Foundation English: Every Australian Curriculum Code, Explained

Foundation English in the Australian Curriculum is 29 content descriptions, AC9EFLA01 through AC9EFLY15. That is more than twice the size of the Foundation Maths code set, and the weighting inside it is the thing most Foundation programs get wrong. Seven of the 29 are the code-breaking sequence: phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, blending, spelling and high-frequency words. Those seven have a deadline. The other 22 do not.

This is a working guide to all 29 codes: what each strand is really asking for, the three descriptions that decide whether Year 1 reading goes well, a term-by-term order that starts blending in Term 2 rather than Term 4, and six five-minute checks that tell you whether a child is actually ready for Year 1.

What Foundation English is actually for

Foundation English runs two jobs in parallel, and they compete for the same timetable. The first is meaning: talking, listening, story, vocabulary, knowing what texts are and what they are for. The second is the code: hearing that spoken words are made of separate sounds, and learning which letters represent those sounds well enough to turn print into speech.

The meaning half is visible, enjoyable and easy to plan. Shared reading looks like teaching. The code half is repetitive, oral, unphotogenic, and it is the half with a hard window. A child who leaves Foundation unable to hear the three sounds in ship starts Year 1 with AC9E1LY09 and AC9E1LY10 assuming a skill they do not have, and the gap widens every term after that. The single most useful thing you can do with this code set is protect the seven code-breaking descriptions from the other 22.

The year at a glance

Literacy carries half the year on its own, and within Literacy the phonics group carries half again. If your Foundation program gives Literature and Literacy roughly equal air time, the weighting is wrong by a factor of three.

Reading the codes

Foundation English codes look slightly different from every other year. From Year 1 the pattern is AC9 + E + year + strand + number, so AC9E1LY04 is Year 1 Literacy. At Foundation the year is written as F inside the strand block: AC9EFLA01 is Foundation Language, AC9EFLE01 is Foundation Literature, AC9EFLY01 is Foundation Literacy. If a search for “AC9E0LY01” or “AC9EFL01” returns nothing, that is why. LA is Language, LE is Literature, LY is Literacy, and the letters are the fastest way to read a program at a glance.

Strand by strand

Language (AC9EFLA01 to AC9EFLA09)

The nine Language descriptions fall into three clusters. AC9EFLA01 and AC9EFLA02 are about language between people: how it is used differently at home and school depending on the relationship, and how to express preferences, likes and dislikes. This is the strand’s oral half, and it does most of its work inside routines rather than lessons.

AC9EFLA03, AC9EFLA04 and AC9EFLA07 are about texts as objects: that texts take many forms including signs, books and digital texts; the conventions of print and screen, including how books and simple digital texts are organised; and how images and words together contribute to meaning. AC9EFLA04 is the concepts-of-print code, and it is the cheapest descriptor in the whole set to teach and the one most often assumed. Which way up the book goes, where the front is, where you start, which direction you travel, what happens at the end of a line. Two minutes at the start of a shared read, every day, for a term.

AC9EFLA05, AC9EFLA06, AC9EFLA08 and AC9EFLA09 are about how language is built: that sentences are key units for expressing ideas, that sentences are made of groups of words working together, vocabulary in familiar contexts, and punctuation as a feature of written text different from letters. AC9EFLA05 is the load-bearing one. Everything in AC9EFLY06 (creating short written texts with basic sentence boundary punctuation) rests on a child understanding that an idea has an edge. Teach the sentence before you teach the full stop, or the full stop becomes decoration that lands wherever the line runs out.

Literature (AC9EFLE01 to AC9EFLE05)

Five descriptions, and the smallest strand. Read the verbs: share, respond, recognise, explore, retell. Foundation Literature is response, not analysis. AC9EFLE02 asks students to respond to stories and share feelings and thoughts about events and characters; AC9EFLE03 asks them to recognise different types of literary texts and identify features including events, characters, and beginnings and endings. Nothing here asks a five-year-old to explain why an author made a choice.

