Level 3 English: Every Victorian Curriculum Code, Explained

Level 3 English in the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 is 30 content descriptions, VC2E3LA01 through VC2E3LY13. The national curriculum uses 28 for the same year. Two extra codes does not sound like much, and the two Victoria adds are both worth having: modal verbs get their own descriptor, and editing gets its own descriptor.

The more consequential difference is a word that is missing rather than one that is added. Search the entire Victorian English curriculum, Foundation to Level 10, for the word plan. It does not appear. Neither does publish. The national curriculum names both in a single Year 3 descriptor. Level 3 is the level Victorian students are first asked to group ideas into paragraphs, and it is the level at which a Victorian program built strictly from the descriptors will contain no planning step at all. This is a working guide to all 30 codes: what the Victorian cut is telling you, the three codes that decide Level 4, a term-by-term order, and six checks worth running before December.

What changes this level

Three shifts, and the first is the one that separates a Victorian program from a national one.

The paragraph arrives, and nothing tells you to plan it. VC2E3LA04 says a paragraph is one of the structural building blocks of a written text, and that its job is to hold related information together. VC2E3LY11 then asks students to produce texts across the three purposes with their ideas gathered into simple paragraphs. Between those two codes there is no planning verb, because there is no planning verb anywhere in Victorian English. The national AC9E3LY06 says plan, create, edit and publish. Victoria says create (VC2E3LY11) and edit (VC2E3LY12), and stops. This is not an oversight to be indignant about, it is a boundary decision: Victoria treats planning as pedagogy rather than as content. It does mean the step where paragraphing is actually decided has to be put on your program by you, because the curriculum will never prompt you for it.

Modality gets its own code. Nationally, modal verbs are a parenthetical inside AC9E3LA02, the code about the language of evaluation and emotion. Victoria splits them out. VC2E3LA02 keeps the more-or-less-forceful idea, and VC2E3LA09 stands alone: modal verbs indicate obligation, probability and possibility. Naming three functions rather than one scale is a real improvement, and it is the difference between a class that can move a sentence from should to must and a class that understands why must means two completely different things in you must go and it must be raining.

Analysis arrives properly, and evaluation does not. VC2E2LY10 asked students to begin to analyse texts. VC2E3LY10 drops the hedge and asks for analysis outright, drawing on what the student now knows about context, structure and language features. The national AC9E3LY05 does not say analyse at Year 3, it says begin to evaluate. Victoria’s evaluating clause does not arrive until VC2E4LY09. So the two frameworks cross over at exactly this point: Victoria is a year ahead on analysis and a year behind on evaluation, and a program converted in either direction will carry the wrong verb.

Handwriting also changes model at VC2E3LY13, which moves to joined script, well formed and even in size.

The level at a glance

Language gained two codes on Level 2 and Literacy stayed at thirteen. Both facts point the same way: Level 3 is a level of knowledge about how language works, applied through the same number of doing codes as the level before.

Reading the codes, and the ordering

The pattern is VC2 + E + level + strand + number, so VC2E3LA04 is Level 3, Language, fourth description. LA is Language, LE is Literature, LY is Literacy. Victoria says level rather than year.

Two things about the numbering are worth knowing before you plan.

First, the Language strand happens to line up with the national one for the first eight codes, including the important one: VC2E3LA04 and AC9E3LA04 are both paragraphs. The insertion of modality at VC2E3LA09 then pushes everything after it out by one, so VC2E3LA10 is images and sound, VC2E3LA11 is vocabulary, VC2E3LA12 is apostrophes. If you are converting a national program, the Language strand is safe to map straight across up to LA08 and unsafe after it.

Second, the Literacy strand is in teaching order rather than in the national order, exactly as it was at Level 2. VC2E3LY03 to LY06 are the code-breaking chain: phoneme–grapheme knowledge and blending for multisyllabic words, then base words with prefixes and suffixes and the generalisations for adding one, then less common letter patterns for spelling, then high-frequency words and homophones. The national curriculum numbers the same four block at AC9E3LY09 to AC9E3LY12, at the end of the strand. Victoria puts them at the front because that is when you teach them. Follow the numbers.

Strand by strand

Language (VC2E3LA01 to VC2E3LA12)

Twelve descriptions, in four groups.

