Year 1 English skills

understand how language, facial expressions and gestures are used to interact with others when asking for and providing information, making offers, exclaiming, requesting and giving commands

explore language to provide reasons for likes, dislikes and preferences

explore how texts are organised according to their purpose, such as to recount, narrate, express opinion, inform, report and explain

explore how repetition, rhyme and rhythm create cohesion in simple poems, chants and songs

understand how print and screen texts are organised using features such as page numbers, tables of content, headings and titles, navigation buttons, swipe screens, verbal commands, links and images

understand that a simple sentence consists of a single independent clause representing a single event or idea

understand that words can represent people, places and things (nouns, including pronouns), happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as when, where and how (adverbs)

compare how images in different types of texts contribute to meaning

recognise the vocabulary of learning area topics

understand that written language uses punctuation such as full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, and uses capital letters for familiar proper nouns

discuss how language and images are used to create characters, settings and events in literature by First Nations Australian, and wide-ranging Australian and world authors and illustrators

discuss literary texts and share responses by making connections with students’ own experiences

discuss plot, character and setting, which are features of stories

listen to and discuss poems, chants, rhymes and songs, and imitate and invent sound patterns including alliteration and rhyme

orally retell or adapt a familiar story using plot and characters, language features including vocabulary, and structure of a familiar text, through role-play, writing, drawing or digital tools

discuss different texts and identify some features that indicate their purposes

use interaction skills including turn-taking, speaking clearly, using active listening behaviours and responding to the contributions of others, and contributing ideas and questions

describe some similarities and differences between imaginative, informative and persuasive texts

read decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic knowledge, phrasing and fluency, and monitoring meaning using context and grammatical knowledge

use comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising and questioning when listening, viewing and reading to build literal and inferred meaning by drawing on vocabulary and growing knowledge of context and text structures

create and re-read to edit short written and/or multimodal texts to report on a topic, express an opinion or recount a real or imagined event, using grammatically correct simple sentences, some topic-specific vocabulary, sentence boundary punctuation and correct spelling of some one- and two-syllable words

create and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations on personal and learnt topics, which include an opening, middle and concluding statement; some topic-specific vocabulary and appropriate gesture, volume and pace

write words using unjoined lower-case and upper-case letters

segment words into separate phonemes (sounds) including consonant blends or clusters at the beginnings and ends of words (phonological awareness)

orally manipulate phonemes in spoken words by addition, deletion and substitution of initial, medial and final phonemes to generate new words (phonological awareness)

use short vowels, common long vowels, consonant blends and digraphs to write words, and blend these to read one- and two-syllable words

understand that a letter can represent more than one sound and that a syllable must contain a vowel sound

spell one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns

read and write an increasing number of high-frequency words

recognise and know how to use grammatical morphemes to create word families