Writing Course
Years 3 and 4

The Australian curriculum achievement standards for Year 3 targeted in this course include:

By the end of Year 3, students listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts including stories. They relate ideas; express opinion, preferences and appreciation of texts. They group, logically sequence and link ideas. They use language features including topic-specific vocabulary, and/or visual features and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts, recognising their purpose and audience. They identify literal meaning and explain inferred meaning. They describe how stories are developed through characters and/or events. They describe how texts are structured and presented. They describe the language features of texts including topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and how visual features extend meaning.

They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories to narrate. They use text structures including paragraphs, and language features including compound sentences, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features. They write texts using letters that are accurately formed and consistent in size.

The Australian curriculum achievement standards for Year 4 targeted in this course include:

By the end of Year 4, students listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts including stories. They use text structures to organise and link ideas. They use language features including subjective and objective language, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts created to engage audiences. They describe how ideas are developed through characters and events, and how texts reflect contexts. They describe the characteristic features of different text structures. They describe how language features including literary devices, and visual features shape meaning.

They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories for purposes and audiences, where they develop ideas using details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They use paragraphs to organise and link ideas. They use language features including complex sentences, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features. They write texts using clearly formed letters with developing fluency.

Words are the building blocks of literacy. Without the right words, students cannot think or articulate their ideas. Therefore the lesson sequence in Unit 1 is:

1. What is a literary device? Understand that literary devices in writing are like the special effects in movies. They are devices - things - that do something.
2. Access the TeacherTalk curriculum-aligned Glossary Of Literary Devices with definitions, examples, and simple English codes we call Eng-Codes®.
3. Learn to Eng-Code® a text with literary devices to make learning visible.
4. Extract language from a classroom text, create a topic-specific language journal, and develop vocabulary.
5. Transform published language to make it your own.

Students gather vocabulary from their classroom texts and learn how to use this language to excel in academic writing. These skills transfer to life beyond the classroom, preparing students to communicate with confidence in any situation.

The Australian curriculum is clear: a narrative is a story about a character who experiences a problem and resolves it in a way that makes a point and stimulates a response from the reader. In a narrative, the author's (or student's) message is heard at the end. Therefore, the teaching sequence in Unit 2 is:

1. What is a narrative? Let's unpack the curriculum definition.
2. Gather plot ideas from literature and life.
3. Plan a powerful narrative using our curriculum-aligned scaffold that focuses students on the resolution - because that's where writers make their point.
4. Cast colourful characters and portray them using literary devices.
5. Scout for symbolic settings and portray them using literary devices.
6. Draft, mark & edit for success using the TeacherTalk student-friendly marking guide.

Each of these include a short sequence of lessons, tips to overcome common challenges, examples of successful student work, and plenty of practice, extension and analysis activities.

Beware! As your students learn to retell and adapt the stories they read by casting new characters, you may discover yourself cast as a hero ... or a villain ... in their stories. Enjoy!

We're continually growing our resources. This unit is under construction and coming soon!