Level 5 English: Every Victorian Curriculum Code, Explained

Level 5 English in the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 is 26 content descriptions, VC2E5LA01 through VC2E5LY12. The national curriculum uses 24 for the same year, and for once the Language strands line up almost exactly: nine codes each, in the same order, covering the same content. The whole of the difference is in Literacy, and it is worth having.

The two extra Victorian codes are editing (VC2E5LY11) and handwriting (VC2E5LY12), and the editing one is the most useful descriptor in the level. It asks students to edit their own texts and the texts of others, against agreed criteria. Nationally, editing is one verb inside AC9E5LY06 and it never says whose text or against what. The Victorian version turns editing into peer review with a rubric, which is a different skill and a bigger one. This is a working guide to all 26 codes: where Victoria sits above the national curriculum and where it sits below, the three codes that decide Level 6, a term-by-term order, and six checks worth running before December.

What changes this level

Three shifts, plus one deadline that is invisible unless you read forward.

Assertion is no longer enough. VC2E5LA02 asks students to move past bare assertions by taking account of differing ideas or opinions and of authoritative sources. Level 4 asked them to tell opinion from fact from feeling, which is a sorting job done on somebody else’s text. Level 5 asks them to change what they write because of it. Two mechanisms are named and they are different: acknowledging a competing view, and citing an authority. A Level 5 student who can do neither is writing the same persuasive text they wrote at Level 3 with longer words.

Cohesion moves from words to position. VC2E4LA04 was text connectives and topic word associations. VC2E5LA04 is about how a text is sequenced and held together by using the starting point of a sentence or paragraph to give prominence to the message and steer the reader through it. Nothing gets added to the sentence. What changes is the order of what is already in it. This is the most abstract grammatical idea in primary English and it is not the same thing as a topic sentence.

Editing becomes other people’s work, judged against criteria. VC2E4LY11 made editing a code and gave it three verbs, including the one children never use on their own, which is moving text. VC2E5LY11 keeps that and adds two things: the texts of others, and agreed criteria for text structures and language features. That is a jump from revision to peer review, and both halves need teaching.

The deadline: VC2E5LA09 is the last apostrophe descriptor in the curriculum. It covers commas marking prepositional phrases, and apostrophes where there is multiple possession in regular and irregular nouns. Apostrophes appear at VC2E3LA12 and then here, and nowhere else in Victorian English F–10. Level 4 had no apostrophe code at all, so unfinished Level 3 work has already sat untouched for twelve months, and this is the last time a descriptor will ask about it. Victoria also asks for more than the national version does, which names multiple possession and stops: the irregular-noun clause is Victorian, exactly as it was at Level 3.

The level at a glance

Language dropped from twelve codes to nine and Literacy held at twelve. Nothing was compressed to make room in Language: the content genuinely left.

Reading the codes, and what left

The pattern is VC2 + E + level + strand + number, so VC2E5LA04 is Level 5, Language, fourth description. LA is Language, LE is Literature, LY is Literacy. Victoria says level rather than year.

The Level 4 numbering diverged from the national set after LA06. At Level 5 it converges again: VC2E5LA01 to LA09 map one for one onto AC9E5LA01 to LA09, with four wording differences worth knowing. Victoria adds sequenced to the cohesion code at LA04. Victoria says independent clause where the national LA05 says main clause, which is the terminology Victoria has used since Level 2. Victoria adds the use of sound to the image sequence code at LA07, as it has done at every level since Level 2. And Victoria’s LA08 stops at specialist and technical terms where the national version adds exploring the history of words.

That last one is a redistribution rather than an omission. Etymology is in the Victorian curriculum, but it is in the spelling code: VC2E5LY04 names word origins explicitly as etymology, and so do VC2E4LY04 and VC2E6LY04. Victoria treats word history as a tool for spelling; the national curriculum treats it as a tool for spelling and for vocabulary. If you want etymology doing vocabulary work in a Victorian program, teach it there deliberately, because the Language strand will not ask.

Three Level 4 Language codes have no Level 5 successor, and two of them matter.

