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This resource assists children to gain an understanding on how to form coherent and flowing sentences. The activity provides students with a rainbow sheet where the children must choose one word off each corresponding coloured sheet to match up with the correct colour on the rainbow sheet. Each coloured sheet provides different types of speech to choose from including nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and conjunctions. This relates to vocabulary expansion, sentence structure and forming an understanding of various parts of speech. Fellowes (2008) supports the importance of gaining an understanding on how to create structured sentences when stating that “pedagogical choices need to ensure a focus on sentence and word level teaching, not just on whole text composition” (p.1). Scull and Mackenzie (n.d) further support this when stating “[children] need to manipulate language in new ways, using their knowledge of word combinations to express more precise and nuanced meanings” (Munro and McGregor, 2015, as cited in Scull and Mackenzie, n.d , p.97).

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This resource offers a range of classroom posters that aim to remind students to include the essential concepts of writing in their work. They relate to specific areas of writing including punctuation, grammar, spelling, phonological awareness, handwriting and parts of speech. This is supported by Osa and Musser (2004) as they present that “researchers report that the visual sense is responsible for 90% of brain stimulation and that vision and visual memory take up to two-thirds of the brain” (p.16). Thus, posters can act as effective yet “colourful [and] attractive learning media which can enhance the learning environment” (p.17). Furthermore, Clark and Paivio (1991) discuss the relationship between verbal and non-verbal representations, or posters and the information they provide, in their Dual Coding Theory. “Links between the two systems are called referential connections [and] they join corresponding verbal and imaginal codes” (p.153).

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This resource offers a lesson plan and other resources regarding letter writing, specifically a letter to Santa, from Australia Post. It gives teachers advice on how to teach letter writing in a fun way that children will engage with while also giving the students the opportunity to practice their writing essentials. It links to text types, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and writing for a purpose. This is reinforced by the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia [EYLF] (2009) as it explains that “children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts” (p.39). The Victorian Government Department of Education (2019) further explains that “this includes exploring and understanding texts written by others [and] children creating their own texts, to record, reflect, entertain, inform, instruct, and even persuade others” (p.7).

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It's really easy for kids to send a letter to the North Pole. Find out how to download our lesson plan and templates to get started.

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This resource offers a worksheet for students to use to create story writing ideas and practice text construction by drawing. The students create text ideas and learn about the construction of text through the setting, characters and the beginning, middle and end by drawing. It relates to text construction and students forming their initial writing ideas through imagery. This activity is backed up by Mackenzie and Veresov (2013) as they describe that, in early writing stages, “children may not have sufficient control of print conventions to enable self-expression using text alone” (p.22). Therefore “drawing, as a text construction method, should remain available to children [as] written text construction is added to visual text creation allowing text production to be fluid and flexible” (p.22). Similarly, Jalongo (2007, as cited by Mackenzie, 2011) outlines the link between drawing and writing construction as they state that “drawing and writing involve some of the same psychomotor skills; depend on similar cognitive abilities; are both expressive arts; are both developmental; and are both purposeful” (p.323).

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This resource provides an activity that can be used to consolidate students’ understanding about parts of speech, specifically nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. It involves students sorting various words into the appropriate category to cement their knowledge of each whilst also adding to their word knowledge for their own writing. It applies to parts of speech and vocabulary which is justified by Scull and Mackenzie (n.d.) as they explain that “vocabulary learning is largely the result of interaction with others and the opportunities provided for children to engage in joint attention” (p.105). The Aims Community College (2018) also presents that “understanding the different parts of speech is important in understanding how words can and should be joined together to make sentences that are both grammatically correct and readable” (p.1).

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This resource provides a self-check list to encourage children to reflect on their own work. The acronym CUPS stands for Capitals, Understanding, Punctuation and Spelling. The resource acts as a visual reminder students can utilise to ensure they are striving for improvement and are attempting to edit their own work. This resource is supported by the Victorian Curriculum, within the year 2 writing curriculum. The curriculum states that students should “reread and edit text for spelling, sentence-boundary punctuation, and text structure” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], 2016). In encouraging independence, this resource is supported by Vygotsky’s theory of Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). By using the CUPS resource children are provided prompts for self reflection on how they can  improve their work. The resource acts as scaffolding provided from the educator to assist children through the ZPD.

