South Australian teachers are being supported to help bring the national curriculum to the classroom like never before, with one of the biggest curriculum development initiatives ever seen in South Australia being launched today.
A group of 37 passionate teachers have been employed over the past nine months to create a curriculum development program and design classroom-ready resources, drawing from expert advice and the work of around 450 teachers.
The new resources include detailed scope and sequence documents for learning areas in the Australian curriculum, as well as flexible and practical units of work that teach directly to the curriculum and are designed specifically for South Australian students.
The first set of resources released today include:
Practical units of work – English, Maths, Science and Humanities and Social Sciences
- Units of work are provided as teachable five-week blocks on content – two per school term – that assist teachers to connect classroom learning to the Australian curriculum. These have been developed for four of the eight learning areas in the curriculum, with units for the remaining four areas (The Arts, Technologies, Health and Physical Education and Languages) to be developed by the Department for Education in the future.
Scope and sequence documents – Reception for Year 10 curriculum
- Scope and sequence documents set out what students are expected to learn and when, supporting teachers to appropriately sequence their classroom content in alignment with the Australian curriculum. These have been created for seven of the eight learning areas of the curriculum, with supports for the Languages learning area to be developed soon.
Education Minister John Gardner said many educators across the state will welcome the introduction of these supports.
"These curriculum resources have been designed by South Australian teachers, for South Australian teachers, and I am confident that the availability of these supports will be welcomed by many educators across South Australia," said Minister Gardner.
"We are making it easier for schools to teach to the Australian curriculum, putting South Australian students in the best possible position to achieve improvement against national standards.
"This is a broad piece of work that has been over a year in planning, with 37 passionate educators leading the development of a series of materials that reflect the knowledge, judgement and creativity of our teachers.
"These resources have the potential to significantly assist teachers in planning their classroom activity, which could give them more time to address individual student outcomes and goals, focus on pedagogy and track and monitor student progress.
"South Australia has been making significant gains in literacy and numeracy outcomes in the past two years, but we know that there is still much more work to be done.
"Latest education research shows that continuous improvement and development of the curriculum is key to giving students the best opportunity to thrive at school.
"We are determined to build on the growth we have seen across our education system to give every learner better access to the wider curriculum and help deliver long term improvement for all South Australian students."
Further resources are set to be released over the next two years as part of the initiative.
The resources build upon other aspects of the Department for Education school improvement agenda including school improvement planning, data provision and literacy and numeracy advice.
You can find out more about South Australia's school improvement model here.
