English

Year Level Objectives

Students in Year 6 communicate with peers and teachers from other classes and schools, community members, individuals and groups, in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments.

Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. Through the Literature Circle program, unique to Year 6, students read and respond in individual, literal, critical and evaluative ways to a range of texts through the year. Students engage in meaningful discussions about texts with their peers, listening and responding respectfully to ideas of others, and sharing their own opinions and understandings.

They listen to, read, view, interpret and evaluate spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These include various types of media texts including newspapers, film and digital texts, junior and early adolescent novels, poetry, non-fiction and dramatic performances. Students develop their understanding of how texts, including media texts, are influenced by context, purpose and audience.

Literary texts that support and extend students in Year 6 as independent readers, describe complex sequences, a range of non-stereotypical characters and elaborated events including flashbacks and shifts in time. These texts explore themes of interpersonal relationships and ethical dilemmas within real-world and fantasy settings. Informative texts supply technical and content information about a wide range of topics of interest, as well, as topics being studied in other areas of the curriculum. Text structures include chapters, headings and subheadings, tables of contents, indexes and glossaries. Language features include complex sentences, unfamiliar technical vocabulary, figurative language and information presented in various types of graphics. Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts, such as narratives, procedures, performances, reports, reviews, explanations and discussions. Writer’s Notebook allows children to find and unpack their own ‘seeds’ (writing prompts) and explore various writing genre.

Achievement Standard

Reading and Viewing

• Understands how the use of text structures can achieve particular effects.
• Analyses and explains how language features, images and vocabulary are used by different authors to represent ideas, characters and events.
• Compares and analyses information in different texts, explaining literal and implied meaning.
• Selects and uses evidence from a text to explain their response to it.

Speaking and Listening

• Listens to discussions, clarifying content and challenging others’ ideas.
• Understands how language features and language patterns can be used for emphasis.
• Shows how specific details can be used to support a point of view.
• Explains how their choices of language features and images are used.
• Creates detailed texts, elaborating on key ideas for a range of purposes and audiences.
• Makes presentations and contributes actively to class and group discussions, using a variety of strategies for effect.

Writing

• Understands how language features and language patterns can be used for emphasis.
• Shows how specific details can be used to support a point of view.
• Explains how their choices of language features and images are used.
• Creates detailed texts elaborating upon key ideas for a range of purposes and audiences.
• Demonstrates understanding of grammar, makes considered choices from an expanding vocabulary, uses accurate spelling and punctuation for clarity and make and explain editorial choices.