Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia

The Australian Curriculum sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life. Skills in the Year 1-2 curriculum include:

• reading and understanding simple texts
• using pictures to help understand texts
• recognising common words in texts.

It’s easy to help your child practise these skills as part of everyday life – just use these simple ideas.

Use story books

There are lots of things you can do with story books to help your child develop their own storytelling skills. For example, if you are reading The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle with your child, you can:

• talk about the pictures and the clues they give about the story – eg what do the pictures tell us about what the caterpillar has eaten?
• act out parts of the story with your child – eg Let's pretend to eat the foods. What sounds do they make? What do they taste like?
• encourage your child to create new sentences using the patterns from the book – eg What do you think the caterpillar ate the next week? On Monday he ate through one [insert your own food], but he was still hungry!

As an extension, your child might enjoy writing down and illustrating some of their new sentences. This develops your child’s confidence at creating stories building on a familiar pattern, and gives them something of their own that they can read to family and friends!

Go online

For online reinforcement, Find Honey will give your child practice at:

• selecting information to create a notice
• reading different texts to find information
• using memory and spatial awareness.

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