Curriculum

PREPARATORY YEAR (PREP)

Prep is the first year of school and provides the foundation for your child. It is compulsory for Queensland children to undertake Prep prior to Year One. Prep is a full-time program in primary schools.

Curriculum information​

At Warrigal Road  State School we implement the Australian Curriculum. Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), is responsible for the development of the Australian Curriculum. The following information is provided by ACARA regarding the Australian Curriculum.

The overall structure of the curriculum is consistent across learning areas and includes the following elements:

• A rationale that explains the place and purpose of the learning area in the school curriculum.
• Aims that identify the major learning that students will be able to demonstrate as a result of learning from the curriculum.
• An organisation section that provides an overview of how the curriculum in the learning area will be organised from Foundation to Year 12.
• Content descriptions that specify what teachers are expected to teach. These are accompanied by elaborations that illustrate the content descriptions.
• Achievement standards that describe what students are typically able to understand and able to do, and which are accompanied by work samples that illustrate the achievement standards through annotated student work.
• General capabilities that describe a set of knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that can be developed and applied across subject-based content.
• Cross-curriculum priorities that ensure the Australian Curriculum is relevant to the lives of students and addresses the contemporary issues they face.

What are the content descriptions?

The content descriptions specify what teachers are expected to teach. They include the knowledge, skills and understanding for each learning area as students progress through schooling. The content descriptions provide a well-researched scope and sequence of teaching, within which teachers determine how best to cater for individual students’ learning needs and interests. Examples that illustrate content descriptions can be found in elaborations. These assist teachers in developing a common understanding of content descriptions.

What are the achievement standards?

An achievement standard describes what students are typically able to understand and able to do as they progress through schooling. An achievement standard comprises a written description with illustrative student work samples.

The sequence of achievement standards across the Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum describes and illustrates progress in the learning area. This assists teachers to plan for and monitor learning and to make judgments about their teaching to support student learning. The achievement standards can support formative and summative assessment practices and provide a basis for consistency of assessment and reporting.

Work samples play a key role in establishing and communicating expectations described in the achievement standards. The examples of student work include the task and a student’s response, with annotations about the learning evident in that response in relation to relevant parts of the achievement standard.

What are the general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities?

The Australian Curriculum pays explicit attention to how seven general capabilities and three cross curriculum priorities contribute to, and can be developed through, teaching in each learning area.

The seven general capabilities are:

1. Literacy
2. Numeracy
3. Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
4. Critical and creative thinking
5. Personal and social capability
6. Ethical understanding
7. Intercultural understanding

The three cross-curriculum priorities are:

1. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
2. Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
3. Sustainability
   

Further detail is available by visiting the ACARA website.​

CURRICULUM ORGANISATION AND IMPLEMENTATION

• Warrigal Road State School derives its curriculum from ACARA (The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority).
• Subjects taught at Warrigal Road are English, Maths, Science, HASS, The Arts, Technologies and Health and Physical Education. Languages (Chinese-Mandarin) is taught from Year Four.
• Warrigal Road State School has a focus on differentiation, with the learning needs of all students recognised and catered for.
• The curriculum has a focus on higher order thinking and the Ways of Working, to ensure our students have the best opportunity to meet their full potential.
• Where possible a hands-on, inquiry model of teaching is adopted.
• Teachers use explicit teaching where appropriate and use, 'The Gradual Release Model' of teaching to help our students transition from teacher directed learning to independent learning.
  

​ASSESSMENT

• All units are assessed using predetermined criteria based on the Australian Curriculum.
• All marking guides have a five-point grading scale to enable the teacher to allocate a rating on the report card.
• All students within a year level complete are assessed against the same Australian Curriculum achievement standards- catering for individuals by varying the mode and making reasonable adjustments
• Assessment samples are moderated each term to ensure consistency across year levels.
• Summative assessment pieces are used for report card grades, but teachers also use a range of formative and diagnostic assessments to inform teaching.​