View Learning Outcomes | Learning Outcomes and Indicators

Curriculum Focus

Communication

Teachers ensure that students have success in their early reading in English, involving them in reading as part of everyday classroom activities. Students read and listen to a wide range of simple, repetitive, and well-illustrated English texts, both published materials and class texts. These include imaginative, factual and fictional texts, such as picture story books, and beginning reading materials. The texts chosen cover immediate needs texts, such as classroom labels and instructions, and topics being covered in class, as well as literary texts. These texts are used as the basis for vocabulary development activities, matching sentences to illustrations, sequencing processes or series of events, simple comprehension or cloze exercises, as well as for drama or art activities. These activities help students to understand texts mainly at the literal level, but also help them to discern more complex meanings and text structures. Students learn that syntactic, semantic and sound–letter cues are important for making meaning from text, and that although they may be able to fluently read or decode texts in English, understanding the content is the main purpose of reading.

Aspects of language

Contextual understanding

Students show an emerging understanding that texts are differently organised and use different language according to purpose and audience. When reading or listening to accessible texts read aloud, students talk simply about the purpose and audience, taking into account text content and layout. Teachers assist students to become aware of the differences between texts by discussing the topics, layouts, structures and purposes of texts. By working with a wide range of books and reading materials, students become aware that books are often published in a series that usually has similar characteristics, such as layout or level of text difficulty. They also become aware of particular authors and illustrators.

Linguistic structures and features

Teachers ensure that students are provided with reading texts where the meaning is well supported by illustrations and layout. Such texts use natural, everyday English and repetitive structures. Students complete activities that focus them on the word and letter level of text. These activities, such as identifying and collecting word families or matching word patterns, assist students as they begin to recognise repeated phrases/formulas in texts, and common English letter patterns in words. Students are also involved in activities such as reconstructing text, that focus them on basic cohesive devices in texts, such as conjunctions, and reference through pronouns.

Strategies

Teachers model and encourage strategies that will assist students to read using a range of cues, and to understand and choose appropriate texts. They provide activities that encourage students to read for meaning, focusing on semantic and syntactic cues as well as graphophonic cues. Teachers help students to perceive patterns of syntax, text organisation and letter groups in English that will assist students to access texts. They model and encourage strategies which will help students to access texts independently. Teachers read texts to students, emphasising key words, patterns or repetitions to assist students’ comprehension. Contextual clues which enhance meaning, such as illustrations or diagrams which are used to enhance meanings in the text, are brought to students’ attention. Teachers assist students to make appropriate choices of reading materials by assessing text difficulty through looking at the support given by illustrations, and by the size and amount of print, and layout.