In this chapter we ask: What is children’s literature? We aim to challenge the traditional idea that children’s literature is simply print-based stories for learners. To do this, we look at what Australia’s English curriculum says about literature and literary texts. Then, we reflect deeply on practical ways we can aid learners to find joy in literature and use different literary texts to: read silently, read aloud and read with friends; talk about plot, characters and settings; examine word choices; reflect on visual elements in images; see different perspectives; perform readers theatre; and sing. But this is no easy feat. Therefore, to help teachers, the bulk of the chapter offers practical ways to do what evidence-based research tells us, which is to put our trust in literature, and submerge and soak learners in quality literature to best support their efforts to lead literate lives.

Children begin to make meaning from the moment they are born. Their emerging abilities to communicate are central to the development of their thinking and imaginations; expression of their feelings and emotions; access to their cultural heritage(s); and, growth of their own unique identities. Learning how to mean and becoming literate continues to be critically important in shaping children and young people’s life chances. Yet it does not follow the same pattern for all children and cannot be reduced to a simple, linear hierarchy of skills (Ewing, 2020) or a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching those skills. Perhaps, because of its centrality to our lives and learning, becoming literate remains a complex and challenging area in education, broadly, but particularly in the primary classroom, where it is riddled with controversy. This book is underpinned by research and practice and reflects our serious commitment to every child’s entitlement to a rich and creative English and literacies education in the primary classroom.

Throughout this chapter you will gain knowledge and understanding of literacies education in the Australian context. This includes insight into Australian education policy and research contexts via the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration and the Melbourne Declaration. With a lens on the context of curriculum in Australia and the Australian Curriculum, this chapter guides your knowledge around the policy drivers, including the basis of the Australian economic and international benchmarking test National Assessment Plan – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).

This chapter presents insights about literacies education in the Australian context and includes an historical perspective on education policy and the Australian Curriculum. The evolution of the national Declarations are discussed together with how the goals of education in Australia are defined. The education of young Australians in 21st century learning and the structure of the Australian Curriculum: English and the Australian Curriculum Literacy as a general capability are explored. The learning progressions designed to engage all Australians in lifelong learning through the developmental continuum of literacy from emergent to adult are also presented.

This chapter provides a brief history of handwriting development from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics through to the role of technology and the relevance of handwriting in education in the twenty-first century. An introduction is given to the typical development of handwriting in the preschool and primary years, as well as the critical interrelationships that exist between oral language, reading and handwriting and keyboarding development. The cognitive and physical components involved to support the teaching of handwriting are also discussed. This is followed by key approaches and teaching strategies to support handwriting development. Finally, the chapter examines curriculum and assessment approaches and how the diverse needs of any classroom can be supported through differentiation.

Throughout the chapter, we engage with content that considers the benefits of fostering literacy engagement in the home and how effective parent and caregiver engagement will occur when a school culture is based on trust and open communication. The chapter discusses how school settings can go about developing a positive learning culture that supports all cohorts of parents and caregivers specific to a school context.

The chapter then explores the wider education department organisation of literacy support networks, including working with professionals such as speech pathologists and school-based literacy specialists. It considers the more recent English/literacy specialisation for graduate teachers. The content also considers the role of school-based libraries and other external community networks such as homework clubs.

Australia’s classrooms are a rich tapestry of cultures, experiences and backgrounds. This chapter explores the diversity of learners and provides opportunities for reflection as a teacher in building positive and inclusive learning environments. A range of diverse needs and approaches are explored, including learners with disability, gifted/talented and English as additional language/dialect (EAL/D) learners in alignment with the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2018).

As teachers we are always accountable to learners, parents and caregivers, the education system we are employed by and our community more broadly for the learning we plan and implement in the classroom. Our goal is to facilitate the learning process for all the individuals in our classrooms and our effectiveness is most often judged by learners’ achievements. While the content in this chapter provides rich examples of assessment in primary English and literacy, the principles and terms discussed apply across all stages of education and key learning areas. This chapter underlines the complexity of authentic or educative English and literacy assessment. It begins by considering definitions for many of the key assessment terms in use in education contexts, including ‘evaluation’, ‘assessment’ and ‘measurement’. The importance of implementing inclusive and authentic assessment practices is discussed along with formative assessment processes (assessment for learning) and summative (assessment of learning) and assessment as learning strategies. A range of examples and case studies follow. Each demonstrate the relationship between curriculum and assessment in English and literacy.