• Tense is gone. VC2E4LA08 was past, present and future tense and its impact on meaning. There is no Level 5 tense code and no mention of tense inside VC2E5LY10. It returns at VC2E6LA06 as elaborated tenses, which is considerably harder. Level 5 is a gap year for tense, and tense drift in extended writing will not be flagged by any descriptor.
• Dialogue is gone entirely. VC2E4LA11 and VC2E4LA12 covered the punctuation and the choice between quoted and reported speech. Neither has a Level 5 successor, and unlike the national curriculum, Victoria does not even name dialogue punctuation inside its writing code. If Level 4 dialogue work was thin, nothing at Level 5 will surface it.
• Navigation features are gone, and nothing replaces them. Victoria ran a navigation code at every level from 1 to 4 and stops at VC2E4LA05. The national curriculum swaps its Year 4 navigation code for AC9E5LY04, which asks students to navigate and read texts for specific purposes using skimming, scanning and confirming. Victoria has no equivalent. There is no code anywhere in Victorian English F–10 that names skimming or scanning, so research reading is a habit you install yourself or one the students do not get.

Strand by strand

Language (VC2E5LA01 to VC2E5LA09)

Nine descriptions, in four groups.

The stance group is VC2E5LA01 and VC2E5LA02: language selected for social context to signal roles and relationships, and moving past bare assertions.

VC2E5LA02 is the level’s headline and the commonest way to miss it is to accept a reason as evidence. Dogs are better pets because they are friendly has a reason and no source, and takes no account of anyone who disagrees. It is the same assertion with a dependent clause attached. Teach the two named mechanisms separately, and give each a frame that forces the missing half. For sources: According to plus a name plus what they said, with the rule that the name has to be something a reader could go and check. Start with sources the class made, since according to our survey of 24 students is authoritative, checkable and needs no library. For differing opinions, insist on three parts rather than two: some people say X, because Y, but Z. The but Z is what children leave off, and it is the difference between a concession and an argument. The Year 5 code set in the national curriculum works the same code through in more detail, and the misconceptions are identical in both frameworks.

The text-structure group is VC2E5LA03 and VC2E5LA04: how text types are organised into characteristic stages and phases for their purpose, and how texts are sequenced and made cohesive through the starting point of a sentence or paragraph. The addition of phases to Level 4’s stages is a small word doing real work: a stage is a block with a job (orientation, complication, resolution), a phase is a move inside a stage, and it is the vocabulary that lets a student say what is happening in the middle of a long section.

VC2E5LA04 is the hardest code of the level. It is not topic sentences. Topic sentences are about which sentence goes at the start of a paragraph; this is about what goes at the start of each sentence, because whatever sits at the front is what the sentence announces itself to be about. The one-minute diagnostic: write down the first four words of every sentence in a paragraph and look at the list. In good writing each sentence starts with something the previous one introduced. If the list has no pattern, the paragraph keeps changing the subject even when the content is consistent, and adding connectives will not fix it.

The grammar group is VC2E5LA05, VC2E5LA06 and VC2E5LA09: the complex sentence as an independent clause plus at least one dependent clause and how writers use that structure for effect; expanding noun groups in a variety of ways to describe a person, place, thing or idea more fully; and commas for prepositional phrases plus apostrophes for multiple possession in regular and irregular nouns.

VC2E5LA06 is the partner code most planners miss. It reads like description practice and it is the engine behind three other codes. A precise noun group is how specialist vocabulary from VC2E5LA08 actually gets into a sentence, it is what a literary image is built out of before any comparison is applied at VC2E5LE04, and it is what the elaborated ideas of VC2E5LY10 are made of. Expanding the dog into the old greyhound from next door is a grammatical operation and a writing improvement in the same move, which is rare enough to build a term around.

Vocabulary and images are VC2E5LA07 and VC2E5LA08: how the sequence of still and moving images and the use of sound affect meaning, and how vocabulary carries greater precision, including specialist and technical terms. VC2E5LA07 is a real step from Level 4, which was about composition inside a single image; Level 5 is about order across several, which is the grammar of comics, storyboards and film. The sound clause is Victorian and it is met honestly by one clip watched twice, once without it.

Literature (VC2E5LE01 to VC2E5LE05)

Five descriptions, and the change from Level 4 is that literature acquires a technical vocabulary and a viewpoint.

VC2E5LE03 is the new idea: recognising that the point of view in a literary text influences how readers interpret and respond to plots, characters and events. Level 4 asked how a writer built tension. Level 5 asks whose eyes the reader is looking through and what that does. It is the first Victorian code that treats a text as a partial account of something rather than as the account, and it is the direct ancestor of the bias work at VC2E6LA02.

VC2E5LE02 is treated in full below, because the word it uses appears nowhere else.

