English / Year 5 / Language / Expressing and developing ideas

Curriculum content descriptions

Understand the difference between main and subordinate clauses and that a complex sentence involves at least one subordinate clause (ACELA1507)

Elaborations
  • knowing that complex sentences make connections between ideas, such as: to provide a reason, for example He jumped up because the bell rang.; to state a purpose, for example She raced home to confront her brother.; to express a condition, for example It will break if you push it.; to make a concession, for example She went to work even though she was not feeling well.; to link two ideas in terms of various time relations, for example Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
  • knowing that a complex sentence typically consists of a main clause and a subordinate clause
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
ScOT terms

Sentences (Grammar),  Clauses

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Syllabus bites: types of sentences

A web page resource with information, teacher guides and activities on types of sentences to support the Australian Curriculum in English K–10. It has detailed activities, links to resources and quizzes.

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Syllabus bites: Visual literacy

A resource with information, study guides and resources on visual literacy to support the English K-10 Australian Curriculum in English. It provides a series of activities, guidelines and tasks about visual texts from a variety of sources. Contains writing scaffolds, templates and proformas for responding and composing ...

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Sentence combining

Sentence combining is an instructional technique used to improve sentence quality, complexity and variety. Students are taught how to combine two or more basic sentences to create more interesting, sophisticated and varied sentences. When sentence combining is taught explicitly and in a sustained way, it becomes one component ...

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Phrases and Clauses

Find information about the difference between phrases and clauses and exercises to support students in working through the difference. The resource includes some simple exercises for students to firstly differentiate between independent and dependent clauses and then to identify subordinating conjunctions. They then practise ...

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Independent and Dependent Clauses Worksheet

Find some simple exercises for students to firstly differentiate between independent and dependent clauses, and then to practise joining two related clauses.

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Connecting Ideas

Help students to create well-structured sentences by developing their knowledge of compound sentences, compound complex sentences and ways to combine messages by using quoting as a device. This teacher resource will support your understanding of this topic and provide examples to use with students.

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Analysing Persuasive Elements in a Literary Text: The Island

This learning sequence aims to help students to interpret an author’s point of view and to explore how evaluative language is used to influence the reader. This learning sequence is the second of eight sequences within a larger unit of work titled ‘Persuasion and Influence’.

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Persuasion and Influence

This learning sequence aims to develop student understanding of persuasive language, focussing on how persuasive techniques work and why persuasive language matters. It aims to equip students with the skills to critically analyse a wide range of persuasive texts and to identify bias and subjectively in the texts they read ...

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Varying openings

Use this worksheet to discuss the directions in which a story might go depending on what the opening sentence is.

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Work sample Year 5 English: Informative text - Bushfires

This work sample demonstrates evidence of student learning in relation to aspects of the achievement standards for Year 5 English. The primary purpose for the work sample is to demonstrate the standard, so the focus is on what is evident in the sample not how it was created. The sample is an authentic representation of ...

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World heritage: Kakadu information display

Look at descriptions of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Help a park ranger to sort facts and pictures for an information display. Use a model structure, sample text and images to build a description for visitors. Include sections on the park's location, wildlife and cultural importance.

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Ready to race: wheels, jets, tyres and gears

Go to a race track and collect information from different kinds of visual texts to make your kart the fastest on the track. First, add important kart parts and choose the style of kart you want. Then collect information about the time and place of your race. Next, go to the garage to set up your kart before doing a starting ...

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Show and tell: that cat

Watch a short cartoon about a cat chasing a bird. Select noun groups, verb groups and phrases to create sentences and build a basic factual recount. Rearrange the word groups to create the best order in the sentences. Who was involved? What did they do? When, where or how did they do it? Add adjectives and adverbs to make ...

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Complex sentences: Creating agility and depth in your writing

Complex sentences are an important step in enabling students to produce more sophisticated writing. Mastering complex sentences allows students to have greater control when communicating. This resource provides information about topics such as Dependent clauses, Nominalisation and Subordinating conjunctions. This guide ...

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Compound sentences

This guide provides clear grammatical definitions, and unpacks the features of compound sentences and how they function. It includes information about using conjunctions; coordinating conjunctions; using semicolons and common problems with compound sentences. The guide also offers, as a starting point, some strategies for ...

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Teaching Morphology to Improve Literacy: A Guide for Teachers

Morphological awareness is a powerful tool for improving many areas of literacy. Find teaching ideas for specifically teaching this skill across a range of year levels.

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Vocabulary in context

The aim of this resource is to support students to identify and build meaning of words and their affixes. Students will learn to use contextual clues to determine best word choice. The resource includes a list of strategies that may help to build vocabulary. It includes a list organised from most frequently used suffixes ...

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Paragraphs: Finding the Main Idea and Supporting Details

The focus in this learning sequence is on developing understandings of the features and purpose of paragraphs. Through this sequence, students will be able to identify the topic sentence and supporting detail in a paragraph and write a paragraph with a topic sentence and supporting detail. This learning sequence is fourth ...

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Can We Help?: Words and sayings over time

Have you ever wondered where sayings like 'hanging by the skin of your teeth' come from? Professor Kate Burridge explains the origin and meaning of this saying. She also explains the opposite word (antonym) to 'misogynist' (someone who hates or has a long and deep prejudice against women) and the origins of the word 'goodbye'.

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Can We Help?: Got or gotten? What a nightmare!

Words have a history. Knowing their history helps us to understand what they mean and why some people use them in different ways. Professor Kate Burridge explains how the use of the past tense of the verb 'get' (gotten) has changed, but is still in use by many people. She also discusses the history of the word 'nightmare'.