Oz-e-English Writing (Geography) Year 5

Overview
Unit 3: Informative – Year 5 is an English language strand unit for Year 5 students. It aligns to the Australian Curriculum: Language Content Strands: 

• Describe how spoken, written and multimodal texts use language features and are typically organised into characteristic stages and phases, depending on purposes in texts. (AC9E5LA03)
• Understand how vocabulary is used to express greater precision of meaning, including through the use of specialist and technical terms, and explore the history of words. (AC9E5LA08)
• Use appropriate interaction skills including paraphrasing and questioning to clarify meaning, make connections to own experience, and present and justify an opinion. (AC9E5LY02)
• Navigate and read texts for specific purposes, monitoring meaning using strategies such as skimming, scanning and confirming. (AC9E5LY04)
• Use comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning to build literal and inferred meaning to evaluate information and ideas. (AC9E5LY05)
• Plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts whose purposes may be imaginative, informative and persuasive, developing ideas using visual features, text structure appropriate to the topic and purpose, text connectives, expanded noun groups, specialist and technical vocabulary, and punctuation including dialogue punctuation. (AC9E5LY06)

It aligns to the Australian Curriculum – Year Level Achievements Standards: 

• Students learn about the influence of people, including First Nations Australians and people in other countries, on the characteristics of a place. (AC9HS5K04)

In lessons 1 to 10, students learn to:  

• We will learn about the continent of Europe.
• We will read an information report.
  • The title of the text is The Continent of Europe.   
  • We will identify the structure of the information report.  
  • We will read and express the main ideas in the text.
• We will use information about Europe to rewrite sentences and paragraphs.
  • We will rewrite sentences to create paragraphs.
• We will jointly write an information report about Europe.
• We will jointly plan an information report.
  • You will independently write an information report. 
• We will learn about the Mediterranean Sea and the countries of Southern Europe.
• We will read an information report.
  • The title of the text is The Mediterranean Sea.   
  • We will identify the structure of the information report.  
  • We will read and express the main ideas in the text.
• We will use information about the Mediterranean region to rewrite sentences and paragraphs. 
  • We will rewrite sentences to create paragraphs.
• We will jointly write an information report about the Mediterranean region.
• You will complete the Geography Progress Test.
  • We will jointly plan an information report. 
  • You will independently write an informative text about the Mediterranean region. 

• Read informative texts and express the main ideas in the text.  
• Rewrite sentences to create paragraphs. 
• Independently plan an informative report.  
• Independently write an informative report.  

Progress Test 

Four progress tests administered across the course of the unit in weeks 2, 4, 6 and 8 They allow teachers to monitor student understanding of the concepts taught over the past few lessons and to identify where reteaching is needed. 

The Teaching Guide contains the Progress Test script and there is a handout for students to write their answers on.  

Formative Assessment 

Each week, the students will produce a written text that may be used to guide and inform future lessons. Educator to target specific intervention and extension to support student outcomes. 

End-of-Unit Assessment  

Week 9 is the End-of-Unit Assessment which has the same variety of question formats as the Progress Tests (e.g., multiple choice, filling in blanks/punctuation, editing, constructing, and improving sentences) to assess student mastery of sentence level writing development from the unit.  

The Teaching Guide contains the testing questions and the End-of-Unit Assessment handout for students to write their answers on.