In Chapter 4, we discussed the two approaches to grammar that have been taught in Australian schools: traditional grammar, and Halliday’s functional grammar. We highlighted some limitations of traditional grammar and outlined the key concepts of functional grammar, which significantly influences English curricula in Australia and globally. While Chapter 4 emphasised explicit grammatical knowledge required by teachers, this chapter focuses on genres, text types, and the teaching of grammar and text types through explicit pedagogical methods.

This chapter outlines essential knowledge for pre-service and in-service teachers regarding the all-encompassing component of language and literacy development: critical literacy. In the current information-saturated world of ‘fake news’ and algorithms that decide the social media content we view, it is important to empower students with the ability to critically engage and knowingly accept or resist what they are reading or viewing. Critical literacy requires text users to approach their consumption of texts with a questioning mindset. It helps them develop an understanding of how texts work – the ability to analyse and identify the visual, linguistic and multimodal features of texts that create meaning implicitly and explicitly. Drawing upon foundational theories and critical literacy models, this chapter demonstrates how to integrate the five macro-skills of reading, writing, listening, speaking and viewing of both textual and multimodal sources to develop students’ critical comprehension and production of various text types.

For many adults, the idea that infants and toddlers are ‘knowers, thinkers and theorisers’ is a strange one. Such concepts are often associated with older children whose abilities to build and express understandings are more evident and align more readily with traditional ideas about learning and teaching. Furthermore, cognitive states and processes such as ‘knowing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘understanding’ are not visible in the same way that physical, social and emotional behaviours. This means that they have to be inferred and interpreted, especially when pre-verbal infants and toddlers cannot tell you what is going on in their heads. Together these challenges may result in a deficit view that, instead of seeing infants and toddlers as active and capable learners, positions very young as waiting to learn. Also, an emphasis on meeting physical and emotional needs may come at the cost of overlooking infants and toddlers cognitive capabilities and potentials.

Grammar has historically been an important component of language and literacy education. It has been understood and defined in various ways, depending on the different linguistic perspectives throughout history. This chapter discusses two main historical perspectives on grammar: traditional grammar and functional grammar. Both implicitly and explicitly underpin the Australian Curriculum: English. The metalanguage and concepts used in the Curriculum and the National Literacy Learning Progression are a combination of traditional and functional grammar terms. Many traditional grammar terms (e.g. nouns, verbs, subject-verb-object) are used alongside functional grammar terms (e.g. participants, processes, circumstances, noun groups, verb groups) to describe sentence-level components, but functional grammar terms are mostly used to describe text-level components. Therefore, it is crucial for pre-service and in-service teachers to be equipped with explicit knowledge of these two grammar traditions to be able to teach in contemporary English classrooms.

Human emotional responses are a complex mixture of physiological, cognitive, social and communicative activity. Emotional activity occurs in response to inner and outer worlds and is deeply shaped by the social and cultural environments in which it is embedded. Very young children experience (and learn about) emotions by feeling, understanding and showing them. These sophisticated emotional capabilities lay the groundwork for co-creating social affective relationships with important people in their lives. As the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) states, when educators tune into and try to understand children’s emotions and feelings within respectful and reciprocal relationships, they support their learning, development and wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing can be seen as the glue that holds children’s learning and development together. Similarly, an educator’s emotional wellbeing can bind their professional learning, development and satisfaction together. Without emotional wellbeing, learning and development for both children and educators can be negatively impacted.

It is very important that teaching and learning activities and assessment are designed to cater for the needs of schools and pupils. Chapter 8 looks at the connection between learning and assessment and includes approaches and strategies for both formative and summative assessment. How to plan for and manage assessment of learners’ progress is examined in detail with practical advice on how to do this in a structured way. How to use assessment for learning within a framework of formative assessment is detailed, including self-assessment and peer-assessment techniques with practical examples for use in class. The development of metacognitive strategies in learners is explored and advice is given on how to promote and develop this in learners in stages. The importance of giving regular feedback to pupils on their learning is also emphasised. Techniques and suggestions in this chapter can be adapted for different classes and year groups.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is examined, emphasising the importance of maintaining skills and keeping abreast of current research and curriculum developments in the teaching of modern languages. Examples of professional learning are given, as well as advice on how collaborative working with colleagues locally, nationally and internationally can enhance learning and teaching. In addition, links are given to sources of further information and advice on a range of opportunities available to teachers to help them with their career-long professional learning (CLPL). Finally, the chapter discusses the important area of teacher well-being and gives guidance and advice on how student teachers can build emotional resilience that prepares them for a career in the classroom, noting sources of support for their own mental health and well-being.

