Level 1 English: Every Victorian Curriculum Code, Explained

Level 1 English in the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 is 30 content descriptions, VC2E1LA01 through VC2E1LY15. The national curriculum has 30 for the same year. The strand sizes match exactly: ten Language, five Literature, fifteen Literacy.

That symmetry is why Victorian planners keep reaching for an AC9 program and swapping the codes. It does not work, and Level 1 is the level where it breaks worst, because the Victorian Literacy strand is ordered as a teaching sequence and the national one is not. This is a working guide to all 30 codes: what the Victorian ordering is telling you to do, the four places where the Level 1 requirement is genuinely different from AC9, a term-by-term order and six checks before Level 2.

What changes this level

Foundation installed one letter, one sound. Level 1 takes it back: VC2E1LY05 establishes that a letter can stand for more than one sound and that every syllable has to contain a vowel sound. Alongside it VC2E1LY04 brings in consonant blends, digraphs and common long vowels, and words grow past a single syllable for the first time.

The second shift is that phonemic awareness is now expected to work on longer words. Victoria rolls blending, segmenting and manipulating into one code, VC2E1LY03, and explicitly extends it to words with consonant blends at both ends and to words of more than one syllable. Foundation stopped at single-syllable words, so this is a real jump inside a code that looks like a continuation.

The third is that composition splits in two. VC2E1LY13 asks the child to produce short narrative and informative texts, written and spoken, with an opening, middle and conclusion. VC2E1LY14 then asks them to re-read what they wrote and discuss what could change to improve meaning, spelling and punctuation. Editing has its own code at Level 1, which is a structural decision worth taking seriously.

The level at a glance

Reading the codes, and the ordering

The pattern is VC2 + E + level + strand + number, so VC2E1LY04 is Level 1, Literacy, fourth description. LA is Language, LE is Literature, LY is Literacy. Victoria says level rather than year, and Foundation is written as F in the level position (VC2EFLY04), which is worth knowing when you are searching.

The part that actually matters is the order inside Literacy. Read the numbers as a route:

• VC2E1LY01 and LY02 are oral: interaction skills, then delivering a short spoken text using features of voice.
• VC2E1LY03 to LY08 are the code-breaking chain, in the order you teach them: phonemic awareness, then sound-letter knowledge for reading and writing, then the rule that a letter can stand for more than one sound, then spelling with common letter patterns, then high-frequency words, then morphemes.
• VC2E1LY09 is reading decodable and authentic texts, which sits immediately after the chain that makes it possible.
• VC2E1LY10 to LY15 are what reading and writing are then used for: discussing text types from a range of cultures and experiences, comparing narrative, informative and persuasive texts, comprehension strategies, composing, editing and handwriting.

Compare that with the national set, where the equivalent of VC2E1LY09 is AC9E1LY04, numbered five places before the phonics codes that enable it. The Victorian numbering is a sequence and the national numbering is a list. If you are working from a VC2 program, follow the numbers. If you are converting an AC9 program, expect the reordering to be the main piece of work, not the code swap. Our comparison of the two frameworks covers the general differences, and what the Victorian Curriculum is covers the structure.

Strand by strand

Language (VC2E1LA01 to VC2E1LA10)

The oral pair is VC2E1LA01 and VC2E1LA02: how words, facial expressions and gestures do the work of asking, offering, exclaiming, requesting and commanding, and how to give reasons for likes, dislikes and preferences. Both live in classroom routines rather than lessons. VC2E1LA02 is the oral seed of every persuasive text the child will write between here and Level 6.

The text-structure group is VC2E1LA03, VC2E1LA04, VC2E1LA05 and VC2E1LA08. Victoria frames VC2E1LA05 as concepts about print across printed and digital texts, which is a slightly different emphasis from the national version: it treats page numbers, contents, headings, navigation buttons, swipe screens and links as one set of conventions in two media rather than as two topics. VC2E1LA08 is the first place the two frameworks visibly diverge, because Victoria asks about images and sound. A video, a song or an audiobook is on the syllabus at Level 1 in Victoria and is not nationally, and if your evidence for this code is all picture books, half of it is missing.

The grammar group is VC2E1LA06, VC2E1LA07, VC2E1LA09 and VC2E1LA10. VC2E1LA06 is the load-bearing code of the level: a simple sentence is one independent clause carrying a single event or idea. VC2E1LA07 names word classes by what they do, and it names one more class than the national version does: alongside nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, Victoria includes prepositions as the words that carry relationships in time and space. That is a genuine extra requirement, and it is the one most often missed when an AC9 program is reused. VC2E1LA09 asks for vocabulary across the curriculum, which means the science and maths words are English evidence. VC2E1LA10 is punctuation and capitals for proper nouns.

