Level 2 English: Every Victorian Curriculum Code, Explained

Level 2 English in the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 is 28 content descriptions, VC2E2LA01 through VC2E2LY13. The national curriculum has 27 for the same year, and the Language and Literature strands match exactly: ten and five in both.

The extra code is in Literacy, and finding out which one it is tells you most of what a Victorian planner needs to know. Victoria has thirteen Literacy codes to the national twelve, because it gives editing its own descriptor instead of folding it into the writing one. That is the pattern for the whole level: the same content, cut at different joints, in a different order. This is a working guide to all 28 codes: what the Victorian ordering is telling you to do, the three places where Level 2 asks for something the national curriculum does not, a term-by-term order, and six checks before Level 3.

What changes this level

Three shifts, and the third is the one Victorian programs most often miss.

Phonic knowledge stops being a closed list. Level 1 dealt in a small finite set of digraphs, each with a single spelling. VC2E2LY04 opens it up to vowel digraphs, the less common long vowel patterns, consonant blends and silent letters, across words of one syllable or more. The problem changes shape rather than getting harder: at Level 1 a sound had a spelling, and at Level 2 a sound has several with nothing in the sound to tell you which.

Meaning takes over from sound. VC2E2LY05 asks for spelling patterns and morphemes to handle words that sound does not fully predict, and VC2E2LY06 asks students to build word families from prefixes and suffixes. Victoria places both immediately after phonic knowledge in the numbering, which is the curriculum stating plainly when the handover happens. Level 2 is the year the engine of spelling changes over.

Analysis starts. VC2E2LY10 asks students to use comprehension strategies and begin to analyse texts by drawing on growing knowledge of context and text structures. The national equivalent, AC9E2LY05, stops at building literal and inferred meaning and does not mention analysis until Year 3. That single clause is a genuine Victorian requirement a level early, and a program converted from a national one will not contain it.

The level at a glance

Reading the codes, and the ordering

The pattern is VC2 + E + level + strand + number, so VC2E2LY04 is Level 2, 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.

The part that matters is the order inside Literacy, because it is a route rather than a list:

• VC2E2LY01 and LY02 are oral: interaction skills, then delivering a short spoken text using features of voice. Victoria numbers spoken delivery second, at the front of the strand. The national curriculum puts the equivalent at AC9E2LY07, near the end and bundled with multimodal presentations.
• VC2E2LY03 to LY06 are the code-breaking chain in teaching order: phonemic awareness, then phonic knowledge, then spelling patterns and morphemes, then morphemic word families. Victoria labels the first two explicitly in the descriptors, which is a small thing that saves a lot of argument about what a phonics lesson is meant to contain.
• VC2E2LY07 is reading with phrasing and fluency, self-monitoring and self-correcting. It sits immediately after the chain that makes it possible.
• VC2E2LY08 to LY10 are what reading is then used for: comparing how topics are handled across text types, identifying purpose and audience, and comprehension plus the beginning of analysis.
• VC2E2LY11 to LY13 are output: composing, editing, handwriting.

Compare that with the national set, where reading fluently is AC9E2LY04, numbered five places before the phonics codes that enable it. If you are working from a VC2 program, follow the numbers. If you are converting a national one, the reordering is the main piece of work, and our comparison of the Victorian and Australian curriculums covers why the two are structured differently in the first place.

Strand by strand

Language (VC2E2LA01 to VC2E2LA10)

Ten descriptions, in three groups. The interpersonal pair, VC2E2LA01 and VC2E2LA02, asks students to explore how interpersonal language shifts with context and with the role someone takes in an interaction, and how language is used to appreciate texts and explain preferences. The word to notice is explore. Victoria uses it where the national curriculum uses investigate for the same content, and across the level Victoria’s verbs sit consistently one step lower. That is a real difference in the assessment bar, not a stylistic one.

