Assignment 2: Essay
Word limit: 2000 (+/- 10%)
Weighting: 40%

Assignment overview
Across this unit, we have introduced a range of strategies to reading and writing. As a teacher in the early primary context, you will need to incorporate these strategies into your teaching in order to effectively support your students’ reading and writing development. This assessment will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of these strategies, their purpose and their value, by writing an essay that critically evaluates reading and writing strategies and their relationship to curriculum and policy.
Assessment 2 represents the personal literacy hurdle task for this unit. As such, you must pass this component of the assessment to pass the unit as a whole. Further information about the requirements for a pass can be found in the standards statement for this task.
Related learning outcomes
This task is assessing your ability to meet the following unit learning objectives:
1. Critically evaluate reading and writing approaches and their relationship to curriculum and policy.

Assignment detail
In your essay, you will critically evaluate reading and writing strategies and their relationship to curriculum and policy for the early primary context. Specifically, you will need to:
• identify two strategies to the teaching of reading and two strategies to the teaching of writing, as covered in your weekly readings across Weeks 2-9 in the unit
• critically evaluate each of these strategies. Think about the following questions:
o What particular aspects of reading or writing are supported by these strategies?
o What are the strengths of the strategies?
o What are the limitations of the strategies?
o What key considerations do teachers need to take into account when adopting these strategies?
• support your evaluation through the use of examples from the Australian Curriculum and any other relevant curriculum and policy documents (for example NAPLAN or state curriculum).
Your essay must be properly referenced with in-text citations and a reference list using APA style. Note, this reference list will NOT be included in the word count.

Preparing your essay
You will prepare your essay as a Microsoft Word document. 

Essential readings for assignment