Teach VC2E1LA06 before VC2E1LA10, or the full stop becomes decoration that lands where the line runs out.

Literature (VC2E1LE01 to VC2E1LE05)

Five codes, and the verbs have moved on from Foundation: discuss, recite and discuss, retell or adapt. The move is from reacting to a text towards giving an account of it.

VC2E1LE03 is the naming code, and it is worth reading closely because it is plural where the Foundation version was not. It asks for plots, characters and settings across a range of literary texts, which is a comparison task rather than a single-book task. Setting is the feature Level 1 students consistently leave out of their own writing, so it is the one to press.

VC2E1LE04 asks children to listen to, recite and discuss poems, chants, rhymes and songs, and to imitate and invent sound patterns including alliteration and rhyme. Note the word recite, which the national equivalent does not use. It is filed under Literature and it is functionally phonemic awareness practice, so a daily chant costs three minutes and counts against VC2E1LE04 while feeding VC2E1LY03.

VC2E1LE05 is the strand’s output: retelling or adapting texts the child has already encountered, using plot, characters, structure, language features and vocabulary, through role-play, writing or drawing. Role-play and drawing are explicitly enough, so a child whose transcription is slow can meet VC2E1LE05 at full difficulty without writing. Separating this from VC2E1LY13 is one of the most useful planning moves at Level 1.

VC2E1LE01 carries the requirement to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and illustrators, written as an ongoing condition on the texts you choose across the year rather than a unit to run in one week.

Literacy (VC2E1LY01 to VC2E1LY15)

Fifteen codes in four blocks, and the blocks are the numbering described above.

The oral block is VC2E1LY01 and VC2E1LY02. The second of these is narrower than people expect: it is about delivering a short spoken text to an audience using features of voice, meaning volume, pace and expression. The structure requirement (opening, middle, conclusion) does not live here, it lives in VC2E1LY13, which covers written and spoken texts together. Plan them as one lesson and assess them as two codes.

The code-breaking chain is VC2E1LY03 to VC2E1LY08. VC2E1LY03 is the whole of phonemic awareness in a single code: blending, segmenting and manipulating, on words with consonant blends at the beginning and the end, and on words of more than one syllable. Nationally that content is split across two codes, and the split makes the sequencing obvious. In Victoria it is one line, so the sequencing is yours to supply, and the multisyllabic clause at the end of it is the part that quietly makes this a year-long code rather than a Term 1 one.

VC2E1LY04 is phonics in both directions, reading and writing, with short vowels, common long vowels, blends and digraphs across one- and two-syllable words. VC2E1LY05 is the rule change: a letter can stand for more than one sound, and a syllable must contain a vowel sound. VC2E1LY06 is spelling one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns, VC2E1LY07 is a growing bank of high-frequency words, and VC2E1LY08 is grammatical morphemes and word families, which is the first point where meaning rather than sound tells you the spelling.

The reading block is VC2E1LY09, decodable and authentic texts with developing phonic knowledge, phrasing and fluency, making and monitoring meaning. Its two halves pull in opposite directions on purpose: decodable texts practise the code, authentic texts practise meaning, and a child given only one ends up either fluent and uncomprehending or comprehending and guessing.

The comprehension and composition block is VC2E1LY10 to VC2E1LY15. VC2E1LY10 asks for discussion of text types drawn from a range of cultures and experiences, which is a wider brief than the national equivalent. VC2E1LY11 compares narrative, informative and persuasive texts. VC2E1LY12 is comprehension strategies: visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, questioning. VC2E1LY13 is composition of short narrative and informative texts, written and spoken, with an opening, middle and conclusion. VC2E1LY14 is the re-reading and editing code. VC2E1LY15 is handwriting with unjoined lower-case and upper-case letters.

Note what VC2E1LY13 asks for and what it does not. Narrative and informative are named; persuasive is not, even though VC2E1LY11 asks children to recognise it. At Level 1 persuasive writing is a text type to notice, not to produce.

The three codes that decide Level 2

VC2E1LY05: one letter, more than one sound

The misconception: that digraphs are simply more letter-sound pairs to add to the Foundation list. They are not. They ask the child to stop treating the letter as the unit and start treating the grapheme as the unit, which changes what they are looking at.

What you will see: the child reads ship as /s/ /h/ /i/ /p/ and then says “sip” or stops. The letter sounds are right and the chunking is wrong. On the vowel half, shown rain they produce a two-syllable non-word. On the syllable clause, asked to spell table they write tabl, because they heard no vowel in the second syllable and the rule in VC2E1LY05 has not landed.