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This resource offers a fun and engaging activity that focuses on practicing and enhancing a student's spelling skills. It relates to spelling strategies such as sounding out and chunking and allows students to fix their own mistakes by rearranging the blocks. This is reinforced by Belenky and Nokes (2009) as they illustrate that “manipulatives are physical objects that are supposed to help the student concretize his or her knowledge by expressing concepts and performing problem-solving steps with them” (p.103). They also present that manipulatives are effective as they “reduce memory load, facilitate understanding by grounding new information in meaningful prior knowledge and may increase students’ motivation to learn and understand the instructions” (p.103). In regard to spelling, Adoniou (2014) describes that “spelling is a linguistic skill that develops through, and for, interactions with others [and] is an integral component of reading and writing, allowing us to make meaning from, and with, texts” (p.144).

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This resource offers a learning activity for students that provides them with ideas for their writing while they continue to practice their essential writing features. It applies to the important writing features including punctuation and grammar, spelling, letter formation and syntax. This is justified by Kroll (2001, as cited by Tosuncuoğlu , 2018) as they outline that “writing is a skill which must be deliberately taught and requires practice to be developed” (p.122). Tosuncuoğlu (2018) also delivers that “as writing allows writers to explore feelings, ideas and thoughts, it is considered as a complex and hard process” (p.122). The Victorian Curriculum outlines, in the writing curriculum, that students should “create short imaginative, informative and persuasive texts using growing knowledge of text structures and language features” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], 2016).

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This resource offers Victorian Modern Cursive Alphabet worksheets that are downloadable for educators. The resource relates to handwriting and has a specific focus on upper and lowercase letters and ensuring children are following the correct cursive techniques within their writing. The worksheet provides step by step examples on how to draw the letter correctly and also asks children to colour in and trace the provided letter. Alongside teaching children how to use the correct Victorian cursive, this resource also requires children to know how to hold a pencil and use it accordingly. It is important children are taught how to follow the appropriate cursive as they begin to write to avoid incorrect habits within their writing in the long term. Sassoon (1986) supports this when claiming that “ a wrong motor movement, once it becomes a confirmed habit, is difficult to alter” (p.21). “This perhaps explains why so many of our children with half-taught cursives revert to printing at the first sign of pressure during secondary schools” (p.21). In using this resource children can refine their understanding of the alphabet and expand their “symbolic repertoire” (Mackenzie, 2011, p.323).

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This resource is an alphabet table strip for students to refer to during writing time. The resource acts as a visual tool to remind students of how each letter is formed and written correctly in Victorian Modern Cursive. It links to phonological awareness and handwriting as the students can form relationships between the letters and their sounds while also becoming proficient with their letter knowledge. This is supported by Sassoon (1986) as they state that “the more automatic the writing process, the more mental capacity is free for the content of the writing” (p.20). Wood and McLemore (2001) further explain that “a child with automatic, accurate recognition of letters will have an easier time learning about letter sounds and word spellings than a child who does not know the letters of the alphabet” (p.1).

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This resource presents a set of posters that inform students about nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, while also giving examples of each. They relate to parts of speech and vocabulary as students can use the examples in the posters and create their own word banks for each of the parts of speech. This is promoted by the Reggio Emilia approach that “highlights the instructive power of environments” (Carter, 2007, as cited by Stewart & Makin, 2017, p.16) and “talks about three educators in the classroom at any one time: the teacher, students and the learning environment” (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007, as cited by Stewart & Makin, 2017, p.16). This also correlates with the National Quality Standards as they outline that the “physical environment [should be] safe, suitable and provide a rich and diverse range of experiences that promote children’s learning and development” (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2012, p.1).

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This resource provides a playful but meaningful approach for ensuring spacing within writing which is an important element within handwriting. Instead of the traditional ‘finger spacing’ this resource encourages children to be creative and provides an enjoyable and playful tool to assist children in ensuring they are placing spaces within their writing. Ensuring spaces are placed between words is a stage of early writing that most children find very challenging and confusing. Hill (2012) supports this when stating that “many children are puzzled about where one word ends and another begins” (Temple, Nathan and Burris, 1982, as cited by Hill, 2012, p.315). Mayer (2007, as cited by Victoria State Government, 2019) further supports the resource when stating “giving children free access to writing materials and print supports their writing development” (p. 37).

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This resource consists of a large collection of resources for students to use during their writing. These resources can be anything that aids the students and can include cards with family names, written numbers, alphabet, days of the week, months, sentence checklists and a booklet of magic words. They predominantly link to supporting students’ spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary. This is supported by socio-constructivist theory as it promotes that “children learn with others as texts are jointly constructed [and] skills and strategies learned are then applied independently” (Mackenzie, 2014, s.10). It also concerns teaching using Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development as teachers can use the writer’s toolbox to scaffold the children’s learning.

