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 Foundation Year curriculum include:

• recognising new or unfamiliar words in everyday situations
• getting clues about a word's meaning from how and where it is used
• developing strategies for dealing with unknown words.

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

Spot words

Our worlds are full of written text, so it’s easy to give your child practice at recognising familiar words and working out new words. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• when preparing a meal, ask your child to get the ingredients out for you
• ask how many words they can read on the label – you might be surprised!
• when ordering from a menu, ask your child to find their favourite foods
• ask your child to write the shopping list for you (check if they try to sneak in some extra treats!)
• when you are going somewhere new, ask your child to look for the street signs and house numbers (if the street name is tricky, tell them the first few letters to look for)
• ask your child to read the addresses on your mail and work out who it is for.

The more you do this, the more your child will want to look for words in their environment and read them to you.

Go online

For online reinforcement, My Day: Jeneka and My Day: Li will give your child practice at:

• selecting appropriate choices for different situations
• reading words we use in familiar situations.

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