The fix: mark the grapheme physically before reading, a line under the sh or a finger sliding under it as one movement rather than two. Teach digraphs as a small closed set (sh, ch, th, ng, ck) to automaticity before opening long vowels, because long vowels are an open set where one sound has several spellings. When a child writes tabl, do not correct the word. Ask how many syllables, then which vowel is in the second. The rule is the reteach.

VC2E1LY03: the multisyllabic clause

The misconception: that VC2E1LY03 is the Foundation phonemic awareness code continued, and therefore a Term 1 revision job. The clause about words of more than one syllable makes it something else. Segmenting rabbit requires the child to hold a syllable boundary and a phoneme sequence at the same time, which is a working memory problem that single-syllable practice never surfaces.

What you will see: ask for stop without the /t/ and the child says stop back or produces “sop-t”. Deleting a phoneme from inside a blend is the hardest of the three operations and the most diagnostic. On the multisyllabic half, ask them to change the /a/ in rabbit to /o/ and they will usually reach for a pencil. Reaching for a pencil is the tell: the code says this is oral work, and a child who needs to see it cannot yet do it.

The fix: three to four minutes daily, no letters visible, one operation at a time until it is automatic rather than cycling through all three. Order it addition, then substitution, then deletion, and initial position before final before medial. Move to two-syllable words only once single-syllable blends are secure, and clap the syllables before working on the sounds inside one of them. Because Victoria bundles all of this into a single code, nothing in the curriculum document will tell you this order. It has to come from the program.

VC2E1LY14: editing has its own code

Re-reading their own texts and discussing possible changes to improve meaning, spelling and punctuation. Its partners are VC2E1LY13 (the composing code) and VC2E1LA06 (the sentence), and planners routinely take the composing code and leave the other two behind.

The misconception: that editing is proofreading, and therefore a job for whoever marks the book. VC2E1LY14 gives editing its own code and its own verb, discuss, which makes it a conversation the child takes part in rather than a correction they receive. What it is really teaching is that text is provisional.

What you will see: “I went to the park and it was fun and my dog came and we had ice cream and”. One clause chained to the next, no boundary anywhere. That passes a Foundation standard and fails VC2E1LA06, because none of it is a single independent clause carrying one event. The other common shape is three correctly punctuated sentences about three unrelated things, which fails nothing at Level 1 and is the direct cause of the Level 3 paragraph problem.

The fix: a fixed two-pass routine. First pass, read it aloud and put a finger down each time you run out of breath; every finger-down is a sentence boundary. Second pass, one named target only, announced before they start: today we are checking capitals, or today we are checking that every sentence has a doing word. One target per pass is the whole technique, because a Level 1 child asked to check everything checks nothing. Our deep dive on VC2E3LY11 and how sentences become paragraphs by Level 3 shows exactly what this thread turns into.

What students need to arrive with

The prerequisites are all in the Foundation English code set, and four matter more than the rest: Foundation phonemic awareness (VC2E1LY03 opens on consonant blends, which is harder than anything at Foundation), CVC reading and writing (VC2E1LY04 assumes it is automatic and spends the level on what sits above it), secure letter-sound knowledge (fewer than about twenty sounds in February means VC2E1LY04 will not land), and the idea that a sentence is a unit of meaning, because VC2E1LA06 defines the sentence rather than introducing it.

Run those checks in Term 1, not Term 4. All four gaps are cheap to close in February and expensive in November.