The text-and-image group is VC2E2LA03, VC2E2LA05 and VC2E2LA08: how text types across the curriculum are organised and use different features for different purposes; navigating printed and digital texts through chapters, contents pages, indexes, sidebar and drop-down menus and links; and how images and sound build or multiply meaning. That last one is a genuine addition. The national AC9E2LA08 covers images only, so a Victorian teacher owes something the national code does not ask for, and the cheapest way to meet it is one lesson on the same short video watched twice, once with the sound off.

The grammar group is VC2E2LA04, VC2E2LA06, VC2E2LA07, VC2E2LA09 and VC2E2LA10. VC2E2LA06 is the load-bearing code of the level: connecting ideas using a compound sentence built from two or more independent clauses, usually joined by a coordinating conjunction. VC2E2LA07 grows the parts on either side, with nouns extending into noun groups through articles and adjectives and verbs becoming verb groups. VC2E2LA10 adds capitals in titles and commas in lists.

VC2E2LA09 is worth a second look. It asks students to apply learnt vocabulary and begin making conscious choices to suit the topic. The national AC9E2LA09 says experiment with vocabulary. Victoria’s wording assumes the words were explicitly taught first, which is a pointer to how the Victorian English curriculum expects vocabulary to be handled: taught, then applied, rather than encountered and absorbed.

VC2E2LA04 is the sleeper. It covers cohesion through personal and possessive pronouns and through omitting words a reader can infer. It is the only Level 2 code that works between sentences rather than inside one, which makes it the first real step towards the Level 3 paragraph, and it is the code most often left off a Level 2 program. It looks like grammar revision and it is not: leaving out words the reader can supply is a text-level skill nothing else at this level teaches.

Literature (VC2E2LE01 to VC2E2LE05)

Five descriptions, and the shift from Level 1 is in what students are asked to connect. Level 1 discussed plots, characters and settings as things to name. VC2E2LE01 asks how characters and settings are connected to each other, and VC2E2LE03 asks how language presents those features differently across a range of texts. The move is from labelling to relating.

VC2E2LE02 asks students to compare features across literary texts and share their preferences. The national AC9E2LE02 asks them to identify features and give reasons for preferences. Compare is the harder verb and give reasons is the harder output, so the two codes are not interchangeable in either direction: Victoria wants two texts held side by side, and the national code wants a justified opinion about one. A Level 2 lesson that meets both is simply two texts and the question “which setting did you prefer, and what made it different from the other one?”

VC2E2LE04, working with rhythmic sound and word patterns in poems, chants, rhymes and songs, is doing double duty for the third level running. It is filed under Literature and it is functionally phonological practice, and at Level 2 it is worth keeping specifically because VC2E2LY03 needs oral material and a daily chant supplies it free.

VC2E2LE05 is the strand’s output: creating texts by adapting the structures and language features of texts already encountered, through writing, drawing and performance. Note what is not there. The national AC9E2LE05 says create and edit; Victoria says create, because editing has its own home in VC2E2LY12. Drawing and performance are still explicitly enough, so a child whose transcription is slow can meet VC2E2LE05 at full difficulty without writing much.

VC2E2LE01 carries the requirement for texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and illustrators. It is a condition on the texts you choose across the level, not a unit to run in one week.

Literacy (VC2E2LY01 to VC2E2LY13)

Thirteen descriptions, and the numbering already groups them.

The oral pair is VC2E2LY01 and VC2E2LY02: interaction skills covering active listening, taking instructions, extending an idea, offering and responding to opinions and giving instructions; then delivering a short spoken text to an audience using features of voice. Neither depends on the child’s own reading, so run both at full difficulty from Week 1 regardless of where decoding is.

The code-breaking chain is VC2E2LY03 to VC2E2LY06, in the order you teach them: blending, segmenting and manipulating to handle increasingly complex words; then sound-to-letter knowledge covering vowel digraphs, less common long vowel patterns, consonant blends and silent letters; then spelling patterns and morphemes for words sound does not predict; then building word families with prefixes and suffixes. Four codes, one route, and the numbers tell you the route.

