Grade-4-English

Year 4 English

English Level Description

The English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of language, literature and literacy. Teaching and learning programs should balance and integrate all three strands. Together, the strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. Learning in English builds on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years, and teachers will revisit and strengthen these as needed.

In Years 3 and 4, students experience learning in familiar contexts and a range of contexts that relate to study in other areas of the curriculum. They interact with peers and teachers from other classes and schools in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments.

Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These encompass traditional oral texts including Aboriginal stories, picture books, various types of print and digital texts, simple chapter books, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances and texts used by students as models for constructing their own work.

The range of literary texts for Foundation to Year 10 comprises Australian literature, including the oral narrative traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, as well as the contemporary literature of these two cultural groups, and classic and contemporary world literature, including texts from and about Asia.

Literary texts that support and extend students in Years 3 and 4 as independent readers describe complex sequences of events that extend over several pages and involve unusual happenings within a framework of familiar experiences. Informative texts include content of increasing complexity and technicality about topics of interest and topics being studied in other areas of the curriculum. These texts use complex language features, including varied sentence structures, some unfamiliar vocabulary, a significant number of high-frequency sight words and words that need to be decoded phonically, and a variety of punctuation conventions, as well as illustrations and diagrams that support and extend the printed text.

Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts including narratives, procedures, performances, reports, reviews, poetry and expositions.

English Content Descriptions

Language

Language variation and change

Language for interaction

  • Understand that social interactions influence the way people engage with ideas and respond to others for example when exploring and clarifying the ideas of others, summarising their own views and reporting them to a larger group (ACELA1488)

 

Text structure and organisation

  • Understand how texts vary in complexity and technicality depending on the approach to the topic, the purpose and the intended audience (ACELA1490)
  • Understand how texts are made cohesive through the use of linking devices including pronoun reference and text connectives (ACELA1491)
    • TUTORIALS/LESSON PLANS
      • Pronouns – personal (I, he, she); demonstrative (this, these); possessive (mine, hers, his); reflexive (myself, yourself); reciprocal (each other, one another); relative (who, whom, whose); interrogative (which, what); indefinite (all, another). The resource gives an explanation of different types of pronouns, what pronouns are and examples of each type of pronoun.
      • Similar to the above resource on pronouns, this one may be easier to understand.
      • A more detailed, technical resource for those who grasp pronouns quickly.
    • WORKSHEETS
  • Recognise how quotation marks are used in texts to signal dialogue, titles and quoted (direct) speech (ACELA1492)
  • Identify features of online texts that enhance readability including text, navigation, links, graphics and layout (ACELA1793)

Expressing and developing ideas

  • Understand that the meaning of sentences can be enriched through the use of noun groups/phrases and verb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases (ACELA1493)
  • Investigate how quoted (direct) and reported (indirect) speech work in different types of text (ACELA1494)
  • Understand how adverb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases work in different ways to provide circumstantial details about an activity (ACELA1495)
  • Explore the effect of choices when framing an image, placement of elements in the image, and salience on composition of still and moving images in a range of types of texts (ACELA1496)
  • Incorporate new vocabulary from a range of sources into students’ own texts including vocabulary encountered in research (ACELA1498)

Phonics and word knowledge

Literature

Literature and context

  • Make connections between the ways different authors may represent similar storylines, ideas and relationships (ACELT1602)

Responding to literature

  • Discuss literary experiences with others, sharing responses and expressing a point of view (ACELT1603)
  • Use metalanguage to describe the effects of ideas, text structures and language features of literary texts (ACELT1604)

Examining literature

  • Discuss how authors and illustrators make stories exciting, moving and absorbing and hold readers’ interest by using various techniques, for example character development and plot tension (ACELT1605)
  • Understand, interpret and experiment with a range of devices and deliberate word play in poetry and other literary texts, for example nonsense words, spoonerisms, neologisms and puns (ACELT1606)

Creating literature

  • Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining (ACELT1607)
  • Create literary texts by developing storylines, characters and settings (ACELT1794)

Literacy

Texts in context

  • Identify and explain language features of texts from earlier times and compare with the vocabulary, images, layout and content of contemporary texts (ACELY1686)

Interacting with others

  • Interpret ideas and information in spoken texts and listen for key points in order to carry out tasks and use information to share and extend ideas and information (ACELY1687)
  • Use interaction skills such as acknowledging another’s point of view and linking students’ response to the topic, using familiar and new vocabulary and a range of vocal effects such as tone, pace, pitch and volume to speak clearly and coherently (ACELY1688)
  • Plan, rehearse and deliver presentations incorporating learned content and taking into account the particular purposes and audiences (ACELY1689)

Interpreting, analysing, evaluating

  • Identify characteristic features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text (ACELY1690)
  • Read different types of texts by combining contextual, semantic, grammatical and phonic knowledge using text processing strategies for example monitoring meaning, cross checking and reviewing (ACELY1691)
  • Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (ACELY1692)

Creating texts

  • Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts containing key information and supporting details for a widening range of audiences, demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features (ACELY1694)
  • Re-read and edit for meaning by adding, deleting or moving words or word groups to improve content and structure (ACELY1695)
  • Write using clearly-formed joined letters, and develop increased fluency and automaticity (ACELY1696)
  • Use a range of software including word processing programs to construct, edit and publish written text, and select, edit and place visual, print and audio elements (ACELY1697)
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