Writing a persuasive letter
A teacher of a class of EAL/D students selects age-appropriate content from the Year 9 Australian Curriculum for English. The lesson is part of a unit of work to teach students how to create persuasive texts in the form of complaint letters. In the lesson, the teacher provides a series of interrelated learning experiences integrating the content in the Year 9 English Language and Literacy strands. The focus of the lesson is the consolidation of specific Standard Australian English (SAE) language proficiency skills and understandings including: phonic knowledge, pronunciation, persuasive vocabulary, grammar, text structure and punctuation. The teacher employs a range of supportive teaching strategies to personalise learning. She provides: learning opportunities that support and extend students’ written and oral language proficiencies, including peer collaboration; individual conferencing; modelling text construction; and joint and independent construction of text. In planning for, and implementing a lesson based on the Year 9 English curriculum, the teacher draws on various components of ACARA's EAL/D Teacher Resource including the EAL/D learning progression to monitor student the students’ language proficiency and the English EAL/D annotated content descriptions.
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Australian Curriculum
Learning area
EnglishYear level
Year 9Content description
General capability
General capability
EAL/D learning progression
Speaking, Writing, ListeningEAL/D learning phase
Years 7-10Personalised learning
Teacher intention
To develop her students' SAE language proficiency as they learn how to construct persuasive text in the form of a complaint letter.Personalised learning
Plan from age-equivalent learning area content:
The teacher bases her teaching plan on the Year 9 English content with the aim to develop the students’ language proficiency when creating written and spoken persuasive texts.
Align individual learning goals with age-equivalent content to personalise the learning:
Teacher draws of material in the EAL/D teacher resource to personalise the learning of her students:
She uses the EAL/D Learning Progression to identify and monitor the students’ language proficiency in Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.
She uses the English EAL/D Annotated content descriptions: English to obtain information about linguistic or cultural considerations implicit in the curriculum content descriptions. She also draws on suggested teaching strategies in this publication.
Questions for discussion
1. How do you use the Australian Curriculum to design activities that are relevant to the diverse learning needs of your students?
2. What strategies do, or could you use to personalise a teaching and learning program developed from age-equivalent content?
3. How might you use the EAL/D Teacher resource to support your teaching of the Australian curriculum?
Professional Standards for Teachers
Standard 1
Know students and how they learnFocus area 1.1
Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of studentsFocus area 1.3
Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgroundsStandard 2
Know the content and how to teach itFocus area 2.3
Curriculum, assessment and reportingSchool details
Aranmore Catholic College
Leederville WA Australia
School type
Non-governmentSchool sector
SecondarySchool location
MetropolitanSchool description
Aranmore Catholic College is a co-educational school of 650 students from Years 7–12 in Leederville, Western Australia. Aranmore has an English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) Department.