VC2E5LE04 asks students to compare the effects of imagery, including simile, metaphor and personification, and sound devices, across prose and poetry. Two things are worth noting. The first is that simile, metaphor and personification do not appear anywhere in Victorian English before this code, so Level 5 is where figurative language arrives by name. The second is the verb: Victoria says compare, where the national AC9E5LE04 says examine. Comparison means two texts rather than one, and it is the harder task, because it requires the student to have an account of the effect in the first text before the second one can be measured against it.

The substitution test is what makes that account possible. Take the line, replace the image with a plain version, read both aloud, and ask what is lost. The sea was like glass against the sea was very flat: the plain version loses the stillness, the hardness and the sense that something could break. A student does not need the word connotation to notice that, and once they have noticed it twice they stop giving definitions as answers.

VC2E5LE05 is the strand’s output: creating texts, experimenting with vocabulary, figurative language, storylines, characters and settings drawn from the literature students have met. Note that Victoria says create and stops, because editing has its own code at VC2E5LY11. The national version says create and edit in the same descriptor. Note also that Victoria adds vocabulary to the list of things to experiment with, which quietly links this code back to VC2E5LA06 and VC2E5LA08.

VC2E5LE01 carries the requirement for texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, extended this level to identifying the aspects of a text that represent historical, cultural and social contexts, which is a shift from responding to a text towards reading it as evidence of a time and place.

Literacy (VC2E5LY01 to VC2E5LY12)

Twelve descriptions, and the numbering groups them for you.

The oral pair is VC2E5LY01 and VC2E5LY02: interaction skills including paraphrasing and questioning to clarify meaning, making connections to personal experience or to a text, and presenting and justifying an opinion; and delivering structured spoken and multimodal texts to an audience for a specific purpose using the features of voice. As at Levels 3 and 4, VC2E5LY02 is delivery only and the composing half lives at VC2E5LY10, at the other end of the strand. The national AC9E5LY07 keeps planning, creating, rehearsing and delivering in one descriptor. In Victoria you join them yourself.

The spelling chain is VC2E5LY03, VC2E5LY04 and VC2E5LY05: phonological, morphological and vocabulary knowledge used on words that share letter patterns but not pronunciations; building and spelling new words from known words, base words, prefixes and suffixes, word origins, letter patterns and generalisations; and less common plurals plus how a suffix changes the meaning or grammatical form of a word.

That last clause in VC2E5LY05 is the new content and it is bigger than it looks. A suffix that changes grammatical form is derivational morphology: happy to happiness turns an adjective into a noun, agree to agreement turns a verb into one. It is what makes the specialist vocabulary of VC2E5LA08 learnable in families rather than one word at a time, and it is the beginning of the academic vocabulary secondary school runs on. Teach it in the same fortnight as VC2E5LA08 and both codes get easier.

Reading and comprehension is VC2E5LY06 to VC2E5LY09: reading increasingly complex text types with phonic, semantic and grammatical knowledge integrated, accurately and fluently, re-reading and self-correcting; describing the ways a text reflects the time and place it was made in; explaining the characteristic features a text uses to meet its purpose and audience; and comprehension strategies used to evaluate information and ideas while building literal and inferred meaning.

VC2E5LY06 is a Victorian code with no national counterpart at this year level. The national curriculum retires its accuracy-and-fluency reading descriptor after Year 4 and replaces it with the skimming and scanning code. Victoria keeps fluency named at Level 5 and again at Level 6, and never introduces the research strategies at all. That is a straight trade, and it is worth knowing which side of it you are on: a Victorian program has a descriptor telling you to keep listening to children read, and no descriptor telling you to teach them how to find something.

VC2E5LY09 drops the hedge that Level 4 carried. VC2E4LY09 said begin to evaluate; VC2E5LY09 asks for evaluation outright. The national curriculum made that move a year earlier, so Level 5 is where the two frameworks come back into line on comprehension after crossing over at Level 4.

Output is VC2E5LY10, VC2E5LY11 and VC2E5LY12: creating different text types in writing and in speech with relevant, elaborated and sequenced ideas, with a text structure appropriate for topic, purpose and audience and multimodal elements where they help; editing against agreed criteria; and writing legibly, fluently and automatically.

VC2E5LY10 is worth reading against Level 4, which asked for relevant, linked ideas. Linked means the ideas connect. Elaborated and sequenced means each one is developed and they are in a deliberate order, which is a substantially higher bar and is exactly what VC2E5LA04 and VC2E5LA06 exist to make possible. And note, once more, what no Victorian descriptor has ever said: there is no plan and no publish anywhere in Victorian English, Foundation to Level 10. Victoria gives you create and edit. The planning and publishing steps go on your program in your own words or they do not happen.

