Reading is about making meaning. Choose from these comprehension activities to help your students explore the text deeply, make personal connections, develop new understandings and draw conclusions. The activities will also help students analyse the text, think critically about it and form their own opinions.

The 5 Ws – questions and answers (partner activity)

As a whole class, discuss the information the poster provides. Use the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why) as a questioning technique and record students’ ideas on a chart.

• What? What is the poster about? (A community clean-up day.)
• Who? Who is the information in the poster aimed at? (People who live in the community.)
• When? When is the clean-up day? (Saturday the 16th of November at 10 am.)
• Where? Where is the clean-up day? (Back Beach Bay.)
• Why? Why is it being held? Why does Back Beach Bay need a clean-up day? (To clean up, to keep Back Beach Bay clean, to protect the ocean environment and to keep sea animals safe.)

Ask students to turn and talk to a partner about the information on the poster. What is the main message? What other information does the poster give us? Have students work with a partner to complete the MIP (most important points) chart.

Print the MIP (most important points) chart.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA01
• Year 1: AC9E1LY05
• Year 2: AC9E2LY05

Words and pictures (partner activity)

What do the words on the poster tell us? Discuss and point out the different types of information contained in the words, details about the actual clean-up day – and information about why we should attend. Highlight the three emphatic statements that give strong reasons for attending the clean-up day.

Discuss the flowchart on the poster. What is the flowchart explaining? What does it tell us? Why do you think this was included on the poster? Discuss as a group.

Ask students to talk with a partner about the image on the poster. Have students share their thoughts and ideas. Discuss as a whole group: Why are images like this used in books, and on posters? How is viewing an image different to reading words? Discuss and draw out that images are easy to understand, their meaning can be worked out quickly and they get stored in our memory more easily than words do, and this means they can be very powerful.

As a whole group, discuss the image further: What do you see in this image? What do you think about when you see it? How does the image make you feel?

Have pairs of students work together to fill in the See think feel Y-chart.

Print the See think feel Y-chart.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA07
• Year 1: AC9E1LA08
• Year 2: AC9E2LA05

Talking text types (whole-group activity)

What sort of text is this? Discuss and draw out that it is a persuasive text in the form of a poster. The poster has words and images that are designed to convince and encourage people to take action, in this case to attend a community clean-up day.

Encourage students to think critically about the poster. How does the poster attempt to persuade people to go to the clean-up day? Discuss and list students’ ideas on a chart (for example, use of an image that appeals to emotions; use of strong statements or commands with exclamation marks; flowchart that explains why it is important to clean up; benefits of attending the clean-up day – how it helps the community and the environment; and the bonus of a free sausage sizzle).

If appropriate, introduce your students to the concept of the three main ways to persuade:

• an appeal to trust and credibility – who is giving us the information? Can we trust it? (ethos)
• an appeal to emotions (pathos)
• an appeal to logic and reasoning – use of facts and statistics (logos).

How else could you persuade people to keep their local community clean? Use this discussion to talk about other types of persuasive texts such as TV ads, radio ads, jingles, school newsletters, speeches, letters and billboards.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA03
• Year 1: AC9E1LA03
• Year 2: AC9E2LA03

These activities will help students to hear the sounds and rhythms of language. Guide them as they explore syllables, onset and rime and listen for phonemes – the smallest units of sound within a word. Use the activities to help your students identify the phonemes in words and practise blending, segmenting and manipulating these sounds.

Hear this! (whole-group activity)

Use the words from the title (‘clean’, ‘up’, ‘back’, ‘beach’ and ‘bay’) one at a time to highlight and practise a range of phonological awareness skills including identifying and counting syllables, hearing onset and rime, and hearing individual phonemes in words.

Use the following types of questions and statements to guide discussion for each word.

• How many syllables does this word have? Let’s clap each syllable as we say the word.
• What sound do you hear at the beginning of this word? Let’s think of some other words that begin with this sound.
• What sound do you hear at the end of this word?
• What other sounds do you hear in the word?
• How many sounds altogether in this word? What are they? Let’s say each sound slowly and blend them together to say the word.
• What other words have the same ending as this word? Let’s make some new words that have the same sound at the end. Can you hear that these words rhyme?

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY10
• Year 1: AC9E1LY10
• Year 2: AC9E2LY09

Blending and segmenting (whole-group activity)

Use words from the poster to identify phonemes, and practise segmenting them. What sounds can you hear in the word ‘bay’? (b, long a). Discuss and model how to segment these sounds into individual phonemes. Repeat with other words such as ‘up’, ‘sea’, ‘clean’, ‘sizzle’, ‘gloves’ and ‘November’. Note: choose words with the appropriate number of sounds that your students are able to isolate.

