Curriculum

Foundation Term 3 2023 Curriculum Overview 

Literacy

Reading

 

Exploring how the combination of print and images can create meaning

 

Making links between events in a text and student’s own experience

Simple, retelling of narrative texts in sequence of events

 

Relating one or two key facts in a text

 

Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 1-6 Heart Words

 

Little Learners Love Literacy Phonics

 

  

Writing

 

Learn to construct letters in correct formation and combine these into words

 

Retell familiar texts through performance, drawings and images

 

Use beginning concepts about print, sound/letter knowledge, word knowledge and punctuation to create short texts

 

 

Numeracy 

Represent practical situations to model addition and subtraction 

 

Sort, describe and name familiar two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects in the environment

 

Use direct and indirect comparisons to decide which is longer, heavier or holds more, and explain reasoning in everyday language

 

Represent practical situations to model sharing

 

Understand language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from any starting point

 

Use direct and indirect comparisons to decide which is longer, heavier or holds more, and explain reasoning in everyday language

 

Interpret simple data displays about yes / no questions

 

Science & Geography

Chemical Science

Materials and Objects are Used for Different Reasons

Geography

Places Important to Me

Year 1/2 Term 3 2023 Curriculum Overview 

Literacy

Reading

Different sounds created from letter combinations including graphs, digraphs and trigraphs using Little Learners Love Literacy or SMART Spelling

 

Making and adjusting predictions before, during and after reading, using explicit and implied meaning

 

Asking questions during the reading process to increase comprehension

 

Concepts of print and screen such as headings, navigation bars, images and scrolling to access digital print

 

Analyse visual elements or books and digital print and how they contribute to meaning

Writing

Selecting interesting and relevant ideas for writing

Using descriptive words and phrases to add detail to writing

Creating complex sentences using conjunctions

Using punctuation to enhance meaning

 

Presentation - headings, handwriting, spacing, diagrams and illustrations

 

Narrative and procedural writing elements

 

 

Numeracy 

Recognise and describe one-half as one of two equal parts of a whole

 

Recognise and interpret common use of halves, quarters and eighths of shapes and collections

 

Compare and order several shapes based on length, area, volume, and capacity using appropriate informal units

 

Recognise and represent multiplication as repeated addition, groups, and arrays

 

Count and order small collections of Australian coins and notes according to their value

 

Investigate the effect of one-step slides and flips 

 

Represent data with objects and drawings where one object or drawing represents one data value. Describe the displays.

 

Recognise and represent division as grouping into equal sets and solve simple problems using these representations

 

Investigate number sequences, initially those increasing and decreasing by twos, threes, five and ten from any starting point, then moving to other sequences

 

Science & Geography

Chemical Science

Materials and Objects are used for Different Reasons

Geography

Places Important to Me

Dear F-2 Parents, 

 

Decodable books will build a strong foundation for your child’s future reading success. They are phonically controlled, so children are always able to read unknown words by sounding out and blending those sounds together to say the word. Children experience success and build confidence whilst developing habits of strong readers. 

 

Top tips:

*Before reading, ask your child to warm up by saying sounds used in the book and by decoding some single words used in the book.

*Whilst reading, encourage your child to sound out to read unknown words when they get stuck, and then re-read the sentence for fluency. Remind your child to pause when they come across full stops and other punctuation.

*Make sure your child tracks their finger underneath the words as they read them.

*When your child finishes reading the book, discuss the content and any new words you came across. 

 

Repeated reading and fluency

Fluency is the ability to read accurately, at a conversational rate and with expression – it is an important aspect of reading comprehension. Listening to a child read a decodable book for the first time can be slow, as children work hard to sound out the words accurately. But when your child reads the same decodable book multiple times, they become more automatic and can concentrate on the meaning. Encourage your child to read the same decodable book multiple times and celebrate their progress as they become more confident and fluent readers. 

 

Please note: 

We have replaced our old take-home readers with new phonics readers that complement the Little Learners Love Literacy classroom program. These books are levelled differently from the previous reading sets so your child will have a new reading level that corresponds with the LLLL Stages we use in the classroom.

