Creating stories
A teacher of a class of 27 students, of whom 18 are learning English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D), selects age-appropriate content from the Year 1 Australian Curriculum: English. The lesson is part of a unit of work to create stories. In the lesson, the teacher integrates the content from the Language, Literature and Literacy strands. The focus of the lesson is the structure and punctuation of written narrative texts. For the EAL/D students, the lesson includes: the consolidation of alphabetic and phonic knowledge, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, text structure and punctuation. The teacher employs a range of supportive teaching strategies to personalise learning. These include providing learning opportunities that support and extend students’ written and oral language proficiencies, including explicit whole class instruction through modelling text construction, individual teacher/student conferencing and opportunities for independent text construction and editing of text. In planning for and implementing the unit, the teacher draws on various components of ACARA's EAL/D Teacher Resource including the EAL/D learning progression to monitor the student students’ language proficiency and the English and EAL/D annotated content descriptions. These annotated content descriptions provide relevant teaching strategies and cultural or linguistic considerations implicit in the curriculum content descriptions.
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Australian Curriculum
Learning area
EnglishYear level
Year 1Content description
General capability
General capability
EAL/D learning progression
Speaking, Listening, WritingEAL/D learning phase
F, 1, 2Personalised learning
Teacher intention
To develop her students' SAE language proficiency as they learn how to construct a narrative text.Personalised learning
Plan from age-equivalent learning area content:
The teacher plans from Year 1 English content to develop a teaching and learning program to develop students’ language proficiency to create both written and spoken narrative texts.
Align individual learning goals with age-equivalent content to personalise the learning:
Teacher draws on 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 ACARA's 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
Emmanuel Christian Community School
Girrawheen WA Australia
School type
Non-governmentSchool sector
PrimarySchool location
MetropolitanSchool description
Emmanuel Christian Community School is a co-educational school of 650 students from Foundation to Year 7 in Girrawheen, Western Australia. The School, has a large population of students for whom English is an Additional Language/Dialect.