Level BL Reading and Viewing

The students' performance in these tasks suggest that they are working within the range of Level BL in Reading and Viewing. The assessing teacher will need to consider a range of student samples in order to determine whether each student is at the beginning of BL, consolidating BL or at the BL standard in Reading and Viewing.

At beginning Level BL students:

•  are new to English and new to literacy

and/or

• may have little or no experience of formal learning and do not have literacy strategies already acquired through developing literacy in a home language

and/or

• may be reluctant to participate in reading activities

and/or

• may recognise their home language in writing, if it has a written form, and may recognise that English print is different from their home language
• will be able to draw on general learning skills and strategies that they have used to function effectively in their home communities, for example observing, memorising, classifying.

At consolidating Level BL students:

• show an interest in books and focus on illustrations
• show interest in print and recognise some environmental print including their name
• can recognise and name some letters
• are starting to build a bank of English words they recognise, such as environmental print
• read some short, familiar texts that have been well-introduced in class
• demonstrate reading-like behaviour such as holding a book, sitting and looking at a book, turning pages and looking at pictures
• watch and listen as texts are read aloud to them but may not join in
  
• rely on peer or teacher support to complete structured activities.

At Level BL Achievement Standard students:

•  read a wide range of familiar, short, simple, repetitive fictional and everyday texts, and complete basic structured activities based on them. These texts may be print or digital, including visual, multimodal and interactive.
• retell a simple and familiar story, and sequence a process with sentences and pictures
• show early understanding that texts are written for a variety of purposes
• show beginning understanding of the letter–sound relationships of English
• read some familiar words and phrases in context, and recognise, name and know the sounds related to all letters and some common letter groups
• recognise that meaning is carried by intonation, and they listen for key words and for repetition of words and phrases in texts read aloud
• focus on illustrations and other non-written features when reading
• use word lists and simple dictionaries to assist them to read new words. 
  

Student information

The student is 11 and eight months old and was born in Kenya. Her home language is Oromo which is a language spoken mainly in southern Ethiopia, and also in parts of Kenya and Somalia. She has had four years of interrupted schooling and cannot read or write in her home language. She has been in Australia for ten months and attended an English language school for nine and a half months.

Task

The class has been learning about sea creatures. They learned about the topic from posters, a big book, short documentaries from the internet and from reading a variety of class texts. There was also a rockpool incursion at the school. The students have learned the relevant vocabulary for naming and describing the animals and their habitats. They have worked on recognising vocabulary and writing simple sentences using the target vocabulary.

In this reading task the student was consolidating her understanding and showing the teacher what she had learned in the unit. In particular the teacher was assessing how well the student could:

• identify the written labels for the animals
• use the technical terminology to describe the animals
• understand and read familiar sentence structures, such as, This is... It has… It lives in the … It eats…
• read familiar texts with fluency.

In the transcript, the words spoken by the student being assessed are in bold. The words spoken by other students and the teacher are in normal font.

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

•  Demonstrate reading-like behaviour (VCEALL210)
• Acquire information from simple images, with teacher direction and support (VCEALC186)
• Recognise the letters of the alphabet (VCEALL208)
• Attempt to self-correct (VCEALL211)
  

Overall, this student can also:

• Read simple, familiar texts with assistance (VCEALC184)
• Understand and explore the basic layout and conventions of simple texts (VCEALL200)
• Recognise some common words or phrases (VCEALL206)

Possible next steps for this student's learning

• Creating a bilingual word list of technical vocabulary, with support (VCEALL207)
• Reading simple sentences with longer descriptive phrases (VCEALC184)
• Reading different texts that contain familiar, learned vocabulary (VCEALL207)(VCEALC185)
• Completing simple sentences describing each sea animals using the words from their word lists, such as, Lobsters have a shell and A lobster has a shell (VCEALL203)
• Recognising the difference between plural and singular nouns (VCEALC184)
• Creating and recording her own read-along e-book on an app, with support (VCEALL203)(VCEALL199)(VCEALL213)
  

Pathways and transitions considerations

A Year 6 student working within the range of Level BL in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway B of the EAL curriculum in all language modes.

Student information

The student is 11 and nine months old and was born in Sudan. His home language is Arabic. He has had two years of interrupted schooling in Sudan. He has been in Australia for four months and has been attending an English language school for twenty weeks.

Task

The class has been learning about sea creatures. They learned about the topic from posters, a big book, short documentaries from the internet and from reading a variety of class texts. There was also a rockpool incursion at the school. The students have learned the relevant vocabulary for naming and describing the animals and their habitats. They have worked on recognising vocabulary and writing simple sentences using the target vocabulary.

In this reading task the student was consolidating her understanding and showing the teacher what she had learned in the unit. In particular the teacher was assessing how well the student could:

• identify the written labels for the animals
• use the technical terminology to describe the animals
• understand and read familiar sentence structures, such as, This is.. It has… It lives in the … It eats…
• read familiar texts with fluency.
  

In the transcript, the words spoken by the student being assessed are in bold. The words spoken by other students and the teacher are in normal font.

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Acquire information from simple images, with teacher direction and support (VCEALC186)
• Participate in activities around class texts (VCEALC190)
• Demonstrate reading-like behaviour (VCEALL210)
• Show an interest in reading books (VCEALA194)
• Recognise the letters of the alphabet (VCEALL208)
• Recognise some common words or phrases (VCEALL206)
  

• Give a personal response to a text (VCEALC188)

Overall, this student can also:

• Read simple, familiar texts with assistance (VCEALC184)
• Show awareness that texts convey meaning (VCEALA191)
• Build a vocabulary that draws on words of interest, learnt words and sight words (VCEALL207)

Possible next steps for this student's learning

• Creating a bilingual word list of technical vocabulary, with support (VCEALL207)
• Recognising initial and final sounds in new and unfamiliar words (VCEALL208)
• Re-reading familiar texts to practise fluency in reading (VCEALL213)
• Reading simple sentences with longer descriptive phrases (VCEALC184)
• Reading different texts that contain familiar, learned vocabulary (VCEALL207) (VCEALC185)
• Creating and recording his own read-along e-book on an app, with support (VCEALL203)(VCEALL199)(VCEALL213)
  

Pathways and transitions considerations

A Year 6 student working within the range of Level BL in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway B of the EAL curriculum in all language modes.