The interpersonal and evaluative group is VC2E3LA01, VC2E3LA02 and VC2E3LA09: cooperation depending on shared social conventions including turn-taking language that varies with formality; how evaluative and emotional language can be dialled up or down in force; and modal verbs indicating obligation, probability and possibility. Teach the last two together and teach them late, once there is a piece of persuasive writing for them to live in.

The text-structure group is VC2E3LA03, VC2E3LA04, VC2E3LA05 and VC2E3LA10: how different text types across the curriculum use different language features and structures for their purpose; paragraphs; the purpose of layout features and navigation words in print and digital texts; and how images and sound add to what a text means. That last code is another quiet Victorian addition, matching VC2E2LA08 at Level 2, where the national AC9E3LA09 covers images only. The cheapest way to meet it honestly is one lesson on a short video watched twice, once with the sound off.

VC2E3LA03 is the code that lets you count science and humanities writing as English evidence, which is worth doing deliberately in a crowded level.

The grammar group is VC2E3LA06, VC2E3LA07 and VC2E3LA08, and all three are about the verb: the clause as a grammatical unit that normally holds a subject and a verb, which have to agree with each other; verbs representing processes for doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating; and verbs anchored in time through tense. Three descriptions on one word class in one level is the curriculum flagging that the verb is now load-bearing, and it is not a coincidence that this is the level tense drift starts wrecking recounts.

VC2E3LA07 is the partner code most planners miss. On its own the list of verb processes reads like taxonomy. In practice it is what makes the other two teachable, because subject–verb agreement 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 also explains why information reports are full of relating verbs and narratives are full of doing and saying verbs, which turns VC2E3LA03 from an assertion into something observable on the page.

Vocabulary and punctuation are VC2E3LA11 and VC2E3LA12. VC2E3LA11 extends topic-specific and technical vocabulary and adds that words can mean different things in different contexts, which is the half with teeth: table, volume, difference and property all mean something specific in maths or science and something else at home. VC2E3LA12 is treated properly below, because Victoria asks for more here than the national curriculum does.

Literature (VC2E3LE01 to VC2E3LE05)

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

VC2E3LE03 is the pivot: how a writer’s words and an illustrator’s pictures construct a plot and present characters and places, and how setting and events together generate mood. Mood is new, and it is the first time students are asked about something a text produces in a reader rather than something a text contains. Build plots is also new, and it is a phrase the national AC9E3LE03 does not use: Victoria expects plot to be discussed as something constructed, not just as what happened.

VC2E3LE04 supplies the tools, naming rhythm and onomatopoeia in poetry and prose and asking how they shape the reader’s reaction. Teach it alongside VC2E3LE03: the device is the cause and the mood is the effect, and a Level 3 child can hold that relationship if it is presented as one idea rather than two units.

VC2E3LE02 asks for connections between personal experiences and character experiences with reasons for preferences. The Level 2 version compared features across texts; Level 3 wants the connection to be about experience rather than surface similarity, and wants a reason attached.

VC2E3LE05 is the strand’s output: creating texts that borrow or rework the language features, characters, settings, plot structures and ideas of the literature students have met. Plot structures is the addition. Level 2 adapted structures and language features; Level 3 expects the shape of the plot itself to be borrowed on purpose.

VC2E3LE01 carries the requirement for texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and illustrators, extended this level with in different contexts, which is a nudge towards more than one text and more than one kind of text across the year.

Literacy (VC2E3LY01 to VC2E3LY13)

Thirteen descriptions, and the numbering groups them for you.

The oral pair is VC2E3LY01 and VC2E3LY02: interaction skills for sharing text- or topic-based information and ideas, and performing a spoken text for listeners, using the voice itself as the tool. Note how short VC2E3LY02 is. The national AC9E3LY07 is a full presentation code (plan, create, rehearse and deliver, with structure, elaborating detail, precise vocabulary, visual features and tone, pace, pitch and volume). Victoria’s is delivery only, because the composing half has been moved: VC2E3LY11 covers narrative, informative and persuasive texts written and spoken. The Victorian spoken text is therefore built at LY11 and performed at LY02, two codes at opposite ends of the strand, and the two have to be joined on your program because the curriculum does not join them.

