AC9E1LY11
Official content description
use short vowels, common long vowels, consonant blends and digraphs to write words, and blend these to read one- and two-syllable words
What AC9E1LY11 actually looks like when you teach it
Digraphs are the moment children discover that one sound can be spelled with two letters, and it needs saying out loud because nothing in their previous instruction predicts it. Teach sh, ch, th and the common long vowel patterns as units — two letters, one sound, underlined together when you write them on the board. Blending two-syllable words is the other half of this descriptor and tends to get less time than it needs; clapping the word into syllables before decoding each part is the strategy that unlocks it.
What the class will get wrong — and what to do about it
The error
Sounding each letter of a digraph separately — ship read as /s/ /h/ /i/ /p/, producing something that isn't a word and can't be blended.
How to confront it
Write the digraph on a single card so it can't be split, and underline it whenever it appears on the board. Give the rule a name the class can use — "two letters, one sound" — and have them find the digraph before they start decoding.
Ready to put on the board
We are learning that two letters can make one sound, and using that to read and write words.
- I can find the digraph in a word before I read it.
- I can read one- and two-syllable words by blending.
- I can use digraphs to spell words.
Spot the digraph
- Model first: write shop, and underline the sh as one unit before reading it.
- Give each child a set of word cards containing sh, ch, th and ck.
- Rule: highlight the digraph before you read the word. Nobody reads first.
- Partners read their words to each other, pointing at the digraph as they say its sound.
- Finish with two-syllable words — chicken, shopping — clapping the syllables first, then decoding each part.
Free to use in your classroom. Written for AC9E1LY11, not adapted from another year level.
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The Year 1 English planning scaffold
A one-page planning sheet with the official achievement standard, every content description grouped by strand, and space for your assessment and week-by-week sequence. Print it and plan on paper, or use it as the skeleton for a unit.
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What Year 1 English students should achieve
Coverage is judged against the achievement standard — not by ticking every content description. These are the official Year 1 English standard sentences this code builds towards:
- By the end of Year 1, students interact with others, and listen to and create short spoken texts including recounts of stories.
- They create short written and/or multimodal texts including recounts of stories with events and characters.
- They report information and experiences, and express opinions.
- They read, view and comprehend texts, monitoring meaning and making connections between the depiction of characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences.
- Ideas in their texts may be informative or imaginative and include a small number of details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts.
- They use topic-specific vocabulary.
The Literacy progression either side of AC9E1LY11
A class can only meet this descriptor if they were taught the one before it. If yours hasn't, that's where the lesson starts — not here.
Taught before · Foundation
- AC9EFLY01identify some familiar texts, such as stories and informative texts, and their purpose
- AC9EFLY02interact in informal and structured situations by listening while others speak and using features of voice including volume levels
- AC9EFLY03identify some differences between imaginative and informative texts
Builds towards · Year 2
- AC9E2LY01identify how similar topics and information are presented in different types of texts
- AC9E2LY02use interaction skills when engaging with topics, actively listening to others, receiving instructions and extending own ideas, speaking appropriately, expressing and responding to opinions, making statements, and giving instructions
- AC9E2LY03identify the purpose and audience of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts
Other Year 1 Literacy codes
- AC9E1LY01discuss different texts and identify some features that indicate their purposes
- AC9E1LY02use interaction skills including turn-taking, speaking clearly, using active listening behaviours and responding to the contributions of others, and contributing ideas and questions
- AC9E1LY03describe some similarities and differences between imaginative, informative and persuasive texts
- AC9E1LY04read decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic knowledge, phrasing and fluency, and monitoring meaning using context and grammatical knowledge
- AC9E1LY05use comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising and questioning when listening, viewing and reading to build literal and inferred meaning by drawing on vocabulary and growing knowledge of context and text structures
- AC9E1LY06create and re-read to edit short written and/or multimodal texts to report on a topic, express an opinion or recount a real or imagined event, using grammatically correct simple sentences, some topic-specific vocabulary, sentence boundary punctuation and correct spelling of some one- and two-syllable words
- AC9E1LY07create and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations on personal and learnt topics, which include an opening, middle and concluding statement; some topic-specific vocabulary and appropriate gesture, volume and pace
- AC9E1LY08write words using unjoined lower-case and upper-case letters
Content description and achievement standard © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), Australian Curriculum Version 9, used under CC BY 4.0. TeachKoala is not affiliated with or endorsed by ACARA.