Reading and comprehension is VC2E2LY07 to VC2E2LY10: reading different text types with phrasing and fluency while re-reading and self-correcting; discussing how similar topics are presented across different text types; identifying purpose and audience; and comprehension strategies plus the beginning of analysis. VC2E2LY07 adds re-reading and self-correcting to the Level 1 requirement, which turns fluency from a by-product of decoding into a named behaviour with a repair strategy attached.

Output is VC2E2LY11 to VC2E2LY13: creating short narrative, informative and persuasive texts for familiar audiences with simple structures, topic-specific vocabulary and multimodal elements; re-reading and editing for spelling, sentence boundary punctuation and text structure; and handwriting with unjoined upper- and lower-case letters.

Read VC2E2LY11 and VC2E2LY12 next to the national AC9E2LY06, which does the job of both in one descriptor. The national code lists its grammar requirements inline: simple and compound sentences, noun groups and verb groups, simple punctuation, common two-syllable words. Victoria’s composing code lists none of that, because in the Victorian structure grammar belongs to the Language strand and is not restated in Literacy. That is coherent, and it is a trap, which is the second of the three hard codes below.

The three codes that decide Level 3

VC2E2LY04: the set is open now

The misconception: that long vowel patterns are just more digraphs, so the Level 1 method (learn the pair, use the pair) carries over. It does not. sh has one spelling; the long /ai/ sound has at least ai, ay, a_e, eigh and ei. The child’s question has changed from “what does this say?” to “which of these do I use?”, and nothing in the sound answers it.

What you will see: reading holds up and spelling collapses. The child reads train, play and cake correctly and then writes trane, plai and caik. Every one of those is phonically defensible, which is the diagnosis: this is not a child who failed to learn the patterns, it is a child who learned them all as interchangeable. The silent letter half gives the other signal: nite, rong, num.

The fix: teach position, not just pattern. ay at the end of a word or syllable and ai in the middle; oy at the end and oi in the middle. Two rules cover a large share of the errors and a Level 2 child can hold them. Then sort rather than list: twenty words with the same sound, grouped by spelling, with the child saying where in the word each spelling sits. Leave the silent letters for later in the year and hand them to VC2E2LY05 and VC2E2LY06, where they can be explained as meaning rather than memorised as exceptions.

VC2E2LA06 and VC2E2LY11: the split the numbering hides

This one is specific to Victoria, and it is the most common Level 2 planning failure in the state. VC2E2LA06 introduces the compound sentence. VC2E2LY11, the code that asks students to actually write something, does not mention sentence structure at all: it asks for narrative, informative and persuasive texts with simple structures, topic-specific vocabulary and multimodal elements. A planner working forwards from the writing code will never be told to teach compound sentences in writing, because the writing code does not say so.

The misconception: that VC2E2LA06 is met once children can point at a compound sentence in a shared text. It is a Language code, so it reads like knowledge. It is only worth anything when it shows up in VC2E2LY11 output, and nothing in the curriculum joins the two for you.

What you will see: two shapes, needing opposite responses. The first is “I went to the shop and bought some milk.” One clause, two verbs, not a compound sentence, no matter how many times the child uses and. The second is “We went to the beach and it was hot and my brother got sand in his hat and then we went home.” Those are independent clauses, VC2E2LA06 is technically met, and the writing is still a chain. Marking both the same way is the error.

The fix: the cover test, taught as a physical action. Put a finger over the and, read the left half, read the right half, and ask whether each stands alone. Two yeses means compound. For the first shape the test yields “bought some milk”, which the child can hear is not a sentence, and the repair is to supply the missing subject. For the second shape the target moves to VC2E2LA04: replace a repeated noun with a pronoun, cut the clause that adds nothing. Then, in planning, write VC2E2LA06 and VC2E2LY11 on the same lesson line every time. In Victoria they have to be joined by the teacher, because the curriculum does not join them.

VC2E2LY10: analysis, a level early

VC2E2LY10 asks for the usual comprehension strategies, visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning, and then adds that students should begin to analyse texts using growing knowledge of context and text structures to build literal and inferred meaning. The national AC9E2LY05 stops before that clause. Analysis appears in the national curriculum at AC9E3LY05, one year later.

The misconception: that analysis at Level 2 means something too abstract for seven-year-olds, so the clause can be treated as aspirational. What it actually asks for is narrow and concrete: noticing that a text is built a particular way and saying why that matters. “This one starts with a question. Why would the writer do that?” is a Level 2 analysis question.

What you will see: a child who answers every question about a text with content and never with structure. Asked what the writer did, they retell what happened. That is inferred meaning, which VC2E2LY10 also wants, and it is not the analysis half.

The fix: two fixed questions after any shared text, asked in this order. “What is this text for?” (which also feeds VC2E2LY09) and “What did the writer do to make that work?” The second question is the whole of the analysis clause at this level. Accept short structural answers: it used headings, it repeated the same word three times, it put the exciting bit first. Two minutes at the end of a read-aloud, four days a week, covers this code better than any worksheet, and it is the clause that makes the Level 3 jump to VC2E3LY10 survivable.

What students need to arrive with

The prerequisites are all in the Level 1 English code set, and four of them matter more than the rest.

• VC2E1LY05 (a letter can stand for more than one sound, and every syllable contains a vowel sound). VC2E2LY04 assumes the grapheme rather than the letter is the unit the child is looking at. A child still reading ship as four sounds cannot be taught less common long vowel patterns.
• VC2E1LY03 (blending, segmenting and manipulating, including words with consonant blends at both ends and words of more than one syllable). VC2E2LY03 opens on more complex words and assumes all three operations are available. Cheapest gap to close, most expensive to leave.
• VC2E1LA06 (the simple sentence as one independent clause). VC2E2LA06 does not define the clause, it multiplies it. Without Level 1, Level 2 is asking children to join two things they cannot identify.
• VC2E1LY08 (grammatical morphemes to create word families). VC2E2LY06 is the same thread one level on. A child who has never seen a base word survive a suffix will treat every inflected form as a new word to memorise.

Run these in February. The phonics gap in particular gets worse rather than staying still, because the child keeps reading and keeps reinforcing the wrong model.

What this level sets up

• VC2E2LA06 becomes VC2E3LA06, which defines the clause properly as a unit containing a subject and a verb that have to agree. Level 2 puts two clauses side by side; Level 3 looks inside one.
• VC2E2LA04 becomes VC2E3LA04: paragraphs as a key organisational feature grouping related information. That is the single most important line of descent in primary English and the reason VC2E2LA04 is not optional. Our deep dive on VC2E3LY11 and how sentences become paragraphs covers the Level 3 end of it in detail.
• VC2E2LY04 and VC2E2LY05 become VC2E3LY03 and VC2E3LY05, which move to multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns and to the less common patterns for spelling. Multisyllabic is the change: Level 2 handled one syllable or more, Level 3 assumes several as the norm.
• VC2E2LY06 becomes VC2E3LY04, which adds generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word. That is a rule layer on top of the families built at Level 2, and it only makes sense to a child who has the families.
• VC2E2LY11 becomes VC2E3LY11, which asks for ideas grouped in simple paragraphs and for precise, topic-specific vocabulary. VC2E2LY12 becomes VC2E3LY12, where editing moves from spelling, boundary punctuation and structure to meaning, structure, grammatical choices and punctuation.
• VC2E2LY13 becomes VC2E3LY13, joined letters. Handwriting changes model at Level 3, so leaving Level 2 with unjoined letters still effortful makes that transition harder than it needs to be.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: finish the oral work, open the vowel patterns. VC2E2LY03 daily and oral, targeting deletion and substitution in the middle of a word, which is what Level 1 usually leaves unfinished. VC2E2LY04 starting on vowel digraphs only, taught by position rather than as a list. VC2E2LA06 taught explicitly with the cover test, VC2E2LA10 after it. VC2E2LY01 and VC2E2LA01 inside routines, VC2E2LE04 as a daily chant, VC2E2LY13 handwriting for fluency.
2. Term 2: the open set, and compound sentences in writing. VC2E2LY04 extended to the less common long vowel patterns and consonant blends, with sorting by spelling and position as the main activity. VC2E2LY11 with VC2E2LA06 named as the writing target on the same lesson line, using the noun groups and verb groups of VC2E2LA07 as the material. VC2E2LY07 with re-reading and self-correcting taught as an explicit repair move. VC2E2LY02 spoken delivery, and add VC2E2LA03 and VC2E2LE02.
3. Term 3: morphology takes over, and analysis starts. VC2E2LY05 and VC2E2LY06 as the main spelling engine, one word family at a time, base word colour-coded. Silent letters revisited here rather than in Term 2, because they make sense as meaning (sign and signal) and not as sound. VC2E2LY10’s two questions installed after every read-aloud. VC2E2LA04 taught deliberately with pronoun tracking across two sentences. Add VC2E2LA05 on digital navigation and VC2E2LA08 on images and sound.
4. Term 4: purpose, audience and editing. VC2E2LY08 and VC2E2LY09 on how the same topic changes shape across text types and who each one is for. VC2E2LY12 run as its own taught skill rather than as marking, with one named target per pass. VC2E2LE05 creating by adapting a familiar text, VC2E2LE01 and VC2E2LE03 on characters and settings, VC2E2LA09 applying taught vocabulary, VC2E2LA02 giving reasons for preferences. Finish with one piece that carries VC2E2LY11 and VC2E2LY12 together as the level’s evidence.

