The texts that students will read include novels, reference materials (including a limited range of primary source material), poetry, plays, textbooks, modified historical and scientific texts, procedural texts, extended instructions (e.g., in science and maths), and age-appropriate newspapers and magazines. These texts often feature:
- less-familiar topics, themes, settings, and ideas in the context of longer texts;
- academic and subject-specific vocabulary;
- the use of metaphor, analogy, and connotative language;
- long and complex sentences that contain a lot of information (often embedded);
- layers of meaning or complexity that require students to infer meaning or make judgments;
- mixed, hybrid, and non-continuous text forms.
Students read at a rate that is appropriate to the text and to their purpose for reading. This may mean slowing down for a complex text or reading quickly to cover a lot of material in a short time.
“Celebrity Word” by Philippa Werry
School Journal 4.1.05
As they read, students build on their expertise and demonstrate that they:
- can select texts at their reading level to meet specific reading purposes (e.g., to find information or to learn how to do something);
- understand academic vocabulary that relates to their learning (e.g., method, identify, summarise) and apply this vocabulary knowledge in varied contexts;
- can use their knowledge of the features and structures of a wide variety of text types and forms (e.g., information reports with embedded definitions), to aid comprehension;
- recognise a variety of grammatical constructions and some rhetorical patterns (e.g., comparison and contrast, cause and effect) and use this knowledge to aid comprehension;
- increasingly control their use of comprehension strategies in flexible ways and draw on a repertoire of such strategies when they know they are not comprehending the text fully;
- use a variety of strategies to gather and synthesise information across a small range of texts and text forms (including hypertext) and can identify and resolve issues arising from competing information;
- identify and evaluate writers’ purposes (and the ways in which writers use ideas and language to suit their purposes) and apply some criteria to evaluate texts (e.g., relevance for their purpose, accuracy of information, presence of bias).
As they write, students build on their expertise and demonstrate that they:
- apply an understanding of the complexity and recursive nature of the writing process and use their writing to examine and present their own thinking and knowledge;
- plan effectively for writing by selecting an appropriate text form to match the writing purpose and audience and by using strategies such as mind mapping to aid planning;
- independently find the information they need for their writing;
- write words fluently (including academic and subject-specific words), using strategies (such as analysing words and inferring the unknown from the known) and attempting to write challenging words by using knowledge of common spelling patterns and morphemes;
- discuss language, using appropriate terms such as tense and verb;
- make their texts readable, e.g., through the language they use and through the ways in which they manipulate sentences, sequence ideas, and mark relationships between their ideas;
- craft and recraft a text, deliberately selecting and using strategies to help create meaning and checking that the text meets its purpose and is likely to engage the intended audience;
- actively seek and respond to feedback on their writing;
- review the text to identify and address any problems, proofreading consistently and independently to correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation, using appropriate print or computer-based tools.
The texts that students will write include personal narratives, feature articles, character profiles, research reports, essays, responses to literature, and short answers. Students will need to write texts that:
- have a clear and logical structure, with sufficient exemplification at both paragraph and text level;
- include a variety of appropriate features that engage the audience and convey meaning (e.g., rhetorical questions, metaphors, charts, and diagrams);
- clearly show how ideas within paragraphs are related (e.g., by sequencing the ideas, juxtaposing ideas, and using appropriate discourse markers);
- accurately use complex punctuation, such as semicolons, colons, and parentheses;
- accurately use appropriate academic and subject-specific vocabulary;
- use increasingly complex sentences (e.g., sentences with dependent clauses) that are grammatically correct
Students use strategies to build their vocabulary knowledge. These strategies are used in both reading and writing. They include making connections with similar words and contexts, considering the different meanings or applications of a word, and consciously using low-frequency but salient words from their reading in their writing.