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This resource provides a YouTube video of a lady teaching viewers how to have the correct pencil grip for writing. The video provides a talk through demonstration as well as a rhyme/song to make the teaching simplistic yet memorable. This relates to ensuring children have the correct pencil grip before commencing writing. Pencil grip is a difficult skill to master but is crucial to ensure writing is smooth and comfortable. Raban (n.d) supports this when stating “holding a pen or pencil and controlling the fine motor movements required of hand-writing takes time to develop” (p.62). Bruni (2006) further supports this when saying “one of the most important physical skills required to handwrite is stability” (as cited by Kelly, 2013, p.29). By providing a visual demonstration alongside a rhyme children are drawn into the learning. “Through songs and rhyming stories, children’s attention can be drawn to the patterning of the words that sound similar” (Raban, n.d., p.57).

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Learn Correct Pencil Grasp ( pencil pick up) Teaches Functional Dynamic Tripod Grasp

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This resource provides a YouTube video of a song about the 5 W’s (Who, What, When, Where and Why), that aids in teaching students the important ‘wh’ question words and how they can be used in their storytelling. It pertains to text types, storytelling and vocabulary and as it is done in song form, it makes the content engaging and easy to remember. This is supported by Jones (2010) as she presents that “music [is] important for children’s cognitive development [as] songs can be used to teach new concepts and to introduce new vocabulary” (p.90). Weinberger (1998, as cited by Froehlich, 2014) also explains that “music has the ability to facilitate language acquisition, reading readiness, and general intellectual development” (p.5).

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The Five W's Song | English Songs | Scratch Garden

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This resource refers to a teacher led activity where the educator models a grammatically incorrect piece of writing and has the children assist them to fix the piece. This relates to grammar, punctuation and spelling. This is supported by Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding and working through the ZPD. By having the teacher model a ‘poor’ piece of writing the children are encouraged to take the initiative to correct the teacher’s work whilst being scaffolded by the educator. Modelled editing is further supported by the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC). Vygotsky (1978, as cited by Victoria State Government, 2019) supports this when claiming “mentor or model texts selected by the teacher are used throughout the TLC to support the students to work within their ‘zone of proximal development’”.

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This resource is an Application game which requires children to enter various types of speech to fill the missing words within a story. The story is not shown so typically silly stories are created. This relates to vocabulary, sentence structure and types of speech, specifically: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. By using a game to work on language development and understanding, children are engaging in the learning. This is supported by Raban (2014, as cited by Raban, n.d.) as she states that “[children] need to ‘play’ with language in order to reach an understanding that language is apart from what it refers to” (p.58). By not being able to see the story children gain an understanding on the importance of context and sentence structure. Richgels (2004, as cited by Scull and Mackenzie, n.d.) supports this further when saying “this moves beyond the focus on individual words and word meanings to ‘how words mean together’ ” (p.97).

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This resource offers a whole class activity where the educator displays cursive paper/lines on a smart board and pulls up students individually and asks them to draw a certain letter, word, or whatever is desired. By presenting this activity with the whole class, students are working on their confidence, self-correction, teamwork, and Victorian cursive. This relates to handwriting. Sassoon (1986) supports this when saying “teachers are accepting that just by adding joining strokes to children’s first letters and teaching carefully in stroke-related groups of letters, children come much earlier to spontaneous cursive” (p.23). Feder and Majnemer (2007, as cited by Overvelde & Hulstijn, 2011) further support the importance of handwriting when claiming that “handwriting is an important skill, related to school performance and a child’s self-esteem” (p.540).

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This resource offers a website catered to teachers that provides an abundance of teaching material catered to your chosen topic. The resource provides lesson plans, games, classroom resources, assessment methods, worksheets and many more various resources. The website relates to grammar, phonics, handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, punctuation and many more topics. It is essential educators utilise different types of resources within their teaching to provide quality learning outcomes for all children. In using various teaching materials within the resource educators are scaffolding children through various resources and pushing children towards the ZPD. By utilising a broad range of teacher resources educators are catering to different learning styles and are implementing different modes within their teaching. Anderson (2016) supports this when explaining that “an effective learning experience is one that is well understood, memorable and results in a new or enhanced way of thinking or practicing” (p.54).

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Teach with comprehensive, curriculum aligned units and lessons.

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This resource delivers a web page that provides learning activities for students to complete online where they create texts in varying types for many real-world purposes. This pertains to text types and the use of ICT. This is supported by the whole language approach as “learners are encouraged to take risks and invited to use language, in all its varieties, for their own purposes [and] all the varied functions of oral and written language are appropriate and encouraged” (Goodman, 1986, as cited by Harris, n.d. p.48). The Victorian Curriculum also encourages the use of ICT as they outline that students should “identify and explore digital systems for a purpose” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2016).