AC9EFLE01 names its requirement explicitly: engaging with texts by First Nations Australian, and wide-ranging Australian and world authors and illustrators. It is the descriptor most often met with a single book in a single week. It is written as an ongoing condition on the texts you choose all year, not a unit.

AC9EFLE04, exploring and replicating the rhythms and sound patterns of poems, rhymes and songs, is the descriptor doing the most hidden work in the strand. It is filed under Literature but it is functionally phonological awareness practice, and it feeds AC9EFLY09 directly. A daily rhyme, chant or song is the cheapest sound-pattern work available and it counts against two codes at once.

Literacy (AC9EFLY01 to AC9EFLY15)

Fifteen descriptions, and it is worth reading them as three groups rather than as a list.

The oral and text-awareness group is AC9EFLY01, AC9EFLY02, AC9EFLY03, AC9EFLY05 and AC9EFLY07: identifying familiar texts and their purpose, interacting while listening to others and using volume appropriately, distinguishing imaginative from informative texts, using comprehension strategies (visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, questioning), and creating and delivering short spoken texts. All five run on texts read to the child, which means none of them are gated behind decoding. They can and should run at full difficulty from week one.

The production group is AC9EFLY06 and AC9EFLY08: creating and participating in shared editing of short written texts using some learnt vocabulary, basic sentence boundary punctuation and correctly spelled CVC words, and forming most lower-case and upper-case letters using learnt letter formations. AC9EFLY08 is handwriting, and it is the one descriptor that genuinely benefits from short daily practice from Term 1, because letter formation habits set fast and are expensive to undo.

The code-breaking group is seven descriptions and it runs in a strict order:

1. AC9EFLY09 recognise and generate rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables and sounds in spoken words.
2. AC9EFLY10 segment sentences into words; orally blend and segment single-syllable words; isolate, blend and manipulate phonemes in single-syllable words.
3. AC9EFLY11 recognise and name all upper- and lower-case letters and know the most common sound each represents.
4. AC9EFLY12 write CVC words by representing sounds with the appropriate letters, and blend sounds associated with letters when reading CVC words.
5. AC9EFLY13 use knowledge of letters and sounds to spell words.
6. AC9EFLY14 read and write some high-frequency words and other familiar words.
7. AC9EFLY15 understand that words are units of meaning and can be made of more than one meaningful part.

AC9EFLY04, reading decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic knowledge while monitoring meaning, sits on top of that stack rather than inside it. It is the descriptor that turns the other seven into reading, and it cannot be met before AC9EFLY12 is secure, no matter how many books go home.

Notice how much is packed into AC9EFLY10. Segmenting sentences into words, blending and segmenting whole single-syllable words, and isolating, blending and manipulating individual phonemes are three different skills at three difficulty levels, and manipulation (say sun without the /s/) is roughly a year harder than the first. One code, three terms of work, and it is routinely ticked off once in March.

The three codes that decide Year 1

AC9EFLY10: phonemes, not letters

The misconception: that rhyme and phoneme awareness are the same skill at different volumes. They are not. Rhyme operates on the chunk at the end of a word; phonemic awareness operates on the individual sound anywhere in it. Plenty of children generate rhymes fluently and cannot isolate an initial sound.

What you will see: ask for the sounds in ship and the child says four sounds, /s/ /h/ /i/ /p/. They are reciting the letters they have been shown rather than the sounds they can hear, which means the work has already drifted from oral to visual too early. A second signal: ask them to say sun without the /s/ and they either repeat sun or produce “un-s”. Deletion is the skill that separates a child who will find Year 1 phonics straightforward from one who will not.

The fix: three to four minutes a day, oral only, no letters visible. One operation at a time, in the order blend, segment, isolate, delete, substitute, and stay on an operation until it is automatic rather than cycling through all five. Words with two or three phonemes only. Do this with eyes closed if the child keeps reaching for letters.

AC9EFLY12: blending, not sounding out

Writing CVC words by representing sounds with the appropriate letters, and blending sounds associated with letters when reading CVC words. This is the descriptor where letter knowledge turns into reading, and it is the point most Foundation children stall at.

The misconception: that knowing all 26 letter sounds produces a reader, so the program should teach all 26 before any word is read. It does not, and the delay causes the problem. Blending is a separate skill from letter knowledge and it needs its own months of practice.

What you will see: the child correctly produces /m/ /a/ /p/ and then says “mop”, or says “/m/ /a/ /p/ … monkey?” while looking at the picture. The sounds are right and the word is wrong, because each sound has faded before the next arrives. Sounding out is not blending. A child who has to say the sounds separately before the word appears is holding three items in working memory and dropping one.

The fix: continuous blending. Stretch the word without stopping, mmmm-aaaa-p, so no silence ever falls between sounds, and only then say it at speed. Start as soon as about six letter sounds are known (m, s, a, t, p, i already build mat, sat, tip, pit, sit, map) rather than waiting for the alphabet. And cover the picture. A child who can guess does not need to blend, and will not.

AC9EFLY06: the sentence boundary

Creating and participating in shared editing of short written texts, using basic sentence boundary punctuation and spelling some CVC words correctly. Its partner is AC9EFLA05 (sentences are key units for expressing ideas), and planners routinely take the Literacy code and leave the Language one behind.

The misconception: that Foundation writing is recording words, and punctuation is a tidy-up applied afterwards. In practice the full stop is a boundary the child has to hear before they can place it.

What you will see: “I wnt to the prk and it wos fun and my dog cam and we had ice creem and”. One unbroken string, correctly spelled by Foundation standards, with no boundary anywhere in it. Adding full stops to that afterwards teaches nothing, because the child is guessing where they go.

The fix: oral rehearsal before the pencil moves. Say the sentence, count its words on fingers, say it again unchanged, then write it. One sentence, then stop, then the full stop, then say the next sentence aloud before writing it. The rule to install is that a new sentence is a new breath and a new idea, not a new line. Our deep dive on how sentences become paragraphs by Year 3 shows what this thread turns into three years later.

What students need to arrive with

Foundation has no prior year of codes, so the prerequisites are developmental rather than curricular. The ones that predict most are oral language volume (how many words a child hears and uses, which is the single largest source of variation on day one), the ability to hear that speech is made of separate words, basic book handling, and enough fine motor control to hold a pencil without the whole arm.

The spread on day one is enormous and it is not, by itself, predictive of Year 3. What is predictive is whether the AC9EFLY09 to AC9EFLY12 sequence is taught systematically and daily, because that is the part of the gap that closes with instruction rather than time.

What this year sets up

• AC9EFLY09 and AC9EFLY10 become AC9E1LY09 (segmenting words with consonant blends at the beginnings and ends) and AC9E1LY10 (manipulating phonemes by addition, deletion and substitution to generate new words). Year 1 assumes manipulation is already available and moves straight to using it.
• AC9EFLY11 and AC9EFLY12 become AC9E1LY11 (short vowels, common long vowels, consonant blends and digraphs, blended to read one- and two-syllable words) and AC9E1LY12 (a letter can represent more than one sound; a syllable must contain a vowel sound). The one-sound-per-letter model Foundation installs is deliberately broken in Year 1.
• AC9EFLY13 becomes AC9E1LY13 (spelling one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns), and AC9EFLY14 becomes AC9E1LY14.
• AC9EFLY15 becomes AC9E1LY15, where grammatical morphemes are used to build word families. The Foundation seed, that a word can have more than one meaningful part, is the whole basis of Year 1 morphology.
• AC9EFLA05 and AC9EFLA06 become AC9E1LA06 (a simple sentence is a single independent clause representing a single event or idea) and AC9E1LA07 (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs by function).
• AC9EFLE03 becomes AC9E1LE03, where events and characters are named as plot, character and setting.

