English / Foundation / Language / Text structure and organisation

Curriculum content descriptions

Understand that some language in written texts is unlike everyday spoken language (ACELA1431)

Elaborations
  • learning that written text in Standard Australian English has conventions about words, spaces between words, layout on the page and consistent spelling because it has to communicate when the speaker/writer is not present
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
ScOT terms

Text types,  Spoken texts,  Register (Language)

Online

Focused Improvement in Early Literacy Development (FIELD)

This teacher resource describes an evidence-based strategy in which eight disadvantaged metropolitan schools and 12 remote schools in Western Australia assessed the oral English language and emergent literacy development of their pre-primary (Foundation) students, and used that data to inform explicit teaching of English ...

Interactive

My design: talking dinosaur: create own text

Design a talking dinosaur to present at show and tell. Create your dinosaur by selecting from a range of elements such as mood, size and colour. Choose a voice and background picture for your dinosaur. Decide on a name that suits your talking dinosaur. Add a note about your dinosaur. Watch the animation. You can change ...

Interactive

My design: talking car: create own text

Design a talking car to present at show and tell. Create your car by selecting from a range of elements such as mood, size and colour. Choose a voice and background picture for your car. Decide on a name that suits your talking car. Add a note about your car. Watch the animation. You can change your design as many times ...

Interactive

My design: talking cat: create own text

Design a talking cat to present at show and tell. Create your cat by selecting from a range of elements such as mood, size and colour. Choose a voice and background picture for your cat. Decide on a name that suits your talking cat. Add a note about your cat. Watch the animation. You can change your design as many times ...

Interactive

My design: talking cat: choose text

Design a talking cat to present at show and tell. Create your cat by selecting from a range of elements such as mood, size and colour. Choose a voice and background picture for your cat. Decide on a name that suits your talking cat. Select a note about your cat. Watch the animation. Change your design as many times as you ...

Text

Building World Knowledge: Motivating Children to Read and Enjoy Informational Texts

This webpage explores the practical instructional techniques that can be used to promote understanding and enjoyment of informational texts. The three techniques described here — Text Impression, Guiding Questions, and the Retelling Pyramid — can help children become familiar with the language and structure of non-fiction books.

Text

Ways to Teach Conventions: Our Favourite Things

This blog post by an experienced teacher provides some practical ideas for reinforcing writing conventions such as punctuation.

Online

Do we need a train at Chullora? – Early Stage 1

This inquiry-based unit of work was created, trialled and peer reviewed as part of a professional learning program in inquiry-based learning for school teachers. The professional learning courses were part of a pilot partnership between the NSW Government’s Sydney Metro transport agency and Western Sydney University.

Video

Introduction to teaching syllable types

This short video (4 mins 11 seconds) provides an introduction to teaching syllable types as part of systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) instruction.

Video

Teaching syllable types: Two syllable words with a VC/CV pattern - wombat words

This short video (8 mins 04 seconds) explains how to teach spelling generalisations related to two-syllable words that have a vowel-consonant/consonant-vowel (VC/CV) pattern (known as wombat words).

Text

Concepts of print

Find background information to support understandings of the concept of text (how a text conveys a message), concept of book (how a book works, how different texts are organised), the idea of directionality (that English books are read from left to right, top to bottom), and other mechanical features on this webpage.

Text

Teaching ideas for Concepts about Print

This resource provides a series of stages (e.g. awareness of the relationship of print to spoken language, understandings of punctuation, understanding text directionality, identifying capital letters) and provides some teaching strategies for reinforcing and supporting understandings of concepts of print.

Text

The importance of book covers

This lesson idea makes book cover design an integral part of the reading and comprehension process. The technique for the cover reveal teaches students about predictive inference.

Text

Exploring and creating texts

The types of texts that children use and create expand and grow in complexity as students develop their skills. Find background information about the different types of texts to support your teaching of this topic.

Video

Introduction to spelling generalisations

This short video (6 mins 22 seconds) provides an introduction to teaching spelling generalisations as part of your systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) instruction. It outlines where and why spelling generalisations fit within your SSP instruction and what these generalisations help students to understand about spelling choices.

Video

Teaching spelling generalisations: Floss rule - ff, ll, ss or zz.

This short video (5 mins 32 seconds) explains how to teach the spelling generalisation known as the floss rule so that students learn when to use the letters ff, ll, ss and zz to represent the sounds /f/, /l/, /s/, and /z/.

Text

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

This resource is a guide to using specific picture books to support the cross-curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, and the general capability of intercultural understanding, within the context of learning areas such as History, Geography and English.

Video

Developing characters with Leigh Hobbs

How can drawings of characters give readers clues about who they are? What are some of the clues Leigh Hobbs gives us about Old Tom's character through his drawings of him? Do you have a character in your head that you've been thinking about for a while? As you draw or write about your character, remember what Leigh says ...

Text

BBC Bitesize: use of punctuation - worksheet

This is a brief, printable worksheet where students insert the correct punctuation into gaps in sentences. The punctuation marks required include full stops, question marks and speech marks. This resource is one of a series of online resources from the BBC's Bitesize collection.

Interactive

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.