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An example of this can be seen within the literature strand, which has a substrand named responding to literature. The following content description is listed within this substrand at the Year 1 level:

Discuss characters and events in a range of literary texts and share personal responses to these texts, making connections with students’ own experiences (ACELT1582).

Throughout the primary school years, this content description is revisited and made more complex to match students’ developing control and understanding of literary features. In Year 6, the same content description has become:

Identify and explain how choices in language, for example modality, emphasis, repetition, and metaphor, influence personal response to different texts (ACELT1615).

In each content description, students are called to respond personally to literature, yet the Year 6 description requires more specialised knowledge of language choices and a more generalised perspective on how texts influence people’s personal responses in different ways. This is typically how the Australian Curriculum: English guides teachers and students to teach and learn about English in more complex ways over time, with central ideas returned to throughout the school years as part of a coherent and cumulative body of knowledge.

An introduction to explicit instruction

Primary school teachers should teach English using evidence-based pedagogical approaches. This part of the chapter introduces explicit instruction: a teaching approach well-supported by over five decades of research as an effective way to teach new skills and cognitive strategies (e.g., Graham et al., 2012; Rosenshine, 2009; Shanahan et al., 2010). Explicit instruction is the main pedagogical approach that underpins the teaching and learning experiences outlined in the chapters of this text.