The steep jump is the phonics one. Year 1 opens with consonant blends and digraphs and never returns to single-letter CVC work, so a child who arrives without AC9EFLY12 spends the year being taught the layer above the one they need.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: oral, print concepts and letters. AC9EFLY09 (rhyme, alliteration, syllables) daily, AC9EFLY02 and AC9EFLA01 to AC9EFLA02 inside routines, AC9EFLA03 and AC9EFLA04 concepts of print at the start of every shared read, AC9EFLE02 and AC9EFLE04 through a daily rhyme or song, AC9EFLY11 letter names and most common sounds at a set pace, and AC9EFLY08 letter formation from week one.
2. Term 2: from syllables to phonemes, and the first words. AC9EFLY10 in order (sentences into words, then blending and segmenting whole words), AC9EFLY11 continuing, and AC9EFLY12 blending started as soon as about six letter sounds are known, not held back for the full alphabet. Add AC9EFLA05 (the sentence), AC9EFLE01 and AC9EFLE03.
3. Term 3: writing arrives. AC9EFLY12 both directions (reading and writing CVC), AC9EFLY13 spelling with letter-sound knowledge, AC9EFLA06 and AC9EFLA09 (sentence structure and punctuation), AC9EFLY06 shared writing and editing, AC9EFLY14 high-frequency words, and AC9EFLY04 decodable texts, which is now finally possible.
4. Term 4: manipulate, extend and apply. AC9EFLY10 completed (isolating and manipulating phonemes), AC9EFLY15 morphology, AC9EFLY05 comprehension strategies pushed harder, AC9EFLY01 and AC9EFLY03 text purpose and imaginative versus informative, AC9EFLY07 short spoken texts, AC9EFLE05 retelling and adapting, and AC9EFLA07 and AC9EFLA08 on images and words.

The one non-obvious choice here is starting AC9EFLY12 in Term 2 with six letters rather than Term 4 with 26. Blending needs months, not weeks, and a child who has read mat successfully in May has a reason to learn the next letter. Waiting for the full alphabet compresses the hardest skill of the year into the term with the most interruptions.

Six checks before Year 1

• “Say the sounds in ship.” Four sounds means letters are being recited rather than phonemes heard. Reteach AC9EFLY10 orally with no letters visible.
• “Say sun without the /s/.” Failure here is the clearest predictor of a hard Year 1. Reteach AC9EFLY10 deletion before anything else.
• Show the written word map, picture covered. Correct sounds followed by a wrong word means AC9EFLY12 blending, not letter knowledge, is the gap. Reteach with continuous stretched blending.
• All 26 lower-case letters in random order, sound not name. Fewer than about 20 secure in Term 4 means AC9EFLY11 needs daily review, not more new letters.
• Dictate “Sam had a big cat.” Words running together, or no capital and full stop, points at AC9EFLA05 and AC9EFLA09 rather than at spelling. Reteach with oral rehearsal and finger-counting the words.
• Hand the child a book upside down and back to front. If they open it and start reading anyway, AC9EFLA04 was assumed rather than taught. Two minutes at the start of each shared read fixes it.

Six checks, five minutes, one child at a time. Each failure names a specific piece of a specific term to repeat rather than a vague sense that a child is behind.

Recording the alignment

For a class program or a homeschool registration portfolio, record the code on the activity as you go. “Phonics” tells a reviewer nothing; “AC9EFLY12, reading and writing CVC words with m, s, a, t, p, i, 12 May” answers the question before it is asked. Our guides to which curriculum your state uses and state-by-state registration requirements cover which code set applies to you and what reviewers ask for. The companion guide to every Foundation Maths code covers the other half of the Foundation year.

Foundation is also the year where the wrapper matters most. A five-year-old will do fifteen minutes of segmenting dinosaur names and about three minutes of segmenting words from a list. The phoneme work is identical; the attention is not, and using an interest as the way in costs nothing in curriculum terms. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these codes, pitched at Foundation and wrapped in whatever the child is currently obsessed with, with the AC9 code recorded in the footer. Try it free.

Australian Curriculum content descriptions are © ACARA and licensed under CC BY 4.0. Quoted here unmodified. ACARA does not endorse this product. Always verify against the current content descriptions and achievement standards at australiancurriculum.edu.au.

FAQ