From the Principal

If you haven’t had a chance to see today’s paper, there is an interesting article on the work done by the Gratten Institute on whole school curriculum planning. While the article is for general news consumption the report is much more informative and I urge you all to follow the link and discuss it at your next Learning Area meeting.

Whole School Curriculum Planning

The report makes it very clear that there are a number of conditions necessary that build knowledge and skills.  When these conditions are in place coupled with effective teaching students are able to, in half a year, achieve what a student with a less effective teacher can in a whole year (Leigh 2010).

It also goes on to say that curriculum planning is more than following the Australian Curriculum or state variants. They only provide a broad direction. They acknowledge that teachers play a key role in contextualising and sequencing learning.

Many learning areas have already developed consistent assessments and standards.  We have an agreed description of what good teaching looks like in our Best Teacher poster and a Shared Instructional Framework. We have moved to provide more, Learning Area Meeting time, curriculum time on school development days and next year we will schedule half a day to interrogate the DoE curriculum resources. I hope this will give teachers access to more choice of quality curriculum materials.

All-in-all we are well on our way.  I hope that this report gives you something to discuss and that the research supports or questions your current curriculum planning and delivery situation.

En Avant

Mike Sinagra