 

Thank you

 

 

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics aims to be relevant and applicable to the 21st century. The inclusion of the proficiencies of understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning in the curriculum is to ensure that student learning and student independence are at the centre of the curriculum. The curriculum focuses on developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These proficiencies enable students to respond to familiar and unfamiliar situations by employing mathematical strategies to make informed decisions and solve problems efficiently.

Each of the proficiencies are explained briefly here:

 

The teaching staff have been engaged in several Professional Learning sessions looking at Fluency and Reasoning tasks, and now have a focus on tasks that promote Understanding.

 

One of the strategies the staff looked at to promote the development of student understanding is the use of a think board.

Think boards can be used to make connections between different mathematical concepts or for students to visually represent their understandings and strategies in a range of ways.

  

 

 

When you are talking with your child at home about their mathematics learning for the day, consider the use of a think board to help them with the organisation of ideas and understanding.

Years 3 - 6  Term 3 Overview

Literacy

Reading

Focus: How Author’s Hold Readers Attention

Week 1: Purpose and Audience 

Week 2: Text Features

Level 3:Understand how different types of texts vary in use of language choices, depending on their purpose, audience and context, including tense and types of sentences

Level 4:

Identify features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text, and understand how texts vary in complexity and technicality depending on the approach to the topic, the purpose and the intended audience

Level 5:Understand how texts vary in purpose, structure and topic as well as the degree of formality

 

Focus: Vocabulary 

Week 3: Cloze Reading

Week 4: Cloze Passage

Level 3:Discuss how language is used to describe the settings in texts, and explore how the settings shape the events and influence the mood of the narrative

Level 4:Identify and explain language features of texts from earlier times and compare with the vocabulary, images, layout and content of contemporary texts

Level 5:Show how ideas and points of view in texts are conveyed through the use of vocabulary, including idiomatic expressions, objective and subjective language, and that these can change according to context

 

Focus: Literal and Inferential Meaning

Week 5: What is the literal meaning?

Week 6: What is the inferential meaning?

Focus: Factual Comprehension

Week 7: Text structures

Week 8: Language Features

Level 3:Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning and begin to evaluate texts by drawing on a growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features

Level 4:Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts

Level 5:Use comprehension strategies to analyse information, integrating and linking ideas from a variety of print and digital sources

Level 6:Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse information and ideas, comparing content from a variety of textual sources including media and digital texts

 

Focus: Fact and Opinion

Week 9: Text structures

Week 10: Language Features

Level 4:Understand differences between the language of opinion and feeling and the language of factual reporting or recording

Level 5:Understand how to move beyond making bare assertions and take account of differing perspectives and points of view

Level 6: Understand the uses of objective and subjective language and bias

Writing

 

Writers Notebook:

Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining (VCELT298)

Students to use picture prompts for writer’s notebook. 

Mini Lesson with Vocabulary and language  Focus before notebook writing. 

Week 1: Adjectives

Week 2: Nouns and Proper Nouns

Week 3: Verbs and Groups

Week 4: Paragraphing

Week 5: Adverbs

Week 6: Apostrophes

Week 7: Question Marks

Week 8: Noun Groups

Week 9: Speech Marks

 

Writing

Focus: Poetry 

Week 1: Building the Field

Week 2: Poetic Devices

Week 3: Language features focusing on different types of poems e.g. limerick 

Week 4: Onomatopoeia

Week 5: Constructing a Poem

Level 3:Discuss the nature and effects of some language devices used to enhance meaning and shape the reader’s reaction, including rhythm and onomatopoeia in poetry and prose

Level 4:Understand, interpret and experiment with a range of devices and deliberate word play in poetry and other literary texts

Level 5: Understand, interpret and experiment with sound devices and imagery, including simile, metaphor and personification, in narratives, shape poetry, songs, anthems and odes

Level 6: Identify the relationship between words, sounds, imagery and language patterns in narratives and poetry such as ballads, limericks and free verse

 

Focus: Procedural 

Week 6: Building the Field 

Week 7: Text Structures

Week 8: Language Features

Week 9: Shared Writing

Week 10: Applying and Editing

 

Understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of written texts

Understand that verbs represent different processes (doing, thinking, saying, and relating) and that these processes are anchored in time through tense 

Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features and selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose

 

 

Numeracy 

Number and Algebra:

 

Weeks 1 - 4: Operations

Year 3:  

-Explain the connection between addition and subtraction

-Recall multiplication facts of two, three, five and ten and related division facts

-Represent and solve problems involving multiplication using efficient mental and written strategies and appropriate digital technologies 

Year 4:

Apply written and mental strategies to add and subtract

-Investigate number sequences involving multiples of 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 

Recall multiplication facts up to 10 × 10 and related division facts 

Year 5: 

-Use mental and written strategies as well as digital technologies to add. 

Solve problems involving multiplication of large numbers by one- or two-digit numbers using mental and written strategies.

Solve problems involving division by a one digit number, including those that result in a remainder 

Year 6: 

- Use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to solve problems with whole numbers and estimates. 

-Select and apply efficient mental and written strategies and appropriate digital technologies to solve problems involving all four operations with whole numbers.

 

Weeks 7 - 8 Money and Financial Mathematics

Year 3:

Represent money values in multiple ways and count the change required for simple transactions to the nearest five cents

Year 4:

Solve problems involving purchases and the calculation of change to the nearest five cents with and without digital technologies

Year 5:

Create simple financial plans

Year 6:

Investigate and calculate percentage discounts of 10%, 25% and 50% on sale items, with and without digital technologies

 

Measurement and Geometry 

 

Weeks 5 - 6 - through Middle Years Maths Challenge

‘The Big Australian Adventure’

Year 3:

-Measure, order and compare objects using familiar metric units of length, area, mass and capacity

-Tell time to the minute and investigate the relationship between units of time

-Create and interpret simple grid maps to show position and pathways

Year 4:

-Use scaled instruments to measure and compare lengths, masses, capacities and temperatures

-Convert between units of time

-Use am and pm notation and solve simple time problems

-Use simple scales, legends and directions to interpret information contained in basic maps

Year 5: 

-Choose appropriate units of measurement for length, area, volume, capacity and mass

-Compare 12- and 24-hour time systems and convert between them

-Use a grid reference system to describe locations. Describe routes using landmarks and directional language 

Year 6:

-Convert between common metric units of length, mass and capacity

-Solve problems involving the comparison of lengths and areas using appropriate units

-Interpret and use timetables 

Introduce the Cartesian coordinate system using all -four quadrants

 

Statistics and Probability

Weeks 9 - 10 Chance

Year 3:

-Conduct chance experiments, identify and describe possible outcomes and recognise variation in results

Year 4:

-Describe possible everyday events and order their chances of occurring

-Identify everyday events where one cannot happen if the other happens

-Identify events where the chance of one will not be affected by the occurrence of the other

Year 5:

- List outcomes of chance experiments involving equally likely outcomes and represent probabilities of those outcomes using fractions 

-Recognise that probabilities range from 0 to 1

Year 6:

- Describe probabilities using fractions, decimals and percentages

-Conduct chance experiments with both small and large numbers of trials using appropriate digital technologies 

 

Inquiry Learning

Geography and Science 

Geography

3-4 - Australia; mapping 

Students can identify the different states and territories 

Students can identify and explain different landmarks both natural and man made

Identify and describe the characteristics of places in different locations at a range of scales 

Identify and describe locations and spatial distributions and patterns 

Identify and explain the interconnections within places and between places 

 

5-6 - Australia and neighbouring countries; Mapping 

Students can identify and locate our neighbouring countries on a map

Students can describe and identify  where other continents are on a map

Location of the major countries of the Asian region in relation to Australia and the geographical diversity within the region

Differences in the demographic, economic, social and cultural characteristics of countries across the world 

Influence of people, including the influence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, on the environmental characteristics of Australian places

 

Science

Mini-Boss Incursion

 

3-4

A change of state between solid and liquid can be caused by adding or removing heat

Natural and processed materials have a range of physical properties; these properties can influence their use

 

5-6

Solids, liquids and gases behave in different ways and have observable properties that help to classify them

Changes to materials can be reversible, including melting, freezing, evaporating, or irreversible, including burning and rusting