Year 2 English Syllabus
Year 2
Year level description
In the early childhood phase of schooling, learning, development and wellbeing are connected and learning experiences are informed by the Principles and Practices of the Early Years Learning Framework. A holistic curriculum that integrates knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes across learning areas connects learning to children’s lives and their natural curiosity about their world.
English provides opportunities for children to learn through a blend of developmentally appropriate intentional approaches, including play-based learning, inquiry and explicit teaching.
In Year 2, children act with intentionality and agency to explore how English, as the shared language of the learning environment, can be used to share ideas, thoughts and opinions with familiar audiences for different purposes. An emphasis on literacy is encapsulated in a holistic approach to learning where key ideas and concepts in a range of learning areas are presented in culturally and phase‑appropriate ways. Children should have recurring and cumulative opportunities to develop their knowledge and understanding of the symbolic representations associated with written language. They interact with others to develop a sense of wellbeing as they investigate interpersonal language choices to communicate for different purposes and to meet their personal needs and interests.
Critical literacy is integral to the English curriculum. It is developed when children actively question, analyse and evaluate the texts they engage with. In Year 2, children learn to identify the purpose and audience of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts.
Children engage with a range of texts for enjoyment and learning. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts whose purpose may be imaginative, informative and persuasive. The range of texts includes imaginative and informative picture books; various types of print, oral and digital stories; rhyming verse, poetry, songs and chants; media, online and digital texts; dramatic performances; spoken texts; chapter books; non-fiction texts; and texts used by children as models for creating their own texts. As children transition to become independent readers, they continue to develop their decoding and comprehension skills, using a range of texts, including:
- texts for different purposes that support children to build literal and inferred meaning
- literary texts that may include sequences of events that span several pages, unusual happenings within a framework of familiar experiences, and images that extend meaning
- texts that include language features, such as varied sentence structures, some unfamiliar vocabulary, an increasing bank of high‑frequency words, and words that need to be decoded using phonic and morphemic knowledge, and a range of punctuation conventions
- informative texts which present new content about topics of interest and topics introduced in other learning areas and that may include illustrations and diagrams that extend the text.
Children create spoken, written, visual and multimodal texts whose purposes may be imaginative, informative and persuasive. These texts may include retells or adaptations of stories, recounts of events or experiences, procedures, narratives, reports of learning area content, responses (including reviews and personal reflections), persuasive arguments/expositions, dramatic performances and poetry. These texts are created for familiar audiences. Children make choices about texts according to their interests and curiosities.
Year 2
Achievement standard
By the end of the year:
Speaking and Listening
Children interact with others for a purpose and listen to and create spoken texts to discuss ideas and share experiences and personal preferences, including through storytelling. They communicate ideas, topic knowledge and appreciation of texts when they recount, inform or express an opinion, and draw on information from learnt topics, their imagination, funds of knowledge or texts. They organise and link ideas, and use language features, including topic-specific vocabulary.
Reading and Viewing
Children listen to, read, view and comprehend texts, identifying literal and inferred meaning, and how ideas are presented through settings, characters and events. They identify how similar topics and information are presented through the structure of narrative and informative texts, and identify their language features and visual features. They use phonic and morphemic knowledge and grammatical patterns to read unfamiliar words and most high-frequency words. They use knowledge of phonics, words and punctuation to read with phrasing and fluency.
Writing and Creating
Children create written and/or multimodal texts, including texts to tell stories, inform, express an opinion or adapt an idea for familiar audiences. They use text structures to organise and link ideas for a purpose. They punctuate simple and compound sentences. They use topic-specific vocabulary. They spell words with regular spelling patterns, and use phonic and morphemic knowledge to attempt to spell words with less common patterns.
Year 2
Content descriptions
Language for interacting with others
Investigate how interpersonal language choices vary depending on the context, including the different roles taken on in interactions
WA2ELAI1
For example:
- exploring culturally appropriate greetings or conventions from different home languages
- interacting with local or visiting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through greetings and culturally appropriate conventions
Explore how language can be used for appreciating texts and providing reasons for preferences
WA2ELAI2
For example:
- using verbs to describe a range of responses to a text, such as prefer, enjoy
- experimenting with conjunctions, such as since, although, or except for to explain their response
Text structure, organisation and features
Explore how texts across learning areas are organised differently and use language features depending on purposes
WA2ELAT1
For example:
- locating information using the subheadings in a non-fiction text
- identifying language features in texts, such as action verbs in a procedural text
- co-constructing a response to a performance from The Arts using a familiar format
Understand how texts are made cohesive by using personal and possessive pronouns and by omitting words that can be inferred
WA2ELAT2
For example:
- replacing repeated nouns with pronouns, such as Jack was hungry.
