Year 3 English: Every Australian Curriculum Code, Explained

Year 3 English in the Australian Curriculum is 28 content descriptions, AC9E3LA01 through AC9E3LY12. One of them is the most consequential single line in primary English: AC9E3LA04, which says that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of the stages of written texts, grouping related information together.

Everything else in Year 3 either feeds that code or depends on it. The clause gets defined so that sentences can be built deliberately. Verbs get processes and tense so that a paragraph can hold together. Writing becomes a four-stage process so there is somewhere for a paragraph plan to live. This is a working guide to all 28 descriptions: what each strand asks for, the three codes that decide whether Year 4 works, a term-by-term order, and six five-minute checks worth running before the December report.

What changes this year

Year 3 is the year the unit of writing changes. Foundation to Year 2 built the sentence. Year 3 builds the thing sentences go inside.

The paragraph arrives, and it arrives as a Language code. AC9E3LA04 is filed under Language, not Literacy, which means the curriculum treats it as knowledge about how texts work before it treats it as something to do. Its Literacy partner, AC9E3LY06, then asks for ideas grouped in simple paragraphs in actual writing. Take one without the other and you get either a child who can define a paragraph and never writes one, or a child who indents in the right places for no reason they could explain.

Writing becomes four verbs. Year 2 said create and edit. AC9E3LY06 says plan, create, edit and publish, and AC9E3LY07 does the same for spoken and multimodal presentations. Plan is the new one and the one that quietly disappears from most Year 3 programs, which matters because planning is where paragraphing is actually decided.

The verb gets three codes to itself. AC9E3LA06 defines the clause as a unit of grammar usually containing a subject and a verb that need to agree. AC9E3LA07 says verbs represent different processes: doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating. AC9E3LA08 says verbs are anchored in time through tense. Three descriptions on one word class in one year is the curriculum flagging that the verb is now the load-bearing part of a sentence, and it is not a coincidence that this is the year tense drift starts wrecking recounts.

Handwriting also changes model: AC9E3LY08 moves to joined letters, clearly formed and consistent in size.

The year at a glance

Language gained a code compared with Year 2 and Literacy stayed at twelve. Both of those facts point the same way: Year 3 is a year of knowledge about how language works, applied through roughly the same number of doing codes as last year.

Reading the codes

The pattern is AC9 + E + year + strand + number, so AC9E3LA04 is Year 3, Language, fourth description. LA is Language, LE is Literature, LY is Literacy. If you are coming from Year 2, note that Language shifted by one from AC9E3LA02 onwards because modality was inserted as a new code, so incrementing the year digit on a Year 2 program misaligns most of the Language strand. AC9E2LA04 (cohesion through pronouns and ellipsis) and AC9E3LA04 (paragraphs) do line up, and that is the one alignment worth knowing, because it is a genuine line of descent rather than a coincidence of numbering.

Strand by strand

Language (AC9E3LA01 to AC9E3LA11)

Eleven descriptions, in four groups.

The interpersonal pair is AC9E3LA01 and AC9E3LA02: understanding that cooperation depends on shared social conventions, including turn-taking language that varies with formality; and understanding how the language of evaluation and emotion, such as modal verbs, can be varied to be more or less forceful. AC9E3LA02 is new this year and it is more useful than it looks. Must, should, might and could are the entire machinery of persuasive writing, and Year 3 is where they get named. A child who can move a sentence along that scale on purpose has the core skill that AC9E4 and AC9E5 persuasive codes assume.

The text-structure group is AC9E3LA03, AC9E3LA04, AC9E3LA05 and AC9E3LA09: how texts across the curriculum use different language features and structures for their purpose; paragraphs as a key organisational feature grouping related information; the purpose of layout features and navigation words in print and digital texts; and how images extend the meaning of a text. AC9E3LA04 is treated properly below. AC9E3LA03 is the one that lets you count science and HASS writing as English evidence, which is worth doing deliberately in a crowded year.

The grammar group is AC9E3LA06, AC9E3LA07, AC9E3LA08 and AC9E3LA11. The first three are all about the verb and are best taught as one thread rather than three topics. AC9E3LA11 covers apostrophes: signalling missing letters in contractions, and showing singular and plural possession. Teach the contraction half first and separately. The two uses share a mark and share nothing else, and teaching them in the same week is the direct cause of dog’s written for the plural, an error that then persists for years.

AC9E3LA07 is the partner code most planners miss. It says verbs represent different processes for doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating. On its own that sounds like taxonomy. In practice it is the code that makes the other two verb codes teachable, because “the verb has to agree with the subject” (AC9E3LA06) is much easier to see once a child can find the verb, and relating verbs (is, was, has) are exactly the ones children fail to spot. It is also the code that explains why information reports are full of relating verbs and narratives are full of doing and saying verbs, which turns AC9E3LA03 from an assertion into something observable.

AC9E3LA10, extending topic-specific and technical vocabulary and knowing that words can have different meanings in different contexts, is the vocabulary code, and the second half is the part with teeth: table, volume, difference and property all mean something specific in maths or science and something else at home.

Literature (AC9E3LE01 to AC9E3LE05)

Five descriptions, and the change from Year 2 is that texts start being read for effect rather than for content.

AC9E3LE03 is the pivot: discussing how an author uses language and illustrations to portray characters and settings, and exploring how settings and events influence the mood of the narrative. Mood is a new idea, and it is the first time students are asked about something a text produces in a reader rather than something a text contains. AC9E3LE04 supplies the tools, naming literary devices including rhythm and onomatopoeia and asking for their effect on the reader’s reaction. Teaching the two together is the obvious move: the device is the cause and the mood is the effect.

AC9E3LE02 asks for connections between personal experiences and character experiences, plus personal preferences. This is the Year 3 version of a thread running from Foundation, and the difference now is that the connection is expected to be about experience rather than about surface similarity.

AC9E3LE05 is the strand’s output: creating and editing imaginative texts using or adapting language features, characters, settings, plot structures and ideas encountered in literary texts. Note plot structures, which is new. Year 2 adapted structures and language features; Year 3 expects the shape of the plot itself to be borrowed on purpose.

AC9E3LE01 carries the First Nations requirement, extended this year with the phrase in different contexts, which is a nudge towards more than one text and more than one kind of text across the year.

Literacy (AC9E3LY01 to AC9E3LY12)

Twelve descriptions, in three groups.

The comprehension and oral group is AC9E3LY01, AC9E3LY02, AC9E3LY03 and AC9E3LY05: recognising that texts can be created for similar purposes but different audiences; interaction skills for contributing to conversations and discussions; identifying audience and purpose through language features and images; and comprehension strategies for literal and inferred meaning while beginning to evaluate texts using knowledge of context, text structures and language features. That evaluation clause is the Year 3 addition. AC9E2LY05 stopped at literal and inferred meaning, so this is a genuine new demand and it needs a question routine rather than a unit.

The production group is AC9E3LY06, AC9E3LY07 and AC9E3LY08. AC9E3LY06 is the assessment vehicle for the year: plan, create, edit and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive written and multimodal texts, using visual features, appropriate form and layout, ideas grouped in simple paragraphs, mostly correct tense, topic-specific vocabulary and correct spelling of most high-frequency and phonetically regular words. Read that list again and count how many other codes it names: AC9E3LA04, AC9E3LA08, AC9E3LA10 and AC9E3LY12 are all inside it. AC9E3LY07 is the spoken twin, with a clear structure, elaborating detail and tone, pace, pitch and volume. AC9E3LY08 is joined handwriting.

