Foundation Year
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 three 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 develop and strengthen these as needed.
In the Foundation year, students communicate with peers, teachers, known adults and students from other classes.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as some texts designed to inform. These include traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of stories, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts and dramatic performances. They participate in shared reading, viewing and storytelling using a range of literary texts, and recognise the entertaining nature of literature.
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 Foundation students as beginner readers include decodable and predictable texts that range from caption books to books with one or more sentences per page. These texts involve straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings with recognisable, realistic or imaginary characters. Informative texts present a small amount of new content about familiar topics of interest; a small range of language features, including simple and compound sentences; mostly familiar vocabulary, known, high-frequency words and single-syllable words that can be decoded phonically, and illustrations that strongly support the printed text.
Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts including pictorial representations, short statements, performances, recounts and poetry.
(source: www.australiancurriculum.edu.au)
Achievement Standard
Receptive modes (listening, reading and viewing)
By the end of the Foundation year, students use predicting and questioning strategies to make meaning from texts. They recall one or two events from texts with familiar topics. They understand that there are different types of texts and that these can have similar characteristics. They identify connections between texts and their personal experience.
They read short, decodable and predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive images, drawing on their developing knowledge of concepts of print, sounds and letters and decoding and self-monitoring strategies. They recognise the letters of the English alphabet, in upper and lower case and know and use the most common sounds represented by most letters. They read high-frequency words and blend sounds orally to read consonant-vowel-consonant words. They use appropriate interaction skills to listen and respond to others in a familiar environment. They listen for rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words.
Productive modes (speaking, writing and creating)
Students understand that their texts can reflect their own experiences. They identify and describe likes and dislikes about familiar texts, objects, characters and events.
In informal group and whole class settings, students communicate clearly. They retell events and experiences with peers and known adults. They identify and use rhyme, and orally blend and segment sounds in words. When writing, students use familiar words and phrases and images to convey ideas. Their writing shows evidence of letter and sound knowledge, beginning writing behaviours and experimentation with capital letters and full stops. They correctly form known upper- and lower-case letters.
(source: www.australiancurriculum.edu.au)
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CVC Word Building Activity
Practise building CVC words with this 25 slide interactive activity.
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Decodable Sound Button Flashcards – Set 1
A set of over 100 decodable sound button flashcards.
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Personal Recounts Worksheet - My Wonderful Weekend
A simple text and worksheet to use when exploring personal recounts.
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Three Little Pigs Retelling Activity Cards
Teach your students about retelling with this set of sequencing cards for The Three Little Pigs.
- Free Plan
Weekend Recount Worksheet
A worksheet for younger students to use when writing a weekend recount.
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Make a Sentence – Worksheets
A set of worksheets where students un-jumble words to create a sentence.
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3 Billy Goats Gruff Retelling Activity Cards
Teach your students about retelling with this set of sequencing cards for 3 Billy Goats Gruff.
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Handwriting Posters - Dirt, Grass and Sky Background With Arrows
Handwriting posters using a dirt, grass and sky background with arrows.
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CVC/CCVC/CVCC Word Flashcards
A comprehensive set of flashcards for CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words.
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Phoneme Segmentation Worksheets - CVCC/CCVC Words
Use this worksheet pack to give students practice at segmenting words into phonemes.
- Free Plan
Fiction or Non-Fiction? Cut and Paste Worksheet
Use this fiction and non-fiction worksheet when teaching your students about the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts.
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First 100 Fry Sight Words – Practice Mat
A hands-on resource to enable your students to practise reading and writing a range of high-frequency words.
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SATPIN Matching Activity - Frog and Lily Pads
A SATPIN matching activity using lilly pads.
- Free Plan
Aiming For Inference Posters
Six mini posters showing different scenarios that can be used when encouraging students to use inference.
- Plus Plan
Initial Sound Peg Cards (Version 2)
An initial sound and fine motor activity for younger students.
- Free Plan
Speaking and Listening Activities Task Cards
A set of 13 cards with instructions for speaking and listening activities.
- Plus Plan
Letter Craft Activity - 'D' is For Dog
An activity to assist young students with letter recognition, phonemic awareness and fine motor development.
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Simple Recounts - Writing Scaffold
A simple scaffolding worksheet to use when writing a recount.
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Coloured Dots - Letter, Number And Punctuation Set
A coloured dot letter, number and punctuation set to use in your classroom.
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Colour Me Carefully Worksheets
A set of four colouring pages to be used as speaking and listening activities.
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Spelling CVCC Words - Worksheets
Develop students’ ability to segment and blend the sounds in CVCC words with this set of differentiated worksheets.
- Free Plan
Capitalise It! Task Cards
Reinforce capitalisation of proper nouns, the pronoun ‘I’ and the beginning of sentences with this set of task cards.
- Plus Plan
Fairy Tales Settings Posters
A set of 6 fairytale story settings background posters.
- Plus Plan
Foundation Magazine - What's Buzzing? (Issue 1)
A beautifully designed, 16-page reading magazine specifically designed for Foundation students.
- Free Plan
Initial Sound Peg Cards (Version 1)
An initial sound and fine motor activity for the early years classroom.
- Plus Plan
Which Word? CVC Decoding Worksheets
A set of 5 worksheets for students to practise segmenting and blending common CVC words.
- Plus Plan
Gingerbread Man Retelling Activity Cards
Teach your students about retelling with this set of sequencing cards for The Gingerbread Man.
- Plus Plan
Phoneme Segmentation Task Cards - CVC Words
Segment initial, middle and end sounds with this set of 20 CVC word task cards.
- Free Plan
Phonological Awareness Diagnostic Tool
Basic diagnostic tool to test your students' phonological awareness.
- Plus Plan
Alphabet Letter Match
A fun match-up activity to consolidate your students' knowledge of uppercase and lowercase letters.
- Free Plan
Colour Me Carefully – Geometric Animals – Worksheets
A set of four colouring pages to be used as speaking and listening activities.
- Free Plan
Decodable Text to Picture Match-Up
Four sets of decodable sentences with matching pictures.