The non-obvious choice is treating VC2E2LY12 as a Term 4 teaching block rather than something that happens every time a child finishes a piece. Victoria separated editing into its own code for a reason, and the way to honour that is to teach it as a skill with its own lessons at least once, rather than only ever practising it as a tidy-up at the end of writing.

Six checks before Level 3

• Dictate train, play and cake. Phonically plausible but wrong spellings mean VC2E2LY04 needs reteaching by position, not by repetition.
• Dictate jumped and played. jumpt or plaid points at VC2E2LY06 rather than at spelling generally. Reteach the base word surviving the suffix before anything else.
• “Say splash without the /p/.” VC2E2LY03 at its hardest, and the clearest single predictor of Level 3 spelling. Three minutes a day for a fortnight usually fixes it.
• Ask them to write one sentence joining two ideas. “I went to the park and played” means the gap is VC2E2LA06, not writing. Reteach the cover test and have them supply the missing subject.
• After a read-aloud, ask what the writer did to make it work. A retell of the content rather than anything structural means the analysis clause of VC2E2LY10 has not been taught. Reteach with the two fixed questions.
• Read them: “The dog chased the cat. It ran under the fence.” Ask who ran. Hesitation or a wrong answer means VC2E2LA04 has not landed, and that is the code Level 3 paragraphs are built on.

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.

Recording the alignment

For a school program or a Victorian home education plan, record the code on the activity as you go. “Spelling” tells a reviewer nothing; “VC2E2LY06, building word families from play, 14 May” answers the question before it is asked. Victorian home educators register with the VRQA and are asked for a plan covering eight key learning areas, and codes are the cheapest way to show English is covered properly. Our guides to the Victorian Curriculum, the four Capabilities and state-by-state registration requirements cover the rest. The national equivalent of this level is Year 2 English in the Australian Curriculum, and in NSW the same content sits inside Stage 1 English, which covers Years 1 and 2 as one stage. The companion post on every Level 2 Maths code covers the other half of the level.

Level 2 is the level where the necessary drill and the interesting content pull hardest against each other. Building word families from play will not hold a seven-year-old for four minutes twice a week on its own, and using an interest as the way in costs nothing in curriculum terms, because the morphology is identical whether the base word is play or dragon. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these 28 codes, pitched at Level 2 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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