The spelling group is AC9E3LY09 to AC9E3LY12, and it is the same four-part shape as Year 2 with everything scaled up: applying phoneme–grapheme relationships, syllables, and blending and segmenting to multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns; applying knowledge of base words, prefixes, suffixes and the generalisations for adding a suffix; using less common letter patterns to spell; and writing most high-frequency words including some homophones.

AC9E3LY10 is the one to watch. Year 2 built word families; Year 3 adds the generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word, which is the rule layer: when to double the final consonant, when to drop the silent e, when y becomes i. Those three rules cover a very large share of Year 3 and Year 4 spelling errors and they are teachable in about six weeks. AC9E3LY04, reading a range of texts using phonic, semantic and grammatical knowledge accurately and fluently with self-correction, sits on top of the group rather than inside it.

The three codes that decide Year 4

AC9E3LA04: the paragraph is a container, not a length

The misconception: that a paragraph is a visual convention, so it is taught as a formatting rule. Indent here, leave a line there, start a new one every four or five sentences. AC9E3LA04 says something different: a paragraph groups related information, and it is a feature of the stages of a written text. The unit is the idea, not the line count.

What you will see: two shapes. The first is a page with no breaks at all, one block from the title to the end, which is the Year 2 chain habit surviving into a longer text. The second, and the one that fools people, is a page broken into neat four-line chunks where the breaks fall in arbitrary places. A child producing the second shape is often marked as having met AC9E3LA04 because the page looks right. The test is to ask them to give each paragraph a heading. If they cannot, or if two consecutive paragraphs would take the same heading, the breaks are decoration.

The fix: teach it backwards, from reading rather than from writing. Take a short information text that is already well paragraphed, cover the text and show only your own one-line summaries of each paragraph, and let the child see that the summaries are the plan. Then reverse it: write three one-line topics on a page before any writing starts and require one paragraph per line. That is the same activity as the planning verb in AC9E3LY06, which is the point. Its direct ancestor is AC9E2LA04 (cohesion through pronouns and by omitting words that can be inferred), so a child who cannot track a pronoun across two sentences will not group ideas across six. Our deep dive on how sentences become paragraphs in Year 3 works through the Victorian version of exactly this code with a full teaching sequence.

AC9E3LY06: the missing verb is “plan”

The misconception: that planning is a graphic organiser handed out at the start of a writing task, so the code is met by anyone who uses one. In practice the organiser usually gets filled in after the child already knows what they are going to write, or filled in with the first sentences of the piece rather than with its structure, and neither of those is planning.

What you will see: the plan and the finished piece are the same length. Or the plan contains full sentences that then appear verbatim in the draft. Or, most commonly, the plan is complete and the draft ignores it entirely, which tells you the child experienced the plan as a separate task to be finished rather than as a tool. On the publish half: the piece stops when the child stops, with no layout, no title and no visual features, even though AC9E3LY06 names appropriate form and layout explicitly.

The fix: constrain the plan so hard it cannot become a draft. Three lines, maximum six words each, one per paragraph. Nothing else on the page. Then require the child to write with the plan visible and tick each line as they finish its paragraph. The tick is what makes the plan a tool. For publishing, pick one real audience per term, which can be a class display, a younger buddy class or a family reader, because form and layout are decisions that only make sense once someone other than the marker is going to read it.

AC9E3LA08 and AC9E3LA06: tense drift

The misconception: that tense is a spelling matter (add ed) rather than a property of the whole text. AC9E3LA08 says verbs are anchored in time through tense, and AC9E3LY06 asks for mostly correct tense across a piece. The word doing the work is anchored. A text picks a time and stays there.

What you will see: a recount that starts in the past and slides into the present exactly where it gets exciting. “We walked down to the creek and we saw a platypus. And then it dives under the log and I’m running to get Dad.” The switch is not carelessness, it is the child narrating a memory as it replays, and it will not be fixed by telling them to check their verb endings. The AC9E3LA06 half shows up separately as agreement errors with a plural subject or a collective noun: “the group of children were”, “my friends is coming”.

