Year 3 English Content Descriptions - Language
Year 3
Content descriptions
Language for interacting with others
Understand that cooperation with others depends on shared understanding of social conventions, including turn‑taking language, which vary according to the degree of formality
WA3ELAI1
For example:
- contributing ideas on how to achieve cooperation when participating in group work
- exploring the social conventions of other cultures through literature or in other learning areas, such as Humanities and Social Sciences or Languages
Understand how the language of evaluation and emotion, such as modal verbs, can be varied to be more or less forceful
WA3ELAI2
For example:
- ordering modal verbs on a continuum, such as could, should, will, must
Text structure, organisation and features
Describe how texts across learning areas are organised into stages and use language features relevant to their purpose
WA3ELAT1
For example:
- identifying typical stages in reports across different learning areas
- identifying the language features of a typical persuasive text, such as modal verbs, conjunctions signalling cause and effect, and text connectives
- identifying visual features used in procedures, such as diagrams or close-up photographs that help the viewer carry out instructions
Understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of the stages of written texts, grouping related information together
WA3ELAT2
For example:
- classifying facts about a topic, such as when planning an informative report
- identifying and discussing the use of paragraphs in a narrative
Identify the purpose of layout features in print and digital texts, and the words and symbols used for navigation
WA3ELAT3
Language for expressing and developing ideas
Understand that sentences are usually made up of clauses, and the subject and verb within the clauses need to agree
WA3ELALA1
For example:
- creating sentences in which the verb and the subject agree, such as The boy was running fast because the dogs were chasing him.
- experimenting with sentence construction using clauses that contain singular and plural subjects
Understand how verbs represent different processes for doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating
WA3ELALA2
For example:
- categorising verbs according to their process, such as doing: walk; feeling: love; thinking: wonder; saying: whisper; relating: are
- using alternative verbs for overused examples, such as did or said
Understand that verbs are anchored in time through tense
WA3ELALA3
For example:
- sorting words and phrases into groups, such as arrived, is arriving and will arrive, into past, present and future
Identify the effect on audiences of techniques, such as shot size, vertical camera angle and layout in picture books, advertisements and film segments
WA3ELALA4
For example:
- discussing how visual techniques affect the viewer, such as how close-ups create a familiarity between the character and the viewer
- selecting an image in a visual text that is portrayed from a high angle and discussing the effect
- describing how the layout of a multimodal text, such as an infographic or webpage, creates a reading pathway or an order of viewing
Extend topic-specific and technical vocabulary and know that words can have different meanings in different contexts
WA3ELALA5
Understand that apostrophes signal missing letters in contractions, and apostrophes are used to show singular and plural possession
WA3ELALA6
For example:
- exploring high-frequency homophones that feature pronoun possession and apostrophes, such as your/you’re, its/it’s, theirs/there’s, whose/who’s
- identifying words with apostrophes that indicate singular possession, as in the girl’s hat (one girl) and plural possession as in the girls’ hats (more than one girl)
Phonic and word knowledge
Understand how to apply knowledge of phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) relationships, syllables, and blending and segmenting to fluently read and write multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns
WA3ELAP1
For example:
- blending, segmenting and syllabifying when reading and writing words with
- more complex consonant patterns, such as <ch> machine, <squ> squash, <dge> edge, <shr> shrink, <t> making a [sh] sound as in lotion or a [ch] sound as in adventure
- vowel patterns, such as <oo> moon, fool, <ui> fruit, <ough> through, tough, <eigh> neigh, eight, <eo> people, <oe> canoe, <ou> could, shoulder, touch
- r‑controlled vowels, such as <air> stair, <are> bare, <ear> beard, <ear> learn, <ore> sore, <our> hour, four, <aw> hawk, <augh> as in taught
Use phoneme–grapheme (sound–letter) relationships and less common letter patterns to spell words
WA3ELAP2
For example:
- spelling words with less common letter patterns, such as
- words where the <y> represents short [i] as in gym, or a long [i] as in cycle
- words that spell the [sh] sound with <s> or <ss>, such as sugar or tissue
- words that end in <le>, such as table
- representing the [r] sound at the end of words, such as author and dollar
Recognise and know how to write most high-frequency words, including some homophones
WA3ELAP3
For example:
- spelling homophones, such as there, their, they’re; to, too, two; here, hear; our, hour; knight, night; mail, male; made, maid; sale, sail
Understand how to apply knowledge of common base words, prefixes, suffixes and generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word to read and comprehend new multimorphemic words
WA3ELAP4
For example:
- recognising that words, prefixes and suffixes are morphemes, and that morphemes are units of meaning
- applying knowledge of morphemes to decode words, such as uneventful = the prefix <un> meaning not + the base word <event> + the suffix <ful> indicating full of or characterised by
- changing the meaning of a word with a prefix, such as happy/unhappy
- using spelling generalisations when adding suffixes, such as adding <es> to make plurals for words ending in <ss>, <sh>, <ch>, and doubling the final consonant when adding the suffix <ing> to words with short vowels, such as hop, knit, sit