Writing Course
Foundation (Prep) Year

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

By the end of Foundation, students listen to texts, interact with others and create short spoken texts, including retelling stories. They share thoughts and preferences, retell events and key ideas to an audience. They use language features including words and phrases from learning and texts.

They read, view and comprehend texts, making connections between characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences. They identify the language features of texts.

They create short written texts, including retelling stories using words and images where appropriate. They retell and state their thoughts, feelings and key ideas. They use words and phrases from learning and texts. They form letters, spell most consonant–vowel–consonant words and experiment with capital letters and full stops.

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 child learns to retell and adapt the stories they read by casting new characters, you may discover yourself cast as a hero ... or a villain ... in your child's next story. Enjoy!

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