Guide to Year 6 English

To assist you understand what year 6 students will be studying, we will detail the key learning areas, categories of texts, themes, and assessments for the Year 6 English curriculum throughout the year.

The Year 6 Curriculum is divided into three parts:

• Literature 

• Language 

• Literacy

All three strands are cultivated and integrated in the curriculum. These abilities improve year 6 English tutoring students’ listening, reading, watching, speaking, writing, and idea creation and comprehension abilities.

Throughout the year, students will engage with a range of texts for enjoyment in order to expose them to a diversity of texts and foster their interest.

They will read, watch, listen to, understand, and assess multimodal and written materials. These writings may be aesthetically pleasing, instructive, or convincing. 

Year 6 students will experience a range of formats, including newspaper, film, and digital texts, junior teenage novels, poetry, non-fiction, and theatrical performances. 

Australian literature, such as Indigenous stories, contemporary literature, classic international literature and texts will be included.

  1. Language

Year 6 students will learn about how language evolves and changes, as well as how the vocabulary we use changes based on who or what we are engaging with. 

The students will learn that there are over 50 Aboriginal languages and two Torres Strait Islander languages in Australia, as well as the link between these languages and geographic locations. They will gain an understanding and respect for all languages and dialects, realising that they are all valuable even if used in different situations. 

  • Interaction

Year 6 students will understand complicated social relationships and the varied degrees of formality necessary in diverse social circumstances. Furthermore, students will learn when it is appropriate to offer personal thoughts and when it is best to stay impartial.

They will learn to differentiate between facts and views, as well as the numerous textual forms each might take. 

  • Text Formation: An Understanding

Students will study the arrangement and structure of texts in addition to understanding the details of the English language. Students will gain a grasp of how writers use text structure and linguistic elements to achieve aesthetic, funny, and persuasive effects.

Using a mix of daily, communal, literary, and instructive texts, your students will examine the overall structure and impact of the author’s choices in two or more pieces. Furthermore, evaluating a humorist’s works can assist students in identifying tactics used to amuse readers as well as providing insight into a character’s feelings, therefore building compassionate readers. 

  • The Application of Their Understanding

Furthermore, your students will be able to put these abilities into practice by expressing and developing their own ideas. Students will gain a respect for complicated sentences and a grasp of how to use them to represent complex thoughts by writing their own works.

Furthermore, students will understand how careful word choice may improve or widen their message. 

In order to properly spell new words, students will continue to enhance his or her spelling skills by studying word origins such as Latin and Greek roots, base words, prefixes, suffixes, letter patterns, and spelling generalisation. They will also continue to improve their grammar. 

In summary, your students will learn about: 

• language variety and change 

• language for interaction 

• text arrangement and structure 

  1. Literature 

The study of specific writings is known as literature; in this unit, students will discover how authorial and audience settings might impact the work, as well as how to react to and critique literature. Students will have the capacity to identify similarities between their own experiences and those of the people and events represented in texts, drawing on historical, social, and cultural contexts as needed. 

Students will compare and contrast books with comparable subjects, concepts, or narratives while reacting to literature. By comparing the works of several writers with diverse writing styles who cover the same issue, your students will be able to detect differences in the use of narrator, narrative structure, voice, linguistic style, and literature.

They will also be taught writing influencing English strategies like modality, repetition, and metaphor choosing. 

Students’ ability to analyse literature and create their own writings will be the pinnacle of these talents. They will learn to recognise, describe, and debate similarities and contrasts across texts, as well as to assess an author’s style.

They will also learn to recognise the connection between narrative and poetry words, sounds, images, and linguistic patterns. These will let your students produce literary texts that change or mix parts from previously studied works to create their own creative works.

  1. Literacy

Literacy refers to a student’s capacity to read and interpret written material. In order to enhance literacy, the Australian curriculum encourages students to communicate with one another and express their thoughts in addition to analysing, analysing, and evaluating books. 

Students will compare texts that reflect different ideas and events in different ways to examine and explain the consequences of diverse approaches to a text. They will examine writers’ linguistic choices and opinions. 

  • Active Participation

A key part of the English language for year 6 students is developing and expressing ideas to be conveyed with others, whether vocally, in writing, or aesthetically.

Students will be encouraged to contribute to class discussions by explaining and questioning concepts, creating and supporting their arguments, sharing and assessing information, and listening to others’ experiences and viewpoints.

They’ll also learn how to employ spoken engagement norms including voice, loudness, tone, cadence, and formality based on their audience. 

  • Text Understanding

Year 6 students will study how text structures and linguistic elements work together to accomplish a book’s goal in order to enhance their literacy. This will help students study and grasp works by applying comprehension tactics to assess facts and ideas, as well as author strategies to influence readers.

This will also improve their capacity to choose and read texts for a variety of objectives, resulting in improved text processing and comprehension. 

English Language Standards for Year 6 Students

The Year 6 English language standards are based on two modes: receptive and productive. 

Receptive Mode

Hearing, reading, and seeing are examples of receptive modes. Teachers will assess students’ understanding of how to utilise text structures to achieve certain effects by assessing the language elements, visuals, and terminology used by different writers to depict ideas, characters, and events.

Students will compare and evaluate material from numerous sources, explaining literal and suggested meaning via the use of textual evidence. 

Productive Mode

Communication, writing, and production are examples of productive modes. Students understand how language traits and patterns may be employed to underline and support certain points of view in this area.

In Year 6, students also learn how to write a range of texts for a variety of objectives and audiences. They will exhibit grammatical knowledge in their writing by using suitable terminology to improve coherence and structure.

They will also learn to appreciate good spelling and punctuation for clarity in order to make and defend editing judgements.