Language/Reading Curriculum in the Fourth Grade
Reading Policy
Rather than a policy that states that students should have attained a specific standard in literacy or reading, the Australian government states that “our education system should deliver a basic learning entitlement for all children to leave school with the skills they need to live and work in a globalized world” and achievement standards for each year level in the education system are incorporated into the curriculum framework for each subject or learning area.8
Some Australian jurisdictions have minimum literacy and numeracy achievement standards for students completing secondary school (i.e., Grade 12) that are aligned with the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) discussed later in this chapter.
Summary of National Curriculum
The teaching of reading is located largely within the English strand of the Australian curriculum and comprises three interrelated substrands—Language, Literature, and Literacy—that focus on the development of knowledge, understanding, and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing, and creating. The teaching of phonics is part of this approach, with teaching and learning programs balancing and integrating all three substrands. Achievement standards for each grade level provide illustrated examples to assist teachers in measuring progress and ensuring every child learns these foundational skills.
Students in Year 4 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. Literary texts that support and extend students in Year 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 phonetically, and a variety of punctuation conventions, as well as illustrations and diagrams that support and extend the printed text.
The Achievement Standard for Year 4 Receptive modes (which include listening, reading, and viewing) state:
“…by the end of Year 4, students understand that texts have different text structures depending on purpose and context. They explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used to engage the interest of audiences. They describe literal and implied meaning connecting ideas in different texts. They fluently read texts that include varied sentence structures, unfamiliar vocabulary including multisyllabic words. They express preferences for particular types of texts, and respond to others’ viewpoints. They listen for and share key points in discussions.”9