How does the Australian Curriculum flow down to be used in individual activities by teachers?
Imagine the Australian Curriculum as a travel guide book. It’s given to every state and territory in Australia to use. Each state and territory looks at this guide book, but they’re able to reword things, add suggestions or remove some content. For the most part, the content of the guide book stays the same, but it may now look different and contain a few different ideas.
This revised guide book (although some states and territories make no changes at all) is then given to schools and teachers within that part of Australia to use. They look at the guide book and use it to plan units of learning. You can imagine these as all the countries in the guide book. Throughout the year, all the countries must be visited, but it’s up to individual schools to decide on their order.
Within each country (unit), there are a number of content descriptors that must be included. These content descriptors are what the curriculum codes link to (and what can be seen on the bottom of our nature at play cards). Most states use the Australian Curriculum codes, but some have re-written the guidebook to use different ones. You can think of these content descriptors as the important cities within a country (unit) to visit.
Finally, within each city (content descriptor with a code), there are a number of sights to see. These are the activities you use to teach, and this is where our nature at play cards come in! You probably wouldn’t say you have seen a whole city if you’ve only visited one sight. Likewise, you will need to include lots of different activities to make sure you’ve covered the whole content descriptor.
It’s my hope that some of the sights you choose to see are outside, fun and hands-on (these are the best kinds of activities and are what our cards are all about!)
Visit our shop at natureatplay.com.au to find out more!
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