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Ready, set ... get prepped for the year ahead

English Stars 18/2/19

If you want to hit the ground running this year, the English Stars Preparation and Planning page is a great place to start. You’ll find printable resources, such as the Yearly Plan and Curriculum Match documents, to help set your preparation and planning on the right track.

Here are a handful of tips to make the most of the English Stars Preparation and Planning section.

1. Get to know the Yearly Plan

The English Stars program is organised into discrete units of study. Each unit has a text type focus and generally includes modules that build to assessment. This carefully structured sequence is what forms the Yearly Plan.

Once you’re familiar with how the English Stars Yearly Plan is organised, you can choose to follow the suggested sequence or develop your own. Either way, you can use the printable Yearly Plan in the Preparation and Planning section to:

• identify new modules you can teach with ease and revise concepts you’d like to brush up on (to find out more about a concept, go to the relevant module home page and select Concept Notes)
• pair English Stars units with other key learning areas or school events (such as teaching the Book Club unit to your Year 6 students during Book Week)
• see where you’d like to include your favourite resources (for example, there’s no reason why you can’t use your tried-and-tested rhyme for teaching their, there and they’re alongside English Stars content)
• inform your school-based planning documents.

2. Print your Curriculum Match document

Curriculum Match documents for all the major national and state curriculums are just a click away. Each Curriculum Match allows you to see how the English Stars content aligns with your state’s curriculum in a single document. Print a copy of your Curriculum Match to pass to your Head of Curriculum, or use for your own planning.

Note: Links to curriculum descriptors are also included in each module for quick reference.

3. Give the Text Reference Sheet to your librarian

The Text Reference Sheets list the featured English Stars texts for each year level. When sourcing books for your school’s reading program, your librarian will find the Reference Sheets a handy resource packed with titles including modern literature, classic tales, fables and poems.

After exploring the extracts in their English Stars lessons, students will love discovering the complete texts on their library shelves. Encourage students to continue reading the books during silent reading time, or at home. What better way to create a generation of avid readers!

4. View the Spelling Spot Scope and Sequence

Every teaching module begins with a Spelling Spot – a short, sharp spelling opportunity covering concepts such as compound words, contractions, homophones, patterns, prefixes, suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots. Refer to the Spelling Spot Scope and Sequence document to quickly see which spelling concepts are taught and where to find them.

There are plenty of other useful preparation and planning resources to discover in English Stars. Teachers who want to get ahead of the Monday morning printing queue, for example, will love being able to print the resources for a whole unit from the unit home page. And if your students have licences, you can access the Printable Activity and Assessment Packs. Use these if you prefer students to complete any activity or assessment offline.

To start exploring the English Stars preparation and planning resources, log in to your account, select English Stars, and select the Preparation and Planning link below the My Classroom button.

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