By the end of year 6, students will read, respond to, and think critically about texts in order to meet the reading demands of the New Zealand Curriculum at level 3. Students will locate, evaluate, and integrate information and ideas within and across a small range of texts appropriate to this level as they generate and answer questions to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum. The text and task demands of the curriculum are similar for students in year 5 and year 6. The difference in the standard for year 6 is the students’ increased accuracy and speed in reading a variety of texts from across the curriculum, their level of control and independence in selecting strategies for using texts to support their learning, and the range of texts they engage with. In particular, by the end of year 6, students will be required to read longer texts more quickly than students in year 5 and to be more effective in selecting different strategies for different reading purposes.
The texts that students use to meet the reading demands of the curriculum at this level will often include:
Such texts will include both fiction and non-fiction in electronic and print media. They may be published individually, for example, as junior novels or information texts, or they may appear in collections, such as the School Journal or other journals and magazines for this age group. Such collections often include poems, plays, stories, and procedural texts.
The student by the end of year 6 deliberately selects and uses strategies such as skimming and scanning to locate, evaluate, and integrate common themes relating to endangered species.
'Plight of the Sea Turtle' (School Journal, Part 3 Number 2, 2008)
Noun frequency level: 10–12
By the end of year 6, students are required to use a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts to locate, evaluate, and integrate information and ideas in order to meet the reading demands of the curriculum, drawing on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes described for the end of year 6 in the Literacy Learning Progressions. The curriculum tasks will also involve the students in generating their own questions as well as answering questions from the teacher.
The students in a year 5 and 6 class are involved in a science investigation to discover how environmental causes and human actions have led to many animals becoming endangered and to identify a range of actions that individuals and organisations can take to restore the habitats of these endangered species.
'Plight of the Sea Turtle' deals with the decreasing numbers of sea turtles in the Pacific and describes some initiatives to prevent their extinction. The information is logically organised, and the text is well supported by photos, a map, captions, and easily identified information boxes. (This is a relatively short text. Students in year 6 will often be required to read texts that are longer.)
The teacher chose 'Plight of the Sea Turtle' because the text features (such as the title, opening paragraph, subheadings, and topic sentences) support students in using speed-reading strategies (including skimming and scanning the text) to locate, evaluate, and integrate information that is relevant to their questions. Examples of such questions could be “What are the threats to turtles’ nesting sites?” and “What human actions threaten turtles’ existence?”
This example illustrates aspects of the task and text and demonstrates how a student engages with both task and text to meet the reading demands of the curriculum. A number of such examples would be used to inform the overall teacher judgment for this student.
By the end of year 6, students will create texts in order to meet the writing demands of the New Zealand Curriculum at level 3. Students will use their writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information to meet specific learning purposes across the curriculum. The text and task demands of the curriculum are similar for students in year 5 and year 6. The difference in the standard for year 6 is the students’ increased accuracy and fluency in writing a variety of texts across the curriculum, their level of control and independence in selecting writing processes and strategies, and the range of texts they write. In particular, by the end of year 6, students will be required to write more complex texts than students in year 5 and to be more effective in selecting different strategies for different writing purposes.
Students will write for a range of different purposes on topics and themes across the curriculum at this level, applying a process appropriate to the task and drawing on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will help them achieve their purpose. The knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected at this level, including those needed for spelling and punctuation, are described in the Literacy Learning Progressions.
Students will independently write texts, choosing language and overall text structures that are appropriate for their audience and purpose (for example, when recounting, describing, narrating, reporting, arguing, or explaining). These texts will include, when appropriate:
The student by the end of year 6 shows more control in organising the content, vocabulary, and sentence structures as he records and communicates ideas and experiences relevant to the curriculum task.
‘Bottle Submarine’
By the end of year 6, students are required to create a variety of texts in order to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information across the curriculum. To meet the standard, students draw on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for writing described in the Literacy Learning Progressions for students at this level.
The students in this year 6 and 7 class are evaluating aspects of a science and technology unit that they have completed. As they write about and discuss what their group has done during the unit, they explore the success they have had, both in developing and testing their prototypes and in working collaboratively as a group.
This example illustrates aspects of the task and text and demonstrates how a student engages with both task and text to meet the writing demands of the curriculum. A number of such examples would be used to inform the overall teacher judgment for this student.
Published on: 19 Oct 2009