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Education resources for schools teachers and students - ABC Education

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ABC Education has 4000+ educational games, videos and teaching resources for schools and students. Free Primary and Secondary resources covering history, science, English, maths and more

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This resource provides a YouTube video that demonstrates an example of guided writing conducted by an early primary teacher. This pertains to modelling various important processes of writing including planning, drafting and editing. This is justified by Rossbridge and Rushton (2015, as cited by Victorian Government Department of Education, 2019) as they discuss that “teachers take a leading role to shape the students’ responses in various ways such as through prompts, questions, paraphrasing, elaborating on responses or thinking aloud” (p.9). Furthering this, the Department of Education (2019) presents that “guided practice is a critical stage of the teaching and learning cycle, bringing together learning that has occurred in other stages, with a focus on the composition of text, through directed and informed dialogue where students are guided by an expert ‘other’, usually the teacher” (p.9).

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Short example of a Guided Write within the Classroom

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This resource provides a writing rubric for teachers to utilise to pinpoint student’s strengths and weaknesses within their writing. This assessment tool can set educators up to relay this feedback to both students and their families on what needs improvement to ensure further growth within students’ writing. This relates to spelling, writing ideas, punctuation, sentence structure, text structure, vocabulary, editing and handwriting. This is supported by Hill (2012) when stating “it is important for children to learn about punctuation, grammar and handwriting as their writing must be read and understood by other people” (p.329). Strickland and Morrow (2000) further support the resource when stating that “in assessing children’s writing, the goal is to uncover the child’s knowledge about written language, which will guide the teacher in planning instruction for the child” (p.164).

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This resource offers a website where children can work on their literacy skills. The website provides both a learning and an analytics area meaning IXL can be used for students learning, as well as for teachers and parents to track progress on children’s learning and development. This relates to writing and composition, vocabulary, sentence structure, parts of speech and many more concepts. IXL gives children the opportunity to cement their understanding on such concepts as well as explore the world of ICT. Wegerif and Dawes (2004, as cited by Beauchamp, 2016) suggest that “for children in primary schools, developing the capacity to interact effectively with computers requires the teaching of classic literacy and ICT literacy to which we can now add digital literacy” (p.160). The resource is further supported by the Victorian Curriculum as they state that students should “identity and explore digital systems with a purpose” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2016). IXL also acts as scaffolding to support children to refine their understanding on particular topics under literacy and assists children to work through the ZPD.

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Online practice for grammar, vocabulary, writing strategies and more!

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This is a complete list of English topics available on IXL. Practise everything from sentence structure to vocabulary.

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This resource provides a checklist for students to use for their writing to practice self-editing. It relates to students having a sound knowledge of the writing essentials, such as spelling, punctuation and vocabulary, and being able to check and correct their work. This is supported by McMillan and Hearn (2008) as they outline that “self-assessment occurs when students judge their own work to improve performance as they identify discrepancies between current and desired performance” (p.40). In agreeance, Usignol (2009) claims that “aside from attempting to have students edit and revise their work on a regular basis, [it is important] to combat the lowered confidence levels of student self-evaluation of their own editing and revising skills” (p.2). Usignol (2009) also explains that “students need to learn and practice effective revision and editing strategies to maximize their writing” (p.2).

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This resource offers an assessment checklist for teachers regarding their students' writing in various text types. For each genre of writing, it lists the essential components the student needs to include and allows the teacher to mark if they are above, at or below the expected level. This relates to the different genres of writing and writing assessment. This is supported by the six-trait writing model of instruction and assessment as it is “designed to help teachers grade and guide children in six specific areas of writing” (Pudewa, 1998, p.1). The six traits include ideas and content, organisation, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions which includes grammar, punctuation and spelling. Hill (2012) also provides that “teachers can assess children's writing for ideas and print conventions and, based on what children can do, plan the writing program in response to this” (p.329).

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This resource provides a self-check list to encourage children to reflect on their own work. The acronym CUPS stands for Capitals, Understanding, Punctuation and Spelling. The resource acts as a visual reminder students can utilise to ensure they are striving for improvement and are attempting to edit their own work. This resource is supported by the Victorian Curriculum, within the year 2 writing curriculum. The curriculum states that students should “reread and edit text for spelling, sentence-boundary punctuation, and text structure” (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], 2016). In encouraging independence, this resource is supported by Vygotsky’s theory of Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). By using the CUPS resource children are provided prompts for self reflection on how they can  improve their work. The resource acts as scaffolding provided from the educator to assist children through the ZPD.