The fix: for tense, one deliberate whole-text conversion per fortnight. Take six sentences of their own writing and rewrite the lot in the other tense. It is quick, it is concrete, and it makes the anchoring visible in a way that correcting individual verbs never does. For agreement, teach AC9E3LA07 first so the child can reliably find the verb, then teach the check as a two-word test: strip the sentence to its subject and verb and say those two words alone. “The group of children in my class were” becomes “group were”, which most children can hear is wrong once the distractors are gone.

What students need to arrive with

The prerequisites are all in the Year 2 English code set, and four of them carry the year.

• AC9E2LA04 (cohesion through personal and possessive pronouns and by omitting words that can be inferred). This is the direct ancestor of AC9E3LA04 and the one most often missing, because it is the Year 2 code most often skipped. A child who cannot connect two sentences cannot group six.
• AC9E2LA06 (the compound sentence as two or more independent clauses). AC9E3LA06 looks inside the clause and assumes the child can already find one. Without it, subject–verb agreement is being taught on an invisible unit.
• AC9E2LY12 (morphemic word families using prefixes and suffixes). AC9E3LY10 adds the generalisations for adding a suffix, which are rules about something. If the something is not there, the rules are arbitrary.
• AC9E2LY10 (vowel digraphs, less common long vowel patterns, consonant clusters and silent letters). AC9E3LY09 assumes multisyllabic words as the norm. A child still unsure on single-syllable long vowels will not survive three syllables of them.

Check all four in February. AC9E2LA04 is the one to check first and the one nobody thinks to check, because it does not look like a prerequisite for paragraphs until you read the two codes side by side.

What this year sets up

• AC9E3LA06 becomes AC9E4LA06: the complex sentence, one independent clause plus at least one dependent clause joined by a subordinating conjunction to create relationships such as time and causality. Year 2 joined two equal clauses, Year 3 defined one, Year 4 subordinates one to another. Three years, one thread, and it only works in order.
• AC9E3LA04 becomes AC9E4LA04: text connectives, including temporal and conditional words, and topic word associations used to sequence and connect ideas. Year 3 groups ideas into paragraphs; Year 4 joins the paragraphs to each other. A child who never got the containers has nothing to connect.
• AC9E3LY06 becomes AC9E4LY06, which keeps all four verbs and adds visual features, relevant linked ideas, complex sentences, synonyms and antonyms and correct spelling of multisyllabic words. The process does not change again after Year 3, which is why establishing it properly now pays for the rest of primary school.
• AC9E3LA08 becomes AC9E4LA09, past, present and future tense and their impact on meaning in a sentence. Year 3 asks for consistency, Year 4 asks what the choice does.
• AC9E3LA11 becomes AC9E4LA12: punctuation signalling dialogue through quotation marks, with the conventions for capitals, commas and boundary punctuation. Year 4 punctuation is almost entirely dialogue, so unfinished apostrophe work from Year 3 never gets revisited.
• AC9E3LY09 to AC9E3LY12 become AC9E4LY09 to AC9E4LY11, which add double letters, spelling generalisations, morphological word families, common prefixes and suffixes and word origins, plus homophones with context as the disambiguator.
• AC9E3LY08 becomes AC9E4LY08, joined letters with developing fluency and automaticity. Year 3 is the last year handwriting is about formation.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: the verb, then the clause. AC9E3LA07 first, as three or four short lessons naming doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating verbs, because everything else in the grammar thread needs the child to find the verb. Then AC9E3LA06 on the clause and subject–verb agreement, with the two-word test. AC9E3LY09 and AC9E3LY11 on multisyllabic words from Week 1, because the spelling load only grows. AC9E3LY08 joined handwriting introduced now, while there is a full year to make it automatic. AC9E3LY02 and AC9E3LA01 inside routines.
2. Term 2: paragraphs, both directions. AC9E3LA04 taught from reading first, summarising each paragraph of a short information text in one line, then reversed into three-line plans. AC9E3LY06 with the plan constrained and ticked, one paragraph per line. AC9E3LA08 tense, taught as anchoring rather than endings, with the fortnightly whole-text conversion. AC9E3LY10 spelling generalisations, one rule at a time: doubling, dropping the silent e, then y to i. Add AC9E3LA03 and AC9E3LY03.
3. Term 3: effect and evaluation. AC9E3LE03 and AC9E3LE04 together, device as cause and mood as effect. AC9E3LA02 modality introduced here, because must and might are easiest to feel in a persuasive piece the child cares about. AC9E3LY05 with the evaluation clause taught as a fixed question after reading. AC9E3LY01 on the same purpose for different audiences. AC9E3LA11 apostrophes, contractions only this term. Add AC9E3LA05 and AC9E3LA09.
4. Term 4: publishing, and possession. AC9E3LY06 taken through to publish with a real audience, form and layout as deliberate decisions. AC9E3LY07 presentations with structure, elaboration and voice. AC9E3LE05 creating and editing by adapting a plot structure rather than just a style. AC9E3LA11 possession, taught now and taught separately from the contraction work in Term 3. AC9E3LA10 vocabulary with a focus on words that mean different things in maths and science. AC9E3LY12 homophones.