The code-breaking chain is VC2E3LY03 to VC2E3LY06, in the order you teach them: phoneme–grapheme correspondences, syllables and blending and segmenting for multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns; base words, prefixes, suffixes and the generalisations for adding a suffix; less common letter patterns for spelling; then most high-frequency words including some homophones.

VC2E3LY04 is the one to watch. Level 2 built word families; Level 3 adds the the generalisations that govern what happens to a base word when a suffix is attached, which is the rule layer: when to double the final consonant, when to drop the silent e, when y becomes i. Three rules, roughly six weeks of teaching, and they account for a large share of Level 3 and Level 4 spelling errors.

Reading and analysis is VC2E3LY07 to VC2E3LY10: reading different text types with phonic, semantic and grammatical knowledge, accurately and fluently, re-reading and self-correcting; how two texts written for the same purpose can be aimed at different readers; identifying purpose and audience through language features and images; and comprehension strategies used to analyse texts and build literal and inferred meanings. VC2E3LY10 is the code that carries the Level 2 analysis clause forward without its hedge.

Output is VC2E3LY11, VC2E3LY12 and VC2E3LY13: creating texts across the three purposes, in writing and in speech, with the ideas gathered into simple paragraphs and with precise, topic-specific word choice and multimodal elements where they help; re-reading and editing for meaning, appropriate structure, grammatical choices and punctuation; and joined handwriting that is well formed and even in size.

VC2E3LY12 is worth reading next to the Level 2 version. At Level 2 editing meant spelling, sentence boundary punctuation and text structure, which is proofreading. At Level 3 it means meaning, appropriate structure, grammatical choices and punctuation, which is revision. That is a genuine promotion, and it is invisible if editing is only ever practised as a tidy-up at the end of a piece.

The three codes that decide Level 4

VC2E3LY11: the level asks for paragraphs and never mentions planning

The misconception: that because VC2E3LY11 does not name a planning step, the code is met by any piece of writing that arrives on the page in paragraph-shaped chunks. The code asks for ideas grouped in simple paragraphs. Grouping is a decision, and a decision made while writing a sentence is not a decision about the paragraph it belongs to. There is no Victorian code that will remind you of this, which is exactly why it needs to be on the program in your own words.

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 Level 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 usually marked as having met VC2E3LY11, 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 from reading first. Take a short information text that is already well paragraphed, cover it, and show only your own one-line summaries of each paragraph, so the child sees that the summaries are the plan. Then reverse it: three one-line topics of no more than six words each, written before any writing starts, one paragraph per line, ticked as each is finished. The constraint is what stops the plan turning into a draft, and the tick is what makes it a tool rather than a separate task to be completed and abandoned. Our deep dive on VC2E3LY11 and how sentences become paragraphs works through a four-week sequence for exactly this code. Its direct ancestor is VC2E2LA04 (cohesion built from pronouns, and from leaving out what a reader can infer), so a child who cannot track a pronoun across two sentences will not group ideas across six.

VC2E3LA12: Victoria asks for irregular possession

VC2E3LA12 covers apostrophes signalling missing letters in contractions, and apostrophes showing possession for both singular and plural owners, including irregular nouns. That last clause is Victorian. The national AC9E3LA11 says singular and plural possession and stops. Irregular nouns are a genuine extra demand at this level, and they are demanded in the same descriptor as contractions, which compounds the problem below.

The misconception: that plural possession is a position rule, taught as “the apostrophe goes after the s”. It works for every regular plural a child meets in Level 3, which is why it gets taught, and it fails on every irregular one. The actual rule is that the apostrophe goes after the whole plural word, and children is already the whole plural word.

What you will see: childrens’, mens’, peoples’. The child has applied the after-the-s rule faithfully and had to invent an s to apply it to. That is a taught error rather than a careless one, and it is durable: it survives into secondary school more reliably than almost anything else in primary punctuation. The other tell is the reverse, dog’s written for a plain plural, which comes from teaching contraction and possession in the same fortnight.

