VELS Level 5 and 6

• Victorian Essential Learning Standards Stages of learning: Building breadth and depth & developing pathways – Includes information on the key characteristics of students as they progress through the particular stages of learning.
• Victorian Essential Learning Standards English and Communications domain – Includes introduction to the English and Communication domains, learning focus statements and standards at Levels 5 and 6.
• Zone of Proximal Development & Scaffolding – Describes in detail the theories of scaffolding from Vygotsky, Bruner and Rogoff.
• Teacher scaffolding in classroom – Identifies two types of scaffolding: ‘designed in’ and ‘point of need’, their benefits and how to use them effectively.
• Speaking and Listening – Includes the types of activity that promote speaking and listening at Levels 5 and 6, as well as extract of learning focus and standards for Speaking and listening for Levels 5 and 6.
• Genre teaching and learning cycle for writing – Includes information for teaching students how to construct their own texts both with and without the aid of the teacher.
• Written language development: Scaffolding specialised language – Looks at scaffolding principles in the classroom and provides some examples of scaffolding for written language development and includes a professional learning activity.
• Written Language Development: Nominalisation – Defines nominalisation and provides advice on use and examples in the classroom and includes a professional learning activity.
• Reading for learning – Contains information on the various theories behind literacy teaching and learning and provides practical ways of exploring these theories with students. It includes a professional learning activity (Luke and Freebody, Munro, Rose)
• Comprehension - the essence of reading – Includes research on comprehension in relation to Levels 5 and 6 English Reading standards.
• Selecting appropriate texts to support literacy learning – Deals with the process of selecting appropriate texts for Levels 5 & 6, the characteristics of the texts and the factors which influence text selection. It also includes a professional learning activity.
• Literacy within the Victorian Essential Learning Standards - All domains – Highlights the literacy demands within all domains.