WA Curriculum English Explained: What Pre-primary to Year 6 Teachers Need to Know
Planning
The WA Curriculum English update has left many teachers sorting through new content descriptions, clearer sequencing and sharper achievement standards. The changes are good — but finding, understanding and organising everything can still feel overwhelming.
If you haven’t yet read the full overview of the update, start with WA Curriculum Changes: What Teachers Need to Know, which breaks down everything that has shifted across learning areas. This English-specific guide builds on that post and shows you how to plan with confidence using the WA English Organisers for Pre-primary to Year 6.
What’s New in the WA Curriculum English?
The 2025–2026 refresh clarifies the existing structure rather than replacing it. The improvements include:
clearer expectations at each year level
a more coherent progression from PP–Y6
stronger alignment between reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing
more explicit elaborations
tighter links between content descriptions and achievement standards
Across Pre-primary to Year 6, the WA Curriculum English follows a holistic view of learning. In the early years, it aligns with the EYLF’s practices, drawing on children’s interests and funds of knowledge. As students progress, they develop agency, purpose and independence in how they use language. Critical literacy is part of every year level: students are expected to question, analyse and evaluate the texts they encounter.
Students experience a wide range of spoken, written and multimodal texts — from oral storytelling, songs and picture books to novels, media, digital texts and complex informational texts. At every stage they also create their own imaginative, informative and persuasive texts for real audiences.
For teachers wanting help translating these curriculum statements into teachable sequences, your Curriculum Companion Teaching Guide provides a detailed unpacking of every English outcome.
WA Curriculum English PP-Y6
Year Level Description Summaries
Pre-primary
Pre-primary learners are developing an understanding that English is the shared language of the classroom. They use it to interact, communicate needs and explore ideas through play, intentional teaching and spontaneous experiences. They engage with rich texts — picture books, oral stories, songs, rhymes, media and early digital texts — and begin experimenting with early reading and writing behaviours. They create short imaginative and informative texts using words, images, movement and drama, drawing on their interests and curiosities.
Year 1
In Year 1, children use English with greater intentionality. They explore how texts have different purposes and begin identifying key structures and features. They read decodable texts that match phonic development, as well as authentic literary and informational texts. They create short spoken, written, visual and multimodal texts such as retells, recounts, responses and early persuasive pieces.
Year 2
In Year 2, children use English to share ideas, thoughts and opinions with familiar audiences. They learn to identify the purpose and audience of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts. Reading moves further towards independence as they draw on decoding, phonic, morphemic and comprehension strategies across longer and more complex texts. They create a broad range of texts — narratives, recounts, responses, procedures and simple arguments.
Year 3
In Year 3, students’ world expands and they begin to operate more confidently within larger communities. They use spoken, written and visual language to interact purposefully with others. They learn more explicitly about literary devices and the language features of cross-curricular texts. Reading involves building literal and inferred meaning from increasingly complex texts. Their writing extends into narratives, reports, responses, procedures and simple persuasive arguments.
Year 4
In Year 4, students use English for a wider range of purposes and audiences. Critical literacy deepens as they identify subjective and objective language and notice how authors and illustrators influence readers. They read short novels and more complex informational texts with a broader range of vocabulary, structures and visual supports. Writing becomes more sustained and varied, including narratives, reports, procedures, persuasive pieces, poetry and dramatic texts.
Year 5
In Year 5, students work more independently and critically with texts. They explore how texts reflect context and present opinions about literature and viewpoints. Their reading includes evaluating ideas in more complex texts with technical vocabulary, figurative language and sophisticated visual features. Students create a wide range of texts — narratives, explanations, arguments, reviews, poetry and dramatic texts — making deliberate choices about structure and language.
Year 6
In Year 6, students use spoken, written and visual language intentionally for particular purposes. They identify bias, subjective and objective language, and examine how authors adapt structures and devices for effect. Reading involves navigating complex literary and informational texts with shifts in time and dense technical vocabulary. Students create extended multimodal and written texts — narratives, reports, reviews, discussions, explanations and arguments — making conscious stylistic decisions.
What These Changes Mean for Your Planning
While the updates add clarity, they also increase the amount of detail teachers must navigate each term. Effective planning now requires:
seeing all content descriptions in one place
tracking what has been taught
linking directly to elaborations
matching assessment evidence to achievement standards
using consistent documentation across teams
This is where the WA English Organisers become essential.
How the WA Curriculum English Organiser Works
The WA Curriculum Curriculum English Organiser takes the entire WA English Curriculum and restructures it into a practical, navigable, teacher-ready planning system. Instead of scrolling through SCSA pages or opening multiple documents, everything sits in one organised, clickable file.
Customisable Cover Page
Add your name or class for quick identification.