Many children seem to learn to talk effortlessly, perhaps because they are treated as meaning-makers from the moment they are born. As Alexander writes, talk plays a powerful role in a child’s learning and yet, sometimes once a child can talk, we pay little attention to the ongoing development of speaking and active listening. This chapter begins by focusing on how children become competent oral communicators in the home, in early childhood contexts and at school. The central role of storying and storytelling in learning both language and culture, including the role of oral narrative in Australia’s First Nations cultures, is also considered in helping us understand why oracy underpins learning to read and write. This chapter documents how speaking and listening are represented in both the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and the Australian Curriculum: English. Finally, a range of teaching and learning instructional strategies that foster the ongoing development of children’s speaking and listening are explored.

In this chapter the focus is on literacy and oral language development for bilingual learners, but all semiotic systems, including Auslan, the language of the deaf community, should be recognised and respected as a first language, the language which is the basis for developing literacy in any language.

This chapter builds on Chapters 6 and 7 by exploring in more detail a range of concrete strategies and activities that teachers can introduce in the classroom to facilitate the deepening of learners’ understanding of different kinds of spoken, written, digital, multimodal and visual texts. In this chapter, we again refer to all kinds of texts (oral, written, digital and multimodal), so text is used here in its broadest sense. This chapter begins with a case study that illustrates how learners can respond to texts in creative ways facilitated by the class teacher. It moves to briefly examine reader response theory before exploring the importance of building learners’ understandings through talk and teacher modelling to ensure learners have both context and field knowledge. A range of classroom strategies and approaches are then considered that can facilitate different ways learners can respond to texts. Through such responses, learners can build critical understandings of texts that go beyond literal or surface comprehension. A particular emphasis is placed on metacognitive and creative arts-rich strategies that can be adapted for imaginative, instructional and information texts.

This chapter stresses the importance of both teachers and learners as writers (Graves, 1983) as they create, either together or individually, a range of different texts for different purposes and become a community of writers. After considering a parent’s account of her daughter’s experience in learning to write, we look at how substantial dialogue always needs to underpin the development of writing. The interrelationship between speaking and writing is then considered using the mode continuum. We then explore the different aspects of learning to write within the teaching and learning framework, including the importance of building learners’ field knowledge, teacher modelling to break down the features of different kinds of texts, joint construction and independent writing. We use a range of examples of children’s writing to illustrate different kinds of texts and emphasise that creating texts can and should be enjoyable.

During the day, the input of energy from the sun drives the uptake of carbon by photosynthesis and the water-vapor losses by evapotranspiration from the vegetated land surface; the latent heat from the land to the atmosphere, related to the evapotranspiration, is coupled to the sensible heat flux, which typically is also positive because of surface warming by solar radiation (e.g., Fig. 5.1).

Human societies are increasingly altering the water and biogeochemical cycles to improve ecosystem productivity and food security while reducing the risks associated with the unpredictable variability of climatic drivers. Agroecosystems are the main stage in this acceleration, comprising 12% of the global land, an area of 16 million square kilometers, equivalent to Brazil and Australia combined. The alterations to ecohydrological processes have the potential to cause dramatic environmental consequences, raising the question how societies can achieve a sustainable use of natural resources for the future while ensuring food security for a growing population. In this chapter, we discuss how ecohydrological modeling may help us to better understand and address some of these broad questions; we follow in part Porporato et al. (2015).

Most quantities of interest in ecohydrology vary so erratically in time and space that they may be considered as random variables. Because of the unpredictable forcing by rainfall and other meteorological and climatic variables, ecohydrological phenomena thus require a probabilistic description. As a result, the dynamical laws for their physical, chemical, and biological behavior take the form of stochastic dynamical systems.