VC2E5LY12 keeps handwriting alive at legible, fluent and automatic. The national curriculum stopped at Year 4: AC9E4LY08 is its last handwriting descriptor. Victoria names it again at Level 6 with the addition of sustained periods.

The three codes that decide Level 6

VC2E5LY11: editing against criteria, and editing someone else’s work

The misconception: that peer editing is a classroom arrangement rather than a skill, so the code is met by pairing students up and asking them to check each other’s work. Read the descriptor: their own texts and the texts of others, using agreed criteria for text structures and language features. Two demands, and the criteria one is doing the heavier lifting. Without named criteria a peer edit is an exchange of opinions between two people at the same level, which produces politeness in one direction and hurt feelings in the other, and improves nothing.

What you will see: three shapes. The first is the compliment sandwich with no middle: “I like your story, maybe add more detail, it was really good.” The second is proofreading in disguise, where the peer editor circles spellings because spelling is the only thing they are confident is wrong, which also tells you the Level 4 relocation work at VC2E4LY11 did not land. The third is the one that looks like success and is not: a completed checklist with every box ticked and no annotation on the draft itself, which means the criteria were treated as a form rather than as a lens.

The fix: build the criteria with the class rather than handing them over, and keep them to three. The word agreed in the descriptor is doing real work: criteria the students helped write are criteria they can apply, and a rubric copied off a poster is not. Take two short pieces of writing on the same task, one that works and one that does not, ask what the difference is, and turn the three answers into the criteria. Then require the editor to quote: every comment has to point at a specific sentence and name which criterion it fails. No general comments, no compliments, three comments maximum. And run the first several rounds on anonymous writing from another class or a previous year, because the criteria have to be learned before the social cost of applying them to a friend is introduced. Only then move to real pairs, and have each student edit their own draft against the same three criteria first, so the code’s two halves stay connected.

VC2E5LA09: multiple possession, and Victoria adds the irregular nouns

VC2E5LA09 asks for commas marking prepositional phrases and apostrophes where there is multiple possession in regular and irregular nouns. That last clause is Victorian; the national AC9E5LA09 says multiple possession and stops. It is the same addition Victoria made at Level 3, and it means the Victorian version of this code is genuinely harder than the national one at both levels it appears.

The misconception: that plural possession is a position rule, taught as “the apostrophe goes after the s”. It works for every regular plural a student meets 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 student 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 the single most durable punctuation mistake in Australian schooling: it survives into Year 10 more reliably than almost anything else. If it is still there at the end of Level 5 it will very likely still be there at the end of school, because this is the last descriptor that asks.

The fix: teach it as a two-step question rather than a position. Write the owner, add the apostrophe, then add an s only if there is not one there already. Children plus apostrophe plus s gives children’s, and the student can see the step that produced it. Give it a fortnight in Term 4 and never mention contractions in the same lesson: they share a mark and share nothing else, and teaching them together is the direct cause of the error. Teach the comma half of the descriptor separately as well. It is a different job in the same code, it belongs with the noun group and phrase work from Term 1, and combining them just means one of the two gets ten minutes.

VC2E5LE02: metalanguage appears once in the entire curriculum

VC2E5LE02 asks students to form and share opinions on a literary text using metalanguage to describe relevant literary devices, text structures and language features across a range of literary texts. Search the whole of Victorian English, Foundation to Level 10, for that word. It appears exactly once, here. That is the curriculum marking the point at which talking about a text stops being allowed in everyday words.

The misconception: that metalanguage means using the technical terms, so the code is met when the words simile and metaphor appear in the answer. The word the descriptor puts next to it is relevant. Metalanguage is language for talking about language, and its job is to make an opinion precise. Terms dropped into an opinion that would read the same without them are decoration, and they are what this code most often produces.

What you will see: the term-plus-adjective sentence. “The author uses a simile, which makes it descriptive.” Every part of that is technically true and it says nothing, because the term is not connected to the opinion and the opinion is a placeholder. The second tell is the term used wrongly but confidently, usually metaphor applied to any vivid phrase, which happens when the vocabulary was taught as a list rather than through examples. The third is the opinion that abandons the metalanguage the moment it becomes an actual opinion: two sentences of correct terminology followed by “and I really liked it”.