Use the same words to model how to blend the phonemes from left to right to say the whole word.

Choose words from the poster to play a game of ‘Guess my word’. For example, choose a word such as ‘beach’ to segment by saying each individual phoneme slowly and in isolation with a pause between each phoneme (b, long e, ch). Have students guess the word.

Repeat with other words. Invite students to take turns saying the phonemes and have the rest of the group guess the word.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY10
• Year 1: AC9E1LY10
• Year 2: AC9E2LY09

Alliteration memory (whole-group activity)

Point out that there is a free sausage sizzle for people who attend the clean-up day. Why is it called a sausage sizzle? Discuss and draw out that it is a catchy name for cooking sausages on a barbeque, and that the use of the s sound at the beginning of both words gets people’s attention and is easy to remember.

Use the words ‘sausage’ and ‘sizzle’ to play a game of alliteration memory. Have students sit in a circle. The first student says ‘sausage’, the second student says ‘sausage sizzle’, and the third student says ‘sausage, sizzle’ and another word beginning with the s sound such as ‘sun’. The next student then says ‘sausage’, ‘sizzle’, ‘sun’ and another new word beginning with the s sound such as ‘silly’. Continue until the list of words is too long to remember. To make the game easier have the whole class chant all of the words in the sequence except the new word that is added by each student in turn.

Highlight the words ‘gloves’ and ‘garbage bags’ and discuss the use of the g sound. Play a game of alliteration memory using this sound.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY09
• Year 1: AC9E1LY10

Evidence shows that children learn best about the relationship between phonemes and graphemes when instruction occurs through a daily structured synthetic phonics program (also known as systematic synthetic phonics). Knowing about these relationships will help students to decode, and this is crucial for their continued reading development.

In addition to your phonics program it is helpful to expose students to letter–sound relationships they come across in other contexts, such as during shared reading experiences. Choose activities that are relevant to your students so they can practise and reinforce already learnt concepts, so as to build automaticity in recognising letter–sound relationships.

Long e sound (whole-group activity)

Have students reinforce and practise identifying the long e sound. Revisit the poster and point to the word ‘beach’. What sounds do you hear in ‘beach’? What is the middle sound? Discuss and draw out that the middle sound in ‘beach’ is the long e sound.

Have students talk with a partner about other words on the poster that have the long e sound (clean, sea, free, keep). Write the words ‘beach’, ‘clean’, ‘sea’, ‘free’ and ‘keep’ on a chart. Invite students to underline the letters that make the long e sound in each word.

Point out that some of the words on the list have the letters ‘ea’ making the long e sound, and some words have ‘ee’ making this sound. Revise other letter/s that make the long e sound.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY12
• Year 1: AC9E1LY11
• Year 2: AC9E2LY10

Long or short? Matching sounds to letters (whole-group activity)

Have students practise identifying the short a and/or long a sounds. Write the words ‘back’ and ‘bay’ on a chart. Have students talk with a partner about the sounds they hear in each word.

In a whole-group discussion, have students share what they discussed. Invite a student to underline the  letter in the word ‘back’ that makes the short a sound, as in ‘apple’ (back).

Now invite a student to underline the letters in the word ‘bay’ that make the long a sound (bay). Explain that this sound is the long a sound.

Create a T-chart with the headings: ‘Short a’ and ‘Long a’.

Discuss: We know ‘back’ has the short ‘a’ sound in it. What other words do you know that have the short ‘a’ sound? Use students’ ideas to list words in the first column of the chart and underline the letter that makes the sound (for example, apple, ant, hat, map, tan, plan, lap and man).

Now talk about the long a sound in the word ‘bay’. What other words have the long ‘a’ sound? Use students’ ideas to list words in the second column of the chart and underline the letter or letters that make the sound (for example, rain, baby, frame, say, game, lane and train’).

Australian Curriculum links

• Year 1: AC9E1LY11, AC9E1LY12
• Year 2: AC9E2LY10

Identifying words with adjacent consonants (whole-group activity)

Have students practise identifying words with adjacent consonants. Write the word ‘clean’ on a chart. Invite a student to say the phonemes they hear in the word (k, l, long e, n). Explain that this word has two consonants together at the beginning and these two letters both make a distinct sound. When we read the word, these sounds must be blended together. Have all the students say out loud the four phonemes in the word ‘clean’ then blend them together.

Have students work with a partner to search the text for other words with adjacent consonants at the beginning (starts, free, gloves, provided, dropped). Have pairs share the words they find, and write the words on a chart. Have students say each word in turn, blending the phonemes from left to right.

Australian Curriculum links

• Year 1: AC9E1LY11
• Year 2: AC9E2LY10

The digraph ‘ch’ (small-group activity)

Have students practise identifying the ch digraph. Write the word ‘beach’ on a chart. What sound do you hear at the end of this word? Discuss and draw out that the end sound in ‘beach’ is the ch sound. What two letters make this sound? Underline the letters ‘ch’ in the word ‘beach’. Explain that this sound is represented by two letters, and when two letters make one sound it is called a ‘digraph’.

Have students talk with a partner about other words that have the ch sound in them.

In small groups, have students brainstorm by writing and/or drawing all the words they can think of that have the ch sound in them onto a large chart (for example, torch, beach, chips, chop, chain, peach, cheese, chin, chop, chat and reach). Have each group report back to the whole class by sharing their ch words.

Where appropriate, repeat the activity focusing on the ‘sh’ digraph as in the words ‘rubbish’ and ‘washes’.

Australian Curriculum links

• Year 1: AC9E1LY11
• Year 2: AC9E2LY10

Oral language development begins at birth, and having a rich oral language is beneficial as a foundational and ongoing resource for literacy development. Oral language is embedded throughout the shared reading experience as students listen and respond to quality texts.

It is also valuable to involve students in specific activities that will continue to improve their oral language skills. Choose from these activities that support students to develop and practise important communication skills.

TV report (small-group activity)

Have students work in small groups to role-play a television report about the clean-up day at Back Beach Bay. Encourage each group to think about the following questions.

• What might a TV reporter tell people about the clean-up day?
• Who might they interview for their report: the organiser of the event, a person who went to the clean-up day?
• What questions would the reporter ask? How would these people answer? What would they say?

Where required support students by modelling how to ask and answer questions. Discuss the difference between a question and a statement. Talk about the types of questions and answers that a TV report about the clean-up day might contain.

Give further support if need be by showing students a clip of a TV news report or an online news video. Point out and discuss the type of information included in the report.

Have groups plan, practise and then present their TV report to the whole class.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY02, AC9EFLY07
• Year 1: AC9E1LY07
• Year 2: AC9E2LY07

What’s your opinion? (whole-group activity)

Make two signs by writing the words ‘Agree’ and ‘Disagree’ on separate pieces of paper. Place one sign at one end of the classroom and one at the other end of the classroom.

Have the students stand in between the two signs. Say a range of statements one at a time, related to the text such as:

• We should never drop rubbish.
• The people in Back Beach Bay are messy.
• Everyone in Back Beach Bay should attend the clean-up day.
• We should hold a clean-up day like the one at Back Beach Bay.
• If we drop rubbish it will end up in the ocean.
• Rubbish can’t hurt sea animals.

After you say each statement have the students take up their position somewhere along the imaginary line to show how strongly they agree or disagree with the statement.

Encourage students to talk about their reasons for their opinions.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA02
• Year 1: AC9E1LY02
• Year 2: AC9E2LY02

Activities aimed at teaching and practising fluency are important for students on their journey towards becoming independent readers. Explicitly modelling fluency and providing opportunities for students to practise reading aloud are integral to this.

Reading for meaning (whole-group activity)

Explain to the class that you are going to read the words on the poster and you want them to listen to how your voice sounds. Read the words in a clear, smooth voice. In what ways is my reading of this text different to the way I would read a story? Discuss and draw out that your voice changes when you are reading depending upon the purpose of the text, and when you read to gather information such as dates and times it is important to be clear.

Point out the exclamation marks on the poster. What are these punctuation marks called and what are they for? Discuss and draw out that exclamation marks can be used to mark a command or an emphatic statement that can express a strong feeling or show that it is an important statement. How would you read these three statements? Have students turn to a partner and take turns reading the three statements emphatically.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY02
• Year 1: AC9E1LA10, AC9E1LY04
• Year 2: AC9E2LY04

Building towards automaticity (whole-group activity)

An important facet of becoming a fluent reader is being able to read for automaticity – reading accurately and quickly. Having lots of exposure to high-frequency words will help students to know these words automatically. Use Clean up Back Beach Bay to reinforce the recognition of high-frequency words.

Ask students to point to words on the poster that they see a lot when reading and might know automatically such as ‘up’, ‘day’, ‘and’, ‘us’, ‘our’, ‘into’ and ‘the’. Have students write the words using small whiteboards or in a writing journal.

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLY14
• Year 1: AC9E1LY14

Having a rich, broad vocabulary assists students when they tackle new texts. These vocabulary activities will help them to build their growing bank of words.

The activities introduce students to new Tier 2 and Tier 3 words, as well as exploring word families and a range of different word types.

Noticing nouns (individual activity)

Introduce or reinforce the definition of a noun. Explain that a noun is a word that refers to a person, a place or a thing. Have students turn to a partner and take turns saying nouns to each other.

Revisit the poster. What nouns are written on this poster? Record students’ ideas on a chart (day, Back Beach Bay, Saturday, November, sausage, sausage sizzle, garbage bags, gloves, beaches, water, sea animals, rubbish, ocean).

Point out that some of the nouns begin with an upper-case letter and some don’t. Ask students to think about why this might be the case. Discuss as a group and draw out that particular people, places and things that have a specific name begin with an upper-case letter, and that these nouns are called ‘proper nouns’.

What proper nouns can you see on the poster? (Back Beach Bay, Saturday, November). Discuss that the names of places such as Back Beach Bay, months of the year and days of the week are all proper nouns. What other nouns are proper nouns? (examples include people’s names, street names, the name of a business, the name of a sporting field and the names of countries, states, towns and cities).

Have students complete the printable worksheet, and then share them in small groups. Have each group identify any proper nouns they listed on their worksheets.

Print the Nouns: people, places, things worksheet.

Australian Curriculum links

• Year 1: AC9E1LA07
• Year 2: AC9E2LA07

When and where? (whole-group activity)

Revisit the poster and ask: What information on the poster tells us about where and when the clean-up day is? (date and time, name of the place).

Draw students’ attention to the aspect of when the clean-up day is. What information has been included? Discuss each feature and how it is written (the date – including the month and the day – and the time).

Draw students’ attention to the use of the initials ‘am’ after the number 10. What does this mean? Discuss and draw out that it means ten o’clock in the morning and that ‘am’ stands for the phrase ante meridiem. Explain that this phrase is from a language called Latin, and in Latin ante means ‘before’ and meridiem means ‘midday’.

What might 10 pm mean? Discuss and draw out that it means 10 o’clock at night. Explain that the initials ‘pm’ stand for post meridiem and that these words also come from Latin (post meaning ‘after’ and meridiem meaning ‘midday’).

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA08
• Year 1: AC9E1LA09
• Year 2: AC9E2LA09

Where’s that word from? (whole-group activity)

Highlight the use of the word ‘annual’ on the poster. What does the phrase ‘10th annual’ mean? Discuss and draw out that ‘annual’ means once every year, so it is the tenth year in a row that the clean-up day has been held.

Explain that the word part ‘ann’ comes from the Latin language, and it means ‘year’ (the variant ‘enn’ also comes from Latin and also means ‘year’).

List words on a chart that come from the Latin root word ‘ann’ such as:

• annual – happens once a year
• biannual – happens twice a year (‘bi’ comes from the Latin bis meaning ‘twice’ and is also used in words such as bicycle – two wheels)
• anniversary – the celebration of a special date once a year such as a wedding anniversary
• annuity – a set amount of money paid to someone once a year.

Discuss the meaning of each word and point out how it links back to its Latin origin, ‘ann’ meaning year.

Australian Curriculum links

• Year 1: AC9E1LY15
• Year 2: AC9E2LY12

The Australian Curriculum places ‘emphasis on Sustainability as a priority study … across learning areas’. Clean up Back Beach Bay offers the opportunity to talk about the dynamic nature of our ocean’s environment and systems, and how we can act in positive ways to support these systems. The poster also offers the opportunity to talk about the interdependent nature of how we interact with and rely on our oceans and ocean wildlife for our collective wellbeing.

Refer to the Teaching and learning sequence for activities aimed at building the capacities of your students to think and act in ways that help to create a more sustainable future. These activities will promote reflective thinking processes and empower your students to think critically about the importance of our ocean systems.

Clean up Back Beach Bay is a persuasive text in the form of a poster. The poster is organised into sections of content including a flowchart and images to persuade people to come together to protect the ocean environment and keep sea animals safe.

Many of your students will have some prior knowledge about ocean life and ways to keep our beaches clean, and many may have also been to a sausage sizzle or attended a community cleanup day. But keep in mind not all students will have had these hands-on experiences or built this prior knowledge. Some EAL/D and CALD students, along with others, depending on their backgrounds or circumstances, may never have visited a beach, attended a sausage sizzle or seen a live sea animal. They may have come across these concepts in books, through television, videos and pictures, or through information on the internet, but their prior knowledge will be limited compared to others who have had direct experiences. Therefore, intentional planning and support will be required to help these students understand the many concepts presented in the persuasive poster.

Deconstructing to make meaning

To support your students as they attempt to make meaning, you should break down, or deconstruct, the elements of the poster into sections of content. This is one way to scaffold students’ learning.

As students explore Clean up Back Beach Bay, support them to make meaning by helping them understand new vocabulary, language structures and concepts. This support will assist them to understand the purpose of the poster (to persuade people to act and help clean up Back Beach Bay) and why and how it attempts to persuade.

As a whole class or in small groups, draw students’ attention to the way the text in the poster is organised and use these sections of content to explore the information presented. Encourage students to make judgements about the themes, ideas, concepts and vocabulary by explicitly modelling your judgements, and then guiding the students to share theirs.

Explore the text by discussing the following components.

Title

Discuss and explore the meaning of the title Clean up Back Beach Bay. Depending upon students’ prior knowledge, you could use pictures or video clips to support their understanding of the words ‘beach’ and ‘bay’. Along with discussion, the use of visuals is a great way to learn new vocabulary. 

Information relating to the concept of time

Making meaning of the poster requires an understanding of the concept of time. Guide students to build their understanding of hours, days, months, years and ordinal numbers. Make links to the connection of time in their everyday lives through calendars, digital clocks and discussions surrounding school days, weekend days and months of the year. Think about how you will assist your students to understand ordinal numbers.

Use the poster to intentionally assist students to understand time by highlighting and discussing the meaning of the following information:

• Saturday 16th November (days of the week, ordinal number, months of the year)
• Starting at 10 am (digital time)
• 10th annual clean-up day (ordinal number and occurrence)

Note: For some students the word ‘annual’ may be a new word and will require investigation. For more  ideas see the 'Vocabulary' section in the Teaching and learning sequence.

Phrases that infer meaning

Draw students’ attention to the phrases ‘Free sausage sizzle’ and ‘Gloves and garbage bags provided’.

Encourage them to think about why a sausage sizzle, gloves and garbage bags are being offered. Guide them in a class or small-group discussion and observe whether students are able to offer meaningful inferences about what this information implies.

With the lens of cultural diversity in mind, consider students who may not know key vocabulary such as ‘sausage sizzle’ or have the background knowledge required to read and understand this text. Defining, applying and regularly reviewing new vocabulary, alongside pre-teaching necessary background knowledge required for understanding, is a key component of comprehension instruction (Beck, McKeown and Kucan, 2013; Recht and Leslie, 1988).

Flowchart

Understanding a flowchart is a complex task for some students, so it is important not to demand too much of them. Point out to students that the flowchart consists of boxes of text and arrows. Explain that this flowchart represents a process through a series of stages where the last stage is the end result.

Guide students’ understanding of the flowchart by viewing videos about what happens when dropped rubbish ends up in the ocean. Search online for video clips and other resources that will support your students to understand how rubbish can injure or kill sea animals.

Another way to assist understanding of flowcharts is to find other visual examples for your students to view on a large screen. Discuss the use of shapes, arrows, text and images and how these components are used to represent order, options or steps. Create a shared flowchart using a topic that is familiar to your students, such as planting a seed and the flow-on effects of this as it grows into a tree. There are many different types of software available for creating flowcharts, or you can hand draw one on a large chart.

Synthesising

The poster Clean up Back Beach Bay is a persuasive text and therefore its purpose is to persuade. After the students have participated in the scaffolded practices surrounding the text and the teaching and learning sequence of activities, guide them to synthesise their new learnings. Provide time for them to reflect on the impact the text has had on them. How has it changed their understandings? How has it made them feel? How they might change their behaviours? (See the ‘Reflecting on learning’ section and The three Fs: facts feelings and future actions printable graphic organiser in the Teaching and learning sequence for further ideas.)

Australian Curriculum links

• Foundation: AC9EFLA03, AC9EFLA07, AC9EFLY02
• Year 1: AC9E1LA05, AC9E1LY01, AC9E1LY02, AC9E1LY05
• Year 2: AC9E2LA03, AC9E2LA09, AC9E2LY05