What this level sets up

• VC2E1LY03 becomes VC2E2LY03, blending, segmenting and manipulating to read and write increasingly complex words. The oral thread does not stop at Level 1, it changes target.
• VC2E1LY04 and VC2E1LY05 become VC2E2LY04, which adds vowel digraphs, less common long vowel patterns and silent letters. The closed set becomes an open set.
• VC2E1LY06 and VC2E1LY08 become VC2E2LY05 and VC2E2LY06, where spelling patterns and morphemes handle words that sound gives you no way to spell, and prefixes and suffixes build word families. Morphology takes over from phonics as the main engine of spelling.
• VC2E1LA06 becomes VC2E2LA06: the compound sentence, two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction. Level 2 formalises the and the child has been overusing all through Level 1, which only works if Level 1 established what sits on either side of it.
• VC2E1LY13 becomes VC2E2LY11, which adds persuasive to narrative and informative. The text type Level 1 only had to recognise now has to be produced.
• VC2E1LY14 becomes VC2E2LY12, where re-reading and editing is stated in terms of spelling, sentence boundary punctuation and text structure. The discussion becomes a checklist.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: blends, and the sentence. VC2E1LY03 daily on consonant blends at both ends of single-syllable words, oral only. VC2E1LY04 starting with blends in print, which extends Foundation rather than contradicting it. VC2E1LA06 taught explicitly as one idea, one clause, with VC2E1LA10 following it rather than leading. VC2E1LY01 and VC2E1LA01 to VC2E1LA02 inside routines, VC2E1LE02 and VC2E1LE04 through a daily chant, and VC2E1LY15 handwriting for fluency.
2. Term 2: digraphs, and independent writing. VC2E1LY05 as a small closed set (sh, ch, th, ng, ck) to automaticity before any long vowel work. VC2E1LY03 manipulation daily, starting with addition. VC2E1LY13 composing short narrative and informative texts, with the VC2E1LY14 two-pass re-read routine established now while texts are short enough to re-read. VC2E1LY06 and VC2E1LY07 as the writing half of the same lessons. Add VC2E1LA03 and VC2E1LE03.
3. Term 3: long vowels and two syllables. VC2E1LY04 extended to common long vowels and two-syllable words, with the syllable rule in VC2E1LY05 as the tool for splitting them, and VC2E1LY03 pushed onto multisyllabic words at the same time so the oral and print work stay on the same target. VC2E1LY09 decodable and authentic texts in parallel. VC2E1LY12 comprehension strategies pushed harder now that decoding takes less of the child. Add VC2E1LA05 and VC2E1LA08, including the sound half.
4. Term 4: morphology, and text types. VC2E1LY08 morphemes and word families as the bridge into Level 2. VC2E1LY10 and VC2E1LY11 on text types across cultures and on narrative, informative and persuasive. VC2E1LY02 spoken delivery using features of voice. VC2E1LE05 retelling and adapting, VC2E1LA07 word classes including prepositions, and VC2E1LA09 vocabulary pulled from whatever else is running.

Two non-obvious choices there. Holding long vowels until Term 3 keeps a closed set and an open set apart, because teaching them together produces a child who knows ai makes a long a and has no idea when to use it rather than a_e. And pushing VC2E1LY03 onto multisyllabic words in the same term as the print work keeps the single code aligned with itself: the curriculum bundles oral and print difficulty into one line, so the program has to keep them moving together.

Six checks before Level 2

• “Say the sounds in strap.” Four or fewer, or the blend treated as one unit, means VC2E1LY03 needs oral reteaching on clusters specifically.
• “Say stop without the /t/.” The hardest operation in VC2E1LY03 and the clearest single predictor of Level 2 spelling. Reteach deletion in initial position, then final, then medial.
• Show the written word chip, picture covered. Four separate letter sounds means VC2E1LY05 has not landed. Reteach by marking the digraph before reading, not by repeating the word.
• Ask them to spell rabbit. A missing second-syllable vowel, or a collapse to one syllable, points at the syllable rule in VC2E1LY05 rather than at spelling. Clap the syllables and ask which vowel is in each.
• Dictate a short sentence, then ask for one sentence about their weekend. If the dictated one is punctuated and the free one is a chain of and, the gap is VC2E1LA06, not VC2E1LY13. Reteach the clause, not the full stop.
• Hand back yesterday’s writing and ask for one thing to change. “Nothing” means VC2E1LY14 has never actually been practised. Install the two-pass routine with one named target.

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

Where the Capabilities attach

In Victoria the Capabilities are separate curriculum areas with their own codes, not cross-curriculum priorities layered over English. At Level 1 the two that attach most naturally to this code set are Critical and Creative Thinking, which pairs with the discussion verbs in VC2E1LY11 and VC2E1LY14, and Personal and Social, which pairs with the interaction skills in VC2E1LY01 and the interpersonal language in VC2E1LA01. Recording those codes alongside the English one costs nothing at planning time and saves an argument at review time. Our guide to the Victorian Capabilities covers how they are structured.

Recording the alignment

Whether you are programming for a class or building a VRQA home education learning plan, record the code on the activity as you go. “Phonics” tells a reviewer nothing; “VC2E1LY05, reading and writing words with sh, ch and th, 12 May” answers the question before it is asked. Our guide to homeschool resources in Victoria covers what the VRQA looks for, and registration requirements state by state covers the rest of the country. The national equivalent of this level is Year 1 English in the Australian Curriculum, the NSW equivalent is Stage 1 English, which covers Years 1 and 2 together, and the companion post on every Level 1 Maths code covers the other half of the level.

Level 1 is where engagement and the code pull against each other hardest. The oral manipulation in VC2E1LY03 is three minutes of the least interesting instruction in primary school and it is non-negotiable, but it goes down considerably better on words a child cares about, and using an interest as the way in costs nothing in curriculum terms. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these 30 codes, pitched at Level 1 and wrapped in whatever the child is currently obsessed with, with the VC2 code recorded in the footer. Try it free.

Curriculum codes reference the Victorian Curriculum F–10 Version 2.0 © VCAA. The curriculum can be accessed directly at f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. The VCAA does not endorse this product. Always verify against the current content descriptions and achievement standards.

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