JackHe bought some magic beans butJack’shis mother threwthe beansthem out. - omitting words in a sentence, such as I thought my cat was hungry but he was not
hungry.
Navigate print and digital texts using chapters, table of contents, indexes, sidebar menus, drop-down menus or links
WA2ELAT3
Language for expressing and developing ideas
Understand that connections can be made between ideas by using a compound sentence with two or more independent clauses usually linked by a coordinating conjunction
WA2ELALA1
For example:
- identifying and using the coordinating conjunctions found in compound sentences: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so
- sorting sentences into simple and compound sentence groups
Understand that, in sentences, nouns may be extended into noun groups using articles and adjectives, and verbs may be expressed as verb groups
WA2ELALA2
For example:
- adding words to nouns to make a noun group, such as changing the noun cat into a noun group, one (article) very old, lazy (adjectives) cat
- adding words to verbs to make a verb group, such as changing walked into walked along the road slowly
Understand that images add to or multiply the meanings of a text
WA2ELALA3
For example:
- discussing detail that is included in the images but not present in the words
- identifying and describing the way images are used to expand meaning, such as a character’s facial expression to communicate emotion, or graphs, diagrams and maps to communicate facts and details
Experiment with and begin to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit the topic, situation or context
WA2ELALA4
Recognise that capital letters are used in titles and commas are used to separate items in lists
WA2ELALA5
For example:
- identifying the separate items in a list as indicated by the commas, such as peas, beans, carrots and pumpkin
- making use of capital letters in titles of proper nouns to help make meaning in texts
Phonic and word knowledge
Manipulate more complex sounds in spoken words and use knowledge of blending, segmenting, phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution to read and write words
WA2ELAP1
For example:
- blending and segmenting spoken words to
- identify the phonemes in spoken words, such as proud, scratch and stick
- delete initial phonemes, such as [s] in snail
- substitute final sounds, such as the [g] in flag for [p]
Use phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) relationships and patterns, when blending and segmenting to read and write words of one or more syllables
WA2ELAP2
For example:
- reading and writing words that contain
- less common long vowel patterns, such as <ey> they, <eigh> eight, <ea> break, <ie> chief, <y> funny, <igh> right,<o> cold, <oe> toe, <ow> flow, <ew> new
- r-controlled vowels, such as <ar> star, <er> herd, <ir> bird, <ur> fur
- diphthongs, such as <oi> boil, <ow> now, <oy> boy
- consonant clusters, such as <qu>, <spl>, <str>, <spr>, <tw>, <gh> laugh, <tch>
- blending and segmenting phonemes in words, such as cloudy or brother, as a decoding or encoding strategy
- decoding or encoding using onset and rime (initial phoneme substitution or rime substitution)
Understand that a sound can be represented by various letter combinations
WA2ELAP3
For example:
- identifying that <ee>, <ea>, <y> and <ie> can all make a long [e] sound
- recognising that the sound [s] can be represented with various letter combinations, such as <s>, <c>, <sc>, <ce> and <ss>
- know that children with the same name may spell their names differently, such as Amy/Aimee, Mark/Marc
Use phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) matches, including vowel digraphs, less common long vowel patterns, consonant clusters and silent letters, when reading and writing words of one or more syllables, including compound words
WA2ELAP4
For example:
- reading and writing words of more than one syllable with
- vowel digraphs, such as <ee>, <oo>, <ai>, <ay>, <ey>, <ea>, <au>, <oi>, <ou>, <ow>, <ui>
- less common long vowel patterns, such as <igh> high, <ie> chief
- consonant clusters, such as <tch>, <spl>, <scr>, <ph>, <tw>, <gh>
- silent letters, such as <k> know, <g> gnome, <t> whistle, <h> hour, <l> walk
- reading and writing compound words, such as motorcycle, whiteboard, rainbow, breakfast
Use knowledge of spelling patterns and morphemes to read and write words whose spelling is not completely predictable from their sounds, including high-frequency words
WA2ELAP5
For example:
- using spelling patterns for words, such as would, could, should and walk, chalk, talk
- spelling words using morphemic knowledge for words, such as once, only, one, lonely and two, twelve, twenty, twin, twist
Build morphemic word families using knowledge of prefixes and suffixes
WA2ELAP6
For example:
- recognising that a base word is a morpheme that holds meaning
- building word families that are linked by meaning by adding prefixes and suffixes to base words, such as cover, covers, covered, uncover, uncovered, uncovering; discover, discovered, discovering
