Learning Map

Compound Words

Recognise and spell compound words by identifying the two component words that combine to form a single word

How to tell they’ve got it

Tick these off as you see them — no test required.

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Try this together

Can your child look at a word like 'sunshine' or 'football' and spot the two smaller words hiding inside it?

Where this sits on the map

Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.

Builds on
Blending Sounds to Read Wordsages 4–7Blending supports reading compound words
Syllablesages 5–6Syllable awareness helps with compound words
Compound Wordsthis skill · ages 5–8
Unlocks
Hyphens in Prefixed Wordsages 10–11Using hyphens in compound modifiers builds on understanding how two component words can combine to create a single compound word

solid = must come firstdashed = helps

Curriculum alignment

Candidate matches to official curriculum codes — machine-suggested, unreviewed (v0.1).

Show candidate curriculum codes · 2 ACARA · 2 NSW · 3 VIC

Australian Curriculum v9 candidate

AC9E3LY10low confidenceYear 3 · Literacy

understand how to apply knowledge of common base words, prefixes, suffixes and generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word to read and comprehend new multimorphemic words

AC9E1LY13low confidenceYear 1 · Literacy

spell one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns

NSW syllabus codes & stages only

ENE-SPELL-01medium confidenceEnglish K-10 · Early Stage 1
EN1-SPELL-01medium confidenceEnglish K-10 · Stage 1

Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only

VC2EFLA06medium confidenceEnglish · Foundation · Language strand
VC2E3LY04medium confidenceEnglish · Level 3 · Literacy strand
VC2E1LY06low confidenceEnglish · Level 1 · Literacy strand

These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.

Nearby on the map

All Phonics & Word Reading skills →