Al Siraat College follows the Australian Curriculum. The English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of Language, Literature and Literacy.
Teaching and learning programs should balance and integrate all three strands. Together the three strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. Learning in English builds on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years, and teachers will revisit, strengthen and develop these as needed.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These encompass traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of print and digital stories, simple chapter books, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances, and texts used by students as models for constructing their own work.
Foundation
In Semester 1, students had developed their speaking and listening skills through ‘Oral Presentations’ and nursery rhymes. In Reading, students had developed their comprehension skills and learnt a range reading strategies. Students had developed recognition of capital and lower case letters of the alphabet and knowledge of phonemes. In Handwriting, the focus has been on the positioning, formation and direction of each letter using THRASS format. Students have read many books written by Pamela Allen and Eric Carle and talked about the characters and setting of various stories.
By the end of the Foundation year, students use predicting and questioning strategies to make meaning from texts. They recall one or two events from texts with familiar topics. They understand that there are different types of texts and that these can have similar characteristics. They identify connections between texts and their personal experience.
They read short, predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive images, drawing on their developing knowledge of concepts about print and sound and letters. They identify the letters of the English alphabet and use the sounds represented by most letters. They listen to and use appropriate language features to respond to others in a familiar environment. They listen for rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words.
Students understand that their texts can reflect their own experiences. They identify and describe likes and dislikes about familiar texts, objects, characters and events.
In informal group and whole class settings, students communicate clearly. They retell events and experiences with peers and known adults. They identify and use rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words. When writing, students use familiar words and phrases and images to convey ideas. Their writing shows evidence of sound and letter knowledge, beginning writing behaviours and experimentation with capital letters and full stops. They correctly form known upper- and lower-case letters.
Year 1
In Semester One, students had been introduced to punctuation, using capital letters, full stops, question marks, exclamations marks and commas. Students have also been working on developing the ability to write complete sentences. In Grammar, students have been working on nouns, adjective and verbs. Students have read books written by the authors Eric Carle and Jeannie Baker. They have developed various comprehension strategies such as making connections, finding the main idea of a text and sequencing. They have also been developing spelling strategies based on the use of the THRASS Chart. Each week the students had participated in Oral Presentation sessions, which have assisted them with their oral development.
By the end of Year 1, students understand the different purposes of texts. They make connections to personal experience when explaining characters and main events in short texts. They identify the language features, images and vocabulary used to describe characters and events.
Students read aloud, with developing fluency and intonation, short texts with some unfamiliar vocabulary, simple and compound sentences and supportive images. When reading, they use knowledge of sounds and letters, high frequency words, sentence boundary punctuation and directionality to make meaning. They recall key ideas and recognise literal and implied meaning in texts. They listen to others when taking part in conversations, using appropriate language features. They listen for and reproduce letter patterns and letter clusters.
Students understand how characters in texts are developed and give reasons for personal preferences. They create texts that show understanding of the connection between writing, speech and images.
They create short texts for a small range of purposes. They interact in pair, group and class discussions, taking turns when responding. They make short presentations of a few connected sentences on familiar and learned topics. When writing, students provide details about ideas or events. They accurately spell words with regular spelling patterns and use capital letters and full stops. They correctly form all upper- and lower-case letters.
Year 2
In Semester One, students had focused on the reading strategies of predicting, making connections, creating visual images, paraphrasing and summarising. In Writing, students have identified and applied the appropriate structure and writing style for the writing genres of recounts, descriptions, poetry, and information reports. Students have studied the use of capital letters, full stops, commas, and conjunctions within the writing context. They have applied THRASS strategies to examine speech sounds, to read and spell unfamiliar words. Students have practiced listening and speaking through class discussions, group discussions and oral presentations, which aimed at developing students' ability to listen for specific purposes and information. This includes instructions that extended students’ own and others' ideas in discussions.
By the end of Year 2, students understand how similar texts share characteristics by identifying text structures and language features used to describe characters, settings and events.
They read texts that contain varied sentence structures, some unfamiliar vocabulary, a significant number of high frequency sight words and images that provide additional information. They monitor meaning and self-correct using context, prior knowledge, punctuation, language and phonic knowledge. They identify literal and implied meaning, main ideas and supporting detail. Students make connections between texts by comparing content. They listen for particular purposes. They listen for and manipulate sound combinations and rhythmic sound patterns.
When discussing their ideas and experiences, students use everyday language features and topic-specific vocabulary. They explain their preferences for aspects of texts using other texts as comparisons. They create texts that show how images support the meaning of the text.
Students create texts, drawing on their own experiences, their imagination and information they have learned. They use a variety of strategies to engage in group and class discussions and make presentations. They accurately spell familiar words and attempt to spell less familiar words and use punctuation accurately. They legibly write unjoined upper- and lower-case letters.