The fix: require the term to be load-bearing, and test it by deletion. Take the student’s sentence, cross out the technical term, and see whether the sentence still means the same thing. If it does, the term was decoration. That is a thirty-second check a student can run on themselves, and it teaches the code better than any amount of explanation about precision.

Then give them a sentence frame that forces the connection: the writer uses [term] when [quote] which makes the reader [effect]. Three slots, and the third one is the opinion. A student who can fill all three has met VC2E5LE02 and has half of VC2E5LE04 as well, since the effect slot is exactly what the substitution test produces. Build the metalanguage from the codes the class has actually met rather than from a glossary: complex sentence and dependent clause from VC2E5LA05, noun group from VC2E5LA06, stage and phase from VC2E5LA03, imagery and personification from VC2E5LE04. Six terms used properly beats twenty recognised.

What students need to arrive with

The prerequisites are all in the Level 4 English code set, and four of them carry the level.

• VC2E4LA04 (text connectives and topic word associations). VC2E5LA04 works on where things go in a sentence, and there is nothing to position if the topic word chain was never built. The connectives half is a bonus; the chain half is the prerequisite.
• VC2E4LA06 (the complex sentence). VC2E5LA05 is the same structure used for effect. A student still producing fragments, or compound sentences labelled as complex, cannot be asked to deploy the structure deliberately.
• VC2E4LY11 (editing by adding, deleting or moving words and word groups). VC2E5LY11 adds criteria and other people’s texts on top. A student who has only ever proofread will peer-edit by circling spellings, which is the Level 4 gap showing up in a Level 5 task.
• VC2E3LA12 (apostrophes for contractions and for singular and plural possession, irregular nouns included). Yes, Level 3: there is no Level 4 apostrophe code, so this is a two-year-old prerequisite and it is the one most likely to be missing. Check it in February, because VC2E5LA09 is the last chance.

Check VC2E4LA07 as well if noun groups look shaky. The phrase work is what VC2E5LA06 expands, and the term noun group itself was last used years earlier.

What this level sets up

• VC2E5LA02 becomes VC2E6LA02: objective and subjective language, and identifying bias. Level 5 asks students to source their own claims; Level 6 asks them to notice when someone else has not.
• VC2E5LA04 becomes VC2E6LA04: sequence and cohesion created by the intentional repetition of text structures, language features and vocabulary. Level 6 turns the accidental sameness Level 5 warns about into a deliberate device, which only works if the positional work landed first.
• VC2E5LA05 becomes VC2E6LA05: embedded clauses expanding the variety of complex sentences to elaborate, extend and explain. Embedding sits inside the noun group rather than hanging off the clause, so VC2E5LA06 is as much a prerequisite for it as VC2E5LA05 is.
• VC2E5LA06 becomes VC2E6LA06, which moves the same expansion work to verb choice, elaborated tenses and adverb groups. Tense returns here after a year off, and it returns harder.
• VC2E5LA08 becomes VC2E6LA08: vivid vocabulary and figurative language including metaphor, simile, personification, idiom, imagery and hyperbole. The Level 5 Literature content reappears at Level 6 as a Language code, which means figurative language is met again as a matter of word choice rather than of literary effect.
• VC2E5LY11 becomes VC2E6LY10, which keeps the agreed criteria and adds exploring editing choices. Level 5 applies a criterion; Level 6 weighs two possible edits against each other and picks one.
• Apostrophes become nothing. VC2E6LA09 is commas separating a dependent clause from an independent one, and that is all. There is no apostrophe descriptor after Level 5 anywhere in Victorian English F–10.