The fix: split the code across two terms and teach the two uses in the right order. Contractions first, and alone, because they are a different job that happens to share a mark. Possession much later, taught as a two-step question rather than a position: who owns it, and is that word already plural? Write the owner, then add the apostrophe, then add an s only if there is not one there yet. Children plus apostrophe plus s gives children’s, and the child can see the step that produced it. Never mention contractions in a possession lesson.

VC2E3LA09: modality has two axes, not one dial

VC2E3LA09 is a standalone Victorian code: modal verbs indicate obligation, probability and possibility. The national curriculum mentions modal verbs only as an example inside AC9E3LA02. Having the code to itself is worth using properly.

The misconception: that modality is a single strength dial running from might up to must, so the lesson is to rank the words and use the strong ones in persuasive writing. Rank them and you will get sentences that are forceful and wrong. The code names three functions because must does two entirely different jobs: you must go is obligation, it must be raining is probability. Same word, opposite direction, and nothing in a strength ranking tells a child which one they have written.

What you will see: persuasive writing in which every modal verb has been pushed to maximum, so an argument that should hedge does not. “Everyone must agree that dogs are the best pet and it must be true.” The second must is a probability claim being made at obligation strength, which is why the sentence reads as shouting rather than arguing. The other signal is the opposite: a child who writes only can and will, because the probability half was never named and so nothing exists between certain and impossible.

The fix: sort before you rank. Give twelve sentences and two columns headed this is about what someone has to do and this is about how likely something is. Modal verbs appear in both columns, which is the point of the lesson. Only once the sort is reliable do you introduce strength, and then only within a column. Then connect it to VC2E3LA02 by taking one sentence and moving it along its own column, three versions, weakest to strongest, with the child saying what changed. Twenty minutes, and it is the piece of Level 3 grammar that pays off most directly in Level 4 and Level 5 persuasive writing.

What students need to arrive with

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

• VC2E2LA04 (holding a text together with personal and possessive pronouns, and by dropping the words a reader can infer without help). This is the direct ancestor of VC2E3LA04 and the one most often missing, because it is the Level 2 code most often skipped. It is the only Level 2 code that works between sentences rather than inside one.
• VC2E2LA06 (the compound sentence, two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction). VC2E3LA06 looks inside the clause and assumes the child can already find one. Without it, subject–verb agreement is being taught on an invisible unit.
• VC2E2LY06 (building morphemic word families from prefixes and suffixes). VC2E3LY04 adds the rules governing what happens when a suffix is attached, and rules have to be about something. If the something is not there, the rules are arbitrary.
• VC2E2LY04 (vowel digraphs, the rarer long vowel spellings, blended consonants and silent letters). VC2E3LY03 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. VC2E2LA04 is the one to check first and the one nobody thinks to check, because it does not look like a prerequisite for paragraphs until the two codes are read side by side.