The non-obvious choice is splitting AC9E3LA11 across two terms. Contractions and possession share an apostrophe and nothing else, and teaching them in the same fortnight is the direct cause of the plural apostrophe that then survives into secondary school. Term 3 for missing letters, Term 4 for ownership, with the two never mentioned in the same lesson.

Six checks before Year 4

• Hand them a piece of their own writing and ask for a heading for each paragraph. Hesitation, or two paragraphs that would take the same heading, means AC9E3LA04 is being met as formatting. Reteach from reading: summarise someone else’s paragraphs first.
• Ask to see the plan for their last piece. No plan, a plan longer than three lines, or a plan in full sentences all point at the planning verb in AC9E3LY06. Reteach with the three-line, six-word constraint and the ticking routine.
• Read them a six-sentence recount of their own and ask them to say it in the present tense. Drift back into the past mid-way means AC9E3LA08 has not landed as anchoring. Reteach with whole-text conversion, not with verb endings.
• “The group of children in my class ___ going.” Were means the child is agreeing with the nearest noun rather than the subject, which is AC9E3LA06. Reteach the two-word strip test, after checking they can find the verb at all (AC9E3LA07).
• Dictate hopping, hoping and carried. These are the three suffix generalisations in AC9E3LY10 in one line. Each error names its own rule to reteach: doubling, dropping the silent e, and y to i.
• After a read-aloud, ask whether the writer did a good job and why. An answer about whether they liked it is the Year 2 response; an answer about what the writer did is the evaluation clause of AC9E3LY05. Reteach by asking the two questions in order: what is this text for, and did it do that.

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 class program or a homeschool registration portfolio, record the code on the activity as you go. “Writing” tells a reviewer nothing; “AC9E3LA04, three-line paragraph plan for an information report, 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. Victorian readers want the VC2 codes instead, and the differences between the two frameworks are larger in English than in maths; NSW readers should start with how the NSW syllabuses are structured, since Year 3 sits inside Stage 2 and the outcomes are coarser than these descriptions. Next year is Year 4 English, where these paragraphs get connected to each other. The companion guide to every Year 3 Maths code covers the other half of the year.

Year 3 is the year the writing task gets long enough that the child’s interest in the topic starts to matter more than their skill. A three-paragraph information report is genuinely hard work at eight, and a child who does not care what the report is about will produce three paragraphs of nothing. Using an interest as the way in costs nothing in curriculum terms, because AC9E3LA04 is met identically whether the three paragraphs are about the water cycle or about a video game. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these 28 codes, pitched at Year 3 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.

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