Wooloowin State School is committed to providing learning opportunities that engