter headings, a variety of characters and settings, a mainly sequential plot, and an easily identifi ed conflict;
- short information texts, which may have subheadings, other visual language features (such as diagrams or text boxes) that are clearly explained and linked to the body text, and a small amount of competing information.
It is expected that students will be reading at Gold in the Ready to Read series after three years of instruction.
“Mice for Sale” by Julia Wall
School Journal 1.1.07
Reading leads to rapid increases in vocabulary as students encounter many new words.
As they read, students build on their expertise and demonstrate that they:
- use and can articulate a variety of decoding strategies (e.g., by recognising syllable and syllable-division patterns and breaking words into syllables) appropriately and automatically when encountering unknown words;
- can read all high-frequency words automatically;
- know the meanings of some common prefi xes (e.g., un-, re-, in-, dis-) and suffi xes (e.g., -s, -es, -ed, -ing, -ly, -er, -less, -ful) and understand how they affect the meanings of words;
- are aware of synonyms for and multiple meanings of many common words (e.g., left, might, right, fine);
- use several strategies (including applying their knowledge of collocations, phrase structures, and word families) to find the meanings of unknown words;
- integrate and use a variety of comprehension strategies to understand texts;
- draw on an increasing variety of fix-up strategies in deciding what to do and how to do it when comprehension breaks down;
- evaluate information and ideas within a text;
- can identify an author’s purpose and give reasons, using evidence from the text.
As they write, students build on their expertise and demonstrate that they:
- can orally convey ideas and information in preparation for writing;
- use planning strategies to organise ideas for writing (e.g., lists and mind maps that distinguish main ideas from details) and to generate language for writing;
- use their plans to inform and shape their writing;
- use language and structures that show an awareness of the audience;
- use their developing knowledge of orthography and morphology, and related resources (e.g., junior dictionaries, classroom charts, and reading materials), to spell new words;
- review their writing from a reader’s perspective, make judgments to determine whether the writing meets the intended purpose, and revise if necessary;
- proofread their writing, e.g., by recognising most spelling errors and applying fix-up strategies.
The writing that students do in classroom contexts, largely by themselves, will:
- address a variety of specific purposes and audiences, with appropriate choices of language, text type, text form, and visual-language features;
- include sentences written to fulfil different functions (e.g., to explain, to question, to exclaim);
- use complete sentences to convey the intended meanings accurately;
- include sentences that are elaborated by the use of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases;
- include text used flexibly (e.g., by using both the present and the past tense appropriately, effectively, and consistently in the context of direct speech);
- include increasingly specific vocabulary (e.g., adjectives and more precise nouns and verbs);
- be legible, accurate, and laid out effectively;
- use a variety of media (including electronic formats).
Students can give feedback to others about their writing, e.g., state a response or an opinion, suggest improvements, or ask a question.