Literature and contexts
Discuss how characters, events and settings are connected in literature created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, wide-ranging Australian and world authors and illustrators
WA2ELICO1
For example:
- discussing characters and their connection to Country in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories
- using information contained in literary texts to make predictions, such as viewing a setting and brainstorming the type of characters and events that may take place there
Engaging with and responding to literature
Identify features of literary texts, such as characters, events and settings, and give reasons for personal preferences
WA2ELIEN1
For example:
- identifying a favourite character giving reasons for that choice
Examining literature
Discuss the characters, settings and events of a range of texts and identify how language is used to present these features in different ways
WA2ELIEX1
For example:
- identifying and describing language features used in literary texts, such as the language used to describe a setting in a poem, or the action verbs used to portray events in a story
- exploring how language is used to portray similar characters across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander oral traditions
Identify, reproduce and experiment with rhythmic sound and word patterns in literary texts, including stories, poems, chants, rhymes and songs
WA2ELIEX2
Creating literature
Create and edit literary texts by adapting structures and language features of literary texts through drawing, writing, performance and digital tools
WA2ELICR1
For example:
- adapting a well-known poem or story into a sequence of images
Texts in context
Identify how similar topics and information are presented in different types of texts
WA2ELYT1
For example:
- exploring and identifying different features in texts of the same text type which vary in their organisation, such as different types of procedures
- comparing two or more texts on a common topic
Interacting with others
Use interaction skills when engaging with topics, actively listening to others, receiving instructions and extending own ideas, speaking appropriately, expressing and responding to opinions, making statements, and giving instructions
WA2ELYI1
Analysing, interpreting and evaluating
Identify the purpose and audience of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts
WA2ELYA1
For example:
- describing the purpose and audience of some child-friendly advertisements
Read texts with phrasing and fluency combining phonic, word and grammatical knowledge, and monitor meaning using text processing strategies
WA2ELYA2
For example:
- blending and segmenting new words using known letter patterns and phonic knowledge
- reading high-frequency words with increasing automaticity to develop fluency
- drawing on topic word knowledge to make meaning in informative texts
- recognising a base word within a larger word to aid decoding
- using knowledge of sentence structure, including punctuation and word order to read with phrasing and fluency
- drawing on personal knowledge and experiences to construct and monitor meaning
Use comprehension strategies, such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning when listening, reading and viewing to build literal and inferred meaning in a range of texts for different purposes
WA2ELYA3
For example:
- making connections to own experiences to understand the motives or feelings of a character
- making predictions about the type of characters who are likely to be in a text, such as a fable or Aboriginal tale
- participating in conversations to share ideas, and ask and answer questions about texts
- sharing the clues from the text when discussing inferences during shared reading
- monitoring understanding by asking questions and/or checking information in another text
Creating texts
Plan, create and edit short imaginative, informative and persuasive written and/or multimodal texts for familiar audiences, using text structure appropriate to purpose, simple and compound sentences, noun groups and verb groups, topic-specific vocabulary, simple punctuation and correct spelling of some common two-syllable words
WA2ELYC1
For example:
- creating a written text, selecting and including elements appropriate to purpose and audience, such as including diagrams in an informative text and detailed descriptions in a narrative
Create, rehearse and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations to inform or tell stories for familiar audiences and purposes, using text structure appropriate to purpose and topic-specific vocabulary, and varying tone, volume and pace
WA2ELYC2
Write words legibly and with growing fluency using unjoined lower‑ and upper-case letters
WA2ELYC3
Use features of digital tools to create or add to texts
WA2ELYC4
For example:
- creating a story using a suitable app