English / Year 2 / Language / Expressing and developing ideas

Curriculum content descriptions

Understand the use of vocabulary about familiar and new topics and experiment with and begin to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit audience and purpose (ACELA1470)

Elaborations
  • interpreting new terminology drawing on prior knowledge, analogies and connections with known words
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
ScOT terms

Text purpose,  Vocabularies

Online

Waterways: behaviour change

We have the power to help keep our coastlines, rivers, lakes, swamps, creeks, floodplains, billabongs and estuaries clean by diverting rubbish from our waterways. We can all be change makers. By altering our everyday habits such as limiting our use of single-use plastic items, we can also inspire others to do the same. This ...

Video

Misty Adoniou - Literacy through Literature 2

This 12-minute video provides a model for supporting students’ intentional choices of language within narratives.

Text

The exquisite corpse: A Grammar-based Word Game

The Exquisite Corpse is similar in style to the old game of Consequences. In the game, each player adds on a new word, folds over a piece of paper to hide the word and passes the paper on. The simple formula of adjective, noun, verb, preposition, adjective, noun will produce something approximating a sentence which can ...

Text

Suspense Toolkit

Give students tips about some of the key ingredients of writing a suspenseful, scary story. This tip sheet provides a range of ideas suitable for the skills and abilities of different year levels. It also includes some teaching strategies.

Text

Space Frog: using interactive fiction for shared reading

In this lesson plan, students explore the game Space Frog through modelled and shared reading with the teacher. Space Frog is a short and cute interactive narrative about a frog going to space in search of a star. It is a text-based, browser-based game, with colourful supporting illustrations and a pick-your-path structure ...

Video

Light and Colour Virtual Workshop

How is colour used to build the story? How does light create mood? How do animators use colour and light together to create rich screen content we want to watch? Students in Foundation – Year 2 consider the decisions that were made to create stories that build happy, scary, funny, or sad moments.

Text

Painting: The Art of Self Expression

How are elements of art and styles expressed through painting? In this K-2 lesson, students will explore elements of art and different artists' techniques to create various styles of paintings. Students will interpret art and describe styles by using key vocabulary terms when discussing paintings.

Text

The Big Book of Old Tom: Unit of work

This unit of work has been written to support the story The Big Book of Old Tom. Explore themes of family, living alone/living with others, making and keeping friends, pets, respect and social awareness. This unit provides practical teaching ideas, assessment tasks and suggestions about how students might respond creatively ...

Text

Work sample Year 2 English: Imaginative writing using a known character

This work sample demonstrates evidence of student learning in relation to aspects of the achievement standards for Year 2 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 ...

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.

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

Emperor Penguins

This informative digital text about emperor penguins is for teachers to read aloud to students. The text is an information report that describes how these penguins survive in the freezing cold climate of Antarctica. The resource includes a teaching sequence related to the Big Six components of literacy development (oral ...

Text

What am I? Amazing Australian Animals

This informative digital text about Australian animals is for teachers to read aloud to students. The text has s a question and answer puzzle format and it provides clues and information about the appearance, habitat and behaviours of the crocodile, platypus, cassowary and quoll. The resource includes a teaching sequence ...

Text

The Last Laugh

This imaginative digital text is an illustrated narrative for teachers to read aloud to students. It is about Monkey, and how she learns an important message about friendship. The resource includes a teaching sequence related to the Big Six components of literacy development (oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, ...

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.

Interactive

Make it happen: find Honey

Honey is missing. Create a notice to let people know your dog is lost. Include a statement, photo and important details such as contact address and phone number. Select places to put up the notice. Consider the replies to your notice when deciding where to look for Honey. Look for Honey at the locations on the map. Check ...

Video

Sustainability of a historic community garden

Discover the history of a local community garden and find out about some of its new sustainable features. View this clip called 'Sustainability in Edinburgh', created by young reporters from North Fitzroy Primary School, Victoria. The clip was developed as part of the ABC Splash Live 'Making the news!' project, which featured ...

Video

The Buyungurra who didn't listen

Listen as Bianca McNeair shares the story of "The Buyungurra who didn't listen". This is a traditional story that Bianca's mother told her when she was growing up. Bianca uses words from the Malgana language, which is spoken in the area around Shark Bay in Western Australia.

Video

Story development and plot holes with Andy Griffiths

How do you move your characters forward in a story? A trick Andy Griffiths uses is asking a lot of questions. His favourite question to ask is "what's the worst thing that can happen next?" Try asking yourself that question if you get stuck when writing your next story. In this clip Andy also talks about plot holes. What ...

Video

English Year 2 with Mr Meissner: Writing a non-fiction text video

In this lesson, you will learn how to write a type of non-fiction text about an animal. Mr Meissner demonstrates the important features of writing a factual animal text, and he provides the opportunity for you to write about your favourite animal.