AC9E3LA04
Official content description
understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of the stages of written texts, grouping related information together
What AC9E3LA04 actually looks like when you teach it
Paragraphs are an organisational tool, and children write better ones when they've spent time noticing them in reading first. Take an information text and cut it into paragraphs, then ask what each chunk is about — one idea per chunk is the pattern they need to see. In their own writing the useful instruction is not "start a new paragraph every five lines" but "start a new paragraph when you change what you're talking about". Planning boxes before drafting help enormously: one box per paragraph, one idea per box.
What the class will get wrong — and what to do about it
The error
Paragraphing by length or by appearance — a new paragraph started whenever the block of text looks too big, regardless of whether the topic has changed.
How to confront it
Give them a text with the paragraph breaks removed and ask them to insert them. They have to find the topic shifts to do it, which is exactly the skill they need in their own drafting.
Ready to put on the board
We are learning to group related information into paragraphs.
- I can say what one paragraph of a text is mostly about.
- I can decide where a new paragraph should start.
- I can plan my writing with one idea in each paragraph.
Put the breaks back
- Read the unbroken text aloud. Ask whether it was easy to follow — it won't have been.
- Pairs mark where they think each new paragraph should begin, and write a few words beside each saying what it's about.
- Compare with the original. Where the class differed from the author, discuss whether the author was right.
- Move to their own writing: a planning grid with three boxes, one idea per box.
- Draft one paragraph from one box. The plan is the assessment here as much as the draft.
Free to use in your classroom. Written for AC9E3LA04, not adapted from another year level.
Free download
The Year 3 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 3 English students should achieve
Coverage is judged against the achievement standard — not by ticking every content description. These are the official Year 3 English standard sentences this code builds towards:
- They write texts using letters that are accurately formed and consistent in size.
- They group, logically sequence and link ideas.
- They use text structures including paragraphs, and language features including compound sentences, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features.
- By the end of Year 3, students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts including stories.
- They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories to inform, narrate, explain or argue for audiences, relating ideas including relevant details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts.
- They use language features including topic-specific vocabulary, and/or visual features and features of voice.
The Language progression either side of AC9E3LA04
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 · Year 2
- AC9E2LA01investigate how interpersonal language choices vary depending on the context, including the different roles taken on in interactions
- AC9E2LA02explore how language can be used for appreciating texts and providing reasons for preferences
- AC9E2LA03identify how texts across the curriculum are organised differently and use language features depending on purposes
Builds towards · Year 4
- AC9E4LA01explore language used to develop relationships in formal and informal situations
- AC9E4LA02identify the subjective language of opinion and feeling, and the objective language of factual reporting
- AC9E4LA03identify how texts across the curriculum have different language features and are typically organised into characteristic stages depending on purposes
Other Year 3 Language codes
- AC9E3LA01understand that cooperation with others depends on shared understanding of social conventions, including turn-taking language, which vary according to the degree of formality
- AC9E3LA02understand how the language of evaluation and emotion, such as modal verbs, can be varied to be more or less forceful
- AC9E3LA03describe how texts across the curriculum use different language features and structures relevant to their purpose
- AC9E3LA05identify the purpose of layout features in print and digital texts and the words used for navigation
- AC9E3LA06understand that a clause is a unit of grammar usually containing a subject and a verb that need to agree
- AC9E3LA07understand how verbs represent different processes for doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating
- AC9E3LA08understand that verbs are anchored in time through tense
- AC9E3LA09identify how images extend the meaning of a text
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.