What this level sets up

• VC2E3LA04 becomes VC2E4LA04: text connectives, both the time words and the conditional ones, plus topic word associations, used to order ideas and tie them together. Level 3 groups ideas into paragraphs; Level 4 joins the paragraphs to each other. A child who never got the containers has nothing to connect.
• VC2E3LA06 becomes VC2E4LA06: the complex sentence, one independent clause plus at least one dependent clause, hooked on by a subordinating conjunction so that a relationship such as time or cause is expressed. Level 2 joined two equal clauses, Level 3 defined one, Level 4 subordinates one to another. Three levels, one thread, and it only works in order.
• VC2E3LA09 becomes VC2E4LA02, identifying and differentiating the language of opinion, facts and feelings. Level 3 sorts modal verbs by function; Level 4 sorts whole statements. The modality work is what makes the Level 4 distinction possible.
• VC2E3LA12 becomes VC2E4LA11: punctuation signalling dialogue through quotation marks, with conventions for capitals, commas and boundary punctuation. Level 4 punctuation is almost entirely dialogue, so unfinished apostrophe work never gets revisited.
• VC2E3LY11 becomes VC2E4LY10, which drops the word paragraph and asks instead for relevant, linked ideas for a range of audiences. Paragraphing is assumed from Level 4 onward, not taught again.
• VC2E3LY12 becomes VC2E4LY11, where editing becomes explicitly surgical: words and word groups get added, cut or shifted to improve what the text says and how it is built. That is the first time a Victorian code tells a student to move text rather than fix it.
• VC2E3LY10 becomes VC2E4LY09, which adds begin to evaluate. Analysis is Level 3, evaluation is Level 4, and the two are not the same question.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: the verb, then the clause, and contractions. VC2E3LA07 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 VC2E3LA06 on the clause and subject–verb agreement. VC2E3LY03 and VC2E3LY05 on multisyllabic words from Week 1, since the spelling load only grows. VC2E3LA12 contractions only, this term and no other. VC2E3LY13 joined handwriting introduced now, while a full year remains to make it automatic. VC2E3LY01 and VC2E3LA01 inside routines.
2. Term 2: paragraphs, both directions, with a planning step you add. VC2E3LA04 taught from reading first, summarising each paragraph of a short information text in one line, then reversed into three-line plans. VC2E3LY11 with the plan constrained to six words a line and ticked, one paragraph per line. Write the planning step onto the program explicitly, because no code will do it for you. VC2E3LA08 tense taught as anchoring rather than endings. VC2E3LY04 spelling generalisations, one rule at a time: doubling, dropping the silent e, then y to i. Add VC2E3LA03 and VC2E3LY09.
3. Term 3: effect, analysis and modality. VC2E3LE03 and VC2E3LE04 together, device as cause and mood as effect. VC2E3LA09 modality introduced here, taught as a sort into two columns before any ranking, with VC2E3LA02 attached to it once the sort is reliable, inside a persuasive piece the child actually cares about. VC2E3LY10 with analysis installed as a fixed question after reading. VC2E3LY08 on similar purposes for different audiences. Add VC2E3LA05 and VC2E3LA10.
4. Term 4: editing as a taught skill, and possession. VC2E3LY12 run as its own block of lessons with one named target per pass, because at Level 3 it means revision rather than proofreading and it will not become that by accident. VC2E3LY02 spoken delivery, using a text built under VC2E3LY11 so the two codes meet. VC2E3LE05 creating by adapting a plot structure rather than just a style. VC2E3LA12 possession, taught now, taught as the two-step question, and never mentioned in the same lesson as the Term 1 contraction work. VC2E3LA11 vocabulary with a focus on words that mean different things in maths and science. VC2E3LY06 homophones.

The non-obvious choice is putting the widest gap possible between the two halves of VC2E3LA12. Contractions and possession share an apostrophe and share nothing else, and teaching them in the same fortnight is the direct cause of the plural apostrophe error. Term 1 for missing letters, Term 4 for ownership. Victoria’s addition of irregular nouns makes the second half harder than the national version, which is another reason to give it a term of its own rather than a week at the end of a punctuation unit.

Six checks before Level 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 VC2E3LY11 is being met as formatting. Reteach from reading: summarise someone else’s paragraphs first, then plan in three lines.
• Dictate “the children’s coats” and “the girls’ coats”. Childrens’ means the after-the-s rule has been taught as a position, which is the irregular-noun half of VC2E3LA12. Reteach as write the owner, add the apostrophe, add an s only if there is not one already.
• “You must wear a hat” and “It must be lunchtime”: ask what must is doing in each. The same answer for both means VC2E3LA09 has been taught as a strength dial. Reteach with the two-column sort before any ranking.
• 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 VC2E3LA08 has not landed as anchoring. Reteach with whole-text conversion, not with verb endings.
• Dictate hopping, hoping and carried. These are the three suffix generalisations in VC2E3LY04 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 what the writer did to make it work. A retell of what happened is inferred meaning, which VC2E3LY10 also wants, and it is not the analysis half. An answer about structure (it started with a question, it repeated the same word three times) is. Reteach by asking two fixed questions in order: what is this text for, and what did the writer do to make that work.

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. “Writing” tells a reviewer nothing; “VC2E3LY11, three-line paragraph plan for an information report, 12 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 3 English in the Australian Curriculum, where the differences described above run in both directions, and the differences between the two frameworks are larger in English than in maths. In NSW the same content sits inside Stage 2 English, which covers Years 3 and 4 as one stage with eleven outcomes. The companion post on every Level 3 Maths code covers the other half of the level.

Level 3 is the level 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 VC2E3LA04 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 30 codes, pitched at Level 3 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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