The environments we create for the infants and toddlers in early childhood education (ECE) settings are critically important because they shape the daily lived experience of children and educators, and create the conditions for children’s interactions, wellbeing, engagement, learning and development. ECE environments are not neutral, nor are they natural. They are constructed in specific ways for specific purposes and are a representation of our philosophy that ‘speaks’ to children, educators and families about our image of the child, about the value we place on family, culture and community, and about our beliefs regarding teaching and learning. ECE environments are political because they influence the possibilities for interactions, relationships, empowerment and agency.

In recent years remote and hybrid approaches to learning, teaching and assessment have risen in prominence. Starting with the strict lockdown measures enforced during the Covid-19 pandemic when schools, colleges and universities had to find alternative ways of providing learning, teaching and assessment quickly, there has been a dramatic expansion of online teaching. This chapter looks at how and when teachers can incorporate remote learning, teaching and assessment approaches in a modern languages class and the practical implications related to doing so.

Phonemic awareness is a subcategory of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the more specific ability to recognise and manipulate the speech sounds (phonemes) of spoken language as a developmental pathway to learning to read and write. It is the topic of this second chapter because it is developed alongside a method of teaching called phonics. Phonics is an explicit teaching method that involves learners understanding the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the letters or letter patterns used to represent those sounds in written language. It involves learning the connections between individual phonemes and the written code of letters (graphemes).

Chapter 7 examines why it is necessary to differentiate learning and how to plan for and manage differentiation in the language class. A range of strategies is given with practical examples of how both content and skills can be differentiated in terms of reception and production of the foreign language. Areas studied include differentiation by length, presentation and density of text; design of task, graded tasks, parallel tasks, branching tasks; differentiation by outcome, differentiated expectations; organisation of class and appropriate use of teaching modes. The chapter examines how to respond to the needs of all learners, from helping pupils with specific learning difficulties (SLDs) to using appropriate strategies with more able learners, and examples are given. The wide variety of additional support needs (ASN) is discussed, with advice on how to respond to multiple needs within a mixed-ability class setting.

Vital to successful learning and teaching and a necessary pre-stage to lesson planning is constructing a long-term and a mid-term plan. In order to ensure successful progression in pupils’ language learning, careful thought is necessary in terms of deciding what pupils need to learn and in which order. Chapter 5 looks at the fundamentals of syllabus and unit planning, taking account of providing meaningful progression through the foreign language, related directly to appropriate pedagogy, and walks student teachers through the stages needed to create successful unit plans, and mid-term and long-term schemes of works for teaching modern languages.

Our goal in writing this book was to address a notable gap in the availability of essential resources dedicated to this critical content area. Despite its foundational importance, no existing text offers a focused, in-depth exploration of language and literacy knowledge tailored for pre-service and in-service teachers working in Foundation to Year 10. The 2008 Bradley Review highlighted a deficiency in teachers’ language and literacy awareness and proficiency, a concern that was addressed by the introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students (LANTITE) in 2016. Consequently, initial teacher education programs have initiated courses and support services in English language and literacy to bolster teachers’ personal knowledge and skills, enabling them to pass the LANTITE’s literacy component.

This chapter explores the value of the arts in the lives of very young children in early childhood education settings. It is hard to imagine a more joyful or rich opportunity for connection, expression and learning in early childhood than the arts. Humanity has always created art in a range of forms for a range of purposes and the youngest children are innately attracted to engage in music, dance, drama, and visual arts experiences.

Language use involves the activation of phonological, morphological, grammatical and lexical systems for meaning-making with other people in specific contexts. Therefore, we not only need to acquire and develop these linguistic systems for language use, but we also need to develop an awareness and understanding of these linguistic systems as meaning-making resources for appropriate use in a given context. For this reason, it is necessary to focus on the social use of language as a key aspect of language development.