A term-by-term order

1. Term 1: noun groups, then the complex sentence for effect. VC2E5LA06 first and properly, three or four weeks of expanding and contracting noun groups, because it is the engine behind the vocabulary, literature and writing codes. Then VC2E5LA05, the complex sentence used deliberately, with the emphasis on choice rather than construction, and the comma half of VC2E5LA09 taught alongside it while phrases are fresh. VC2E5LY03 and VC2E5LY04 spelling from Week 1. VC2E5LY06 reading fluency as a running routine rather than a unit. VC2E5LY01 and VC2E5LA01 inside classroom talk.
2. Term 2: cohesion by position, and precision. VC2E5LA04 taught with the front-of-sentence list on published writing before student writing, then as two revision moves: reordering a sentence so the prepositional phrase comes first, and opening a paragraph with something the previous one ended on. VC2E5LY10 drafts as the vehicle, so the work is done on something the class wrote. VC2E5LA08 vocabulary for precision and VC2E5LY05 derivational suffixes in the same fortnight, because they are the same idea from two directions, with etymology from VC2E5LY04 pulled across deliberately since the Language strand will not ask for it. Add VC2E5LA03 stages and phases and VC2E5LY08.
3. Term 3: evidence, point of view and metalanguage. VC2E5LA02 as the term’s spine, the two mechanisms taught separately, oral drills before written work, class-generated sources before external ones. VC2E5LE03 point of view alongside it, because a text with a viewpoint is the clearest demonstration of why a claim needs backing. VC2E5LE02 metalanguage introduced here and built only from terms the class has met, with the deletion test used on every opinion. VC2E5LY09 with evaluation installed as a fixed post-reading question, and VC2E5LY07 on how a text reflects its time and place.
4. Term 4: imagery, editing and the last apostrophes. VC2E5LE04 with the substitution test, read aloud, and the comparison across two texts made explicit, since Victoria asks for compare rather than examine. VC2E5LE05 creating and experimenting, marked for attempt rather than polish. VC2E5LY11 run as its own block: criteria built with the class, three of them, applied first to anonymous writing and only then to a partner’s. VC2E5LY02 spoken delivery, using a text built under VC2E5LY10 so the two codes meet. VC2E5LA07 image sequence and sound, on a comic or storyboard before a film clip. VC2E5LA09 apostrophes given their own fortnight, taught as the two-step question and never in the same lesson as contractions.

Two non-obvious choices. The first is spending Term 1 on noun groups: VC2E5LA06 reads like a description exercise, gets a week in most programs, and is what the rest of the level quietly depends on. The second is running VC2E5LY11 on anonymous writing for several rounds before any student edits a classmate’s work. The criteria are the hard part and the social dynamics are the loud part, and introducing both at once means the criteria lose. Victoria is one of the few frameworks that makes editing a code in its own right at two consecutive levels, and a code with no timetabled lessons behind it is a code you report on without teaching.

Six checks before Level 6

• Hand them an anonymous draft and three criteria and ask for three comments. Compliments, circled spellings, or a ticked checklist with nothing written on the draft, means VC2E5LY11 is being met as an arrangement rather than a skill. Reteach by requiring every comment to quote a sentence and name the criterion it fails.
• Dictate “the children’s coats” and “the girls’ coats”. Childrens’ means the after-the-s rule was taught as a position, which is the irregular-noun half of VC2E5LA09 and the half Victoria adds. Reteach as write the owner, add the apostrophe, add an s only if there is not one already. This is the last year a descriptor asks.
• Cross out the technical term in one of their opinions about a text and read it back. If the sentence means exactly the same thing, the metalanguage in VC2E5LE02 is decoration. Reteach with the three-slot frame: the writer uses [term] when [quote] which makes the reader [effect].
• Write down the first four words of every sentence in one of their paragraphs and show them the list. No pattern at all, or the same noun eight times, means VC2E5LA04 has not landed. Reteach with the side-by-side list against a published paragraph.
• “Convince me that homework should be shorter, and use somebody else’s view in your answer.” A concession with no rebuttal, or an uncheckable authority (“studies show”), means VC2E5LA02 has been met as a formula. Reteach the three-part frame with the but Z required.
• “Expand the dog as far as you can without starting a new sentence.” Two adjectives and a stop means VC2E5LA06 has not moved past Level 2 noun groups. Reteach by expanding in named directions: which one, what kind, whose, from where.

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. “Editing” tells a reviewer nothing; “VC2E5LY11, three agreed criteria applied to a partner’s 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 5 English in the Australian Curriculum, where the Language strand matches almost code for code and the Literacy strand does not, and the differences between the two frameworks are larger in English than in maths. The Level 4 foundation for all of this is the Level 4 English code set, and the companion post on every Level 5 Maths code covers the other half of the level.

Level 5 is the level a student is asked to defend what they wrote and to judge what someone else wrote, and neither is possible without caring about the subject. A ten-year-old will find a source for an argument they chose and will not find one for a topic handed to them. Using an interest as the way in costs nothing in curriculum terms, because VC2E5LA02 is met identically whether the claim being supported is about renewable energy or about which game console is better. Sprout Lessons builds an interactive lesson from any of these 26 codes, pitched at Level 5 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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