Reading Text Types for Different Year Levels

This post is in regards to what type of texts are appropriate in terms of features and structures for teaching the content descriptions and assessing the quality of the achievement standards within the Australian Curriculum: English.

Let's first consider this aspect of the Reading and Viewing Achievement Standard for Foundation students:

"They read short, predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive images, drawing on their developing knowledge of concepts about print and sound and letters."  

Source: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/Curriculum/F-10

Teachers might have differing views on what actually constitutes a "short, predictable text". 

The information for the text structures and language features appropriate to Foundation students is clearly described in the Year Level Description. It states:

"Literary texts that support and extend Foundation students as beginner readers include predictable texts that range from caption books to books with one or more sentences per page. These texts involve straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings with recognisable, realistic or imaginary characters. Informative texts present a small amount of new content about familiar topics of interest; a small range of language features, including simple and compound sentences; mostly familiar vocabulary, known high- frequency words and single-syllable words that can be decoded phonically, and illustrations that strongly support the printed text."

It is very clear from this description of the range of texts that develop beginner readers at this year level. In terms of the Achievement Standard, it is perfectly acceptable that Foundation students read caption based texts. There will always be a range within the Achievement Standard in terms of quality.

This information is contained at all year levels and builds developmentally.

It is also important that teachers view the Year Level Description and Achievement Standard information alongside the content descriptions that relate to reading.

The Year Level Description information can also be useful for teachers or schools when selecting texts for students to read and even texts for schools to purchase!

Woodlands PS has collated the information on to one sheet so that you can see the build and also have a quick guide to the scope of text structures and features.

Click HERE  for the scope document. This will allow you to download/view the document.  When you click the link it will open in Google Docs. When that screen opens, click on FILE and then DOWNLOAD.

Hope you find this information of use :-)

Kind regards

Carlene Thorpe