Year Level Description Page
A one-page summary of Pre-primary English expectations to anchor planning.
Content Description Term Planning Checklist
All content descriptions listed with checkboxes and clickable links to elaborations and planning pages. This becomes your term-by-term “taught/not taught” dashboard.
Year Level Content Overview
A full map of the year’s content descriptions organised by strand and sub-strand, all hyperlinked for fast access.
Achievement Standards Linked to Content Descriptions
Clear breakdowns showing how each strand of the Achievement Standard connects to content descriptions.
Single-Strand Achievement Standard Pages
One page per strand for cleaner moderation and reporting.
Planning Page Templates (One Per Content Description)
Each page includes the strand, code, content description, elaborations, checkboxes, space for activities and a link to the assessment checklist.
Editable Student Checklists
Enter your class list once — it auto-fills everywhere. Track progress, record evidence and jump back to planning pages with one click.
Teachers use this organiser as their daily workpad for English.
WA Curriculum Organiser Teacher Planner
Our WA Curriculum Organiser Teacher Planner is designed to help teachers access, organise and implement the WA Curriculum V9. They are not your run-of-the-mill paper checklists, they are form fillable!
WA English Curriculum Planning FAQ
Most Searched Teacher Questions Answered
I’m overwhelmed by the amount of English content. Where do I start?
Start with the organiser. It takes the entire WA Curriculum English for your year level and restructures it into a single, easy-to-use file. It removes the overwhelm by showing what to teach, when to teach it, and how it connects to achievement.
Where can I find an easy breakdown of the WA English Curriculum?
Right inside the organiser. The Year Level Description page summarises the curriculum intent, while the Content Overview pages show you all outcomes grouped by strand and sub-strand with clickable links.
What is the difference between the WA Curriculum and the Australian Curriculum for English?
WA has SCSA’s own English curriculum, adapted from ACARA but not identical. The organiser uses WA-specific content, not the national version, ensuring your planning matches Western Australian requirements exactly.
Is the WA English Organiser aligned to the updated WA Curriculum?
Yes. Every content description, elaboration and Achievement Standard in the organiser matches the current SCSA documentation for Pre-primary to Year 6. It removes the need to check multiple PDFs because everything is linked, sorted and correctly aligned.
How do I plan English for WA Curriculum?
Most teachers begin by reading SCSA pages and trying to map content descriptions across a term.
The organiser range does this for you.Each organiser brings year level outcomes together in a single checklist, shows the sequence clearly, and includes clickable links to elaborations. You can open one file and see exactly what needs to be taught for your year level.
What are the WA English content descriptions for each year level?
You can scroll the SCSA website, but the quickest way is using the organiser.
Each organiser includes: a full year-level content map – every content description – the content code – Examples (elaborations) – linked planning pages. You see everything in one place instead of clicking in and out of the curriculum.
How do I link WA English content descriptions to the Achievement Standards?
Manually matching them is time-consuming. The organiser already links each part of the Achievement Standard to the content descriptions it comes from, so you always know what evidence relates to which outcome.
How do I know if I’m covering everything in the WA English Curriculum?
The term planning checklist in the organiser includes tick boxes for every content description. As you teach each one, you simply tick it off. At a glance, you will see what’s done, what’s pending, and what needs revisiting.
What texts should WA students engage with at each year level?
The WA curriculum expects a wide range: picture books, decodable texts, oral stories, poems, songs, media, digital texts, information texts, chapter books and more. The organiser helps you plan text selections because each planning page includes elaborations that clearly state the kinds of texts required.
How do I sequence English learning across the year?
Teachers typically break content into term blocks. The organiser simplifies this because the Content Description Term Planning Checklist shows every outcome across the year with space to plan your coverage. This becomes your year-at-a-glance map without having to build a planner from scratch.
How do I track student progress for WA English?
The organiser includes editable student checklists linked directly to content descriptions. Type your class list once and it auto-fills on every checklist page, making tracking easy and fast.
Is this suitable for assessment and reporting?
Yes. Because the organiser includes Achievement Standards, linked content descriptions and editable checklists, it doubles as your assessment and reporting evidence folder. Everything you need is already cross-referenced.
Key Takeaways for WA English Curriculum Planning
The updated WA Curriculum English brings clearer learning expectations, but it also adds more detail for teachers to navigate. With so many content descriptions, elaborations and achievement standards to interpret, you need a planning system that organises everything in one place.
The WA English Organiser does exactly that. It brings together the full curriculum, links all key components, and gives you a practical structure to plan, teach and assess with confidence — without juggling multiple documents or tabs.
If you’re ready to streamline your planning and work from a tool that supports intentional, curriculum-aligned teaching, explore the organiser for your year level and make WA English planning simpler, clearer and faster.
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