The Australian Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum:

The Australian Curriculum promotes equity and excellence and supports all learners to become successful confident and creative learners. Teachers implement the Australian Curriculum to meet the diverse learning needs of students through personalised learning. Teachers design learning tasks to build on students’ interests, strengths, goals and learning needs to address the cognitive, affective, physical, social and aesthetic needs of all students.

The Australian Curriculum sets out the core knowledge, understanding, skills, and general capabilities and cross curricular priorities important for all Australian students.

From the first year of schooling to Year 6, students develop knowledge and skills in eight learning areas:

◾English

◾Mathematics

◾Science

◾Humanities and Social Sciences – History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship (Year 3 onwards), Economics and Business (Year 5 onwards), Inquiry and Skills

◾The Arts – Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts

◾Technologies – Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies

◾Health and Physical Education

◾Languages – Italian

General Capabilities:

The General Capabilities encompass the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions to equip young Australians to live and work successfully in the 21st century. Successful learners are confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens:

◾Literacy

◾Numeracy

◾Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

◾Critical and Creative Thinking

◾Personal and Social Capability

◾Ethical Understanding

◾Intercultural Understanding

These general capabilities inform Thorndon Park Primary School’s Student Graduate Qualities:

◾Literate and Numerate learner who understands how Mathematics and English apply in real world situations, uses communication skills to confidently ask questions and solve problems

◾Critical and Creative learner who seeks new possibilities and tries new ideas, uses imagination to solve problems, evaluates, reflects and reviews learning and critically reflects on information

◾Confident user of Technologies uses a range of digital tools responsibly to communicate, research, create and present to others locally and globally

◾Learner who demonstrates personal and social capability is able to work independently and successfully with others and shows empathy, leadership skills, manages their emotions and is resilient

◾An ethical learner is aware of their responsibilities and rights and enacts the school values, seeks to understand issues and respects other people’s views when making decisions

◾Learner who demonstrates intercultural understanding is respectful to other cultures, treats everyone fairly and equally and connects to others by embracing diversity

Cross-curriculum priorities:

These priorities enrich the curriculum through developing knowledge, understanding and skills relating to:

◾Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

◾Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

◾Sustainability

Quality Teaching Practice:

SA Teaching for Effective Learning Framework for teachers and leaders.

Research tells us learning needs to be relevant, working from what each student knows, can do and understands, then intellectually challenging them forward. We aim for excellence and growth for every child in every class by assessing students’ needs and tailoring teaching and learning strategies to meet their personal SMART goals.

Walking through our school you will notice:

• teachers collaboratively planning and teaching in teams, drawing upon each other’s strengths
• teachers and students asking students questions to model and explain their thinking
• students building their growth mindset, powerful learner dispositions and work ethic
• students engaged in collaborative team tasks and showcasing their learning
• student dialogue through questioning and conversations about their learning
• students learning and using technology with meaningful interactions in its various forms
• students solving challenging inquiry STEM problems, often linked to a real-life situation
• students reflecting on their learning (What am I am learning? Why am I learning… I still need more teaching on …, I wonder… How will I know that I have learnt it?)

We seek to nurture each student’s strengths, interests, social and emotional wellbeing and bridge misconceptions and learning gaps within a curriculum framework that covers the eight nationally recognised key learning areas.

Our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) facility supports the teaching of interdisciplinary units of work that give R-6 students the opportunity to work on challenging problems, projects and hands-on practical activities to help learners to experiment, use new technologies, test ideas, make and create innovative solutions to real, complex problems through Design Processes and forming relationships with industries and communities.

Parent information FAQ sheets are available online at www.australiancurriculum.edu.au

The Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum is implemented to establish and maintain child safe environments.

Specialist Learning Areas

Performing Arts – Drama, Dance and Music

The Arts have the capacity to engage, inspire and enrich all students, exciting the imagination and encouraging them to reach their creative and expressive potential. The program incorporates rhythm and beat, singing songs, playing instruments, movement to sound and playing musical games.

Technologies:

Technologies is comprised of two distinct yet related areas – Digital Technologies and Design and Technologies.  From Reception to Year 6, students explore how to be responsible users and creators of technology.  When students use design thinking they are able to develop processes and create innovative solutions for real world problems.  Creating digital solutions requires students to use computational thinking and explore information systems to approach complex challenges both independently and collaboratively.

Health and Physical Education:

Health and Physical Education offers experiential learning with a curriculum that is relevant, engaging, physically active and developmentally appropriate. Integral to Health and Physical Education is the acquisition of movement skills, concepts and strategies that enable students to confidently and competently participate in a range of physical activities. Students develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to support them to be resilient, to develop a strong sense of self, to build and maintain satisfying relationships, to make decisions in relation to physical activity participation, and to develop health literacy competencies in order to enhance their own and others’ health and wellbeing.

Languages – Italian:

The Australian Curriculum Languages Reception to Year 6 Italian is pitched to second language learners. As Italian is widely spoken in Australia, many opportunities exist to hear and use the language in real life situations, as well as through Italian media and connections with local communities, in Italy and beyond.

In languages learning the focus is both on language and culture as students learn to communicate meaningfully across linguistic and cultural systems and different contexts. The Italian language content is organised through the two interrelated strands of:

◾Communicating: using language for communicative purposes of interpreting and exchanging meaning.

◾Understanding: analysing language and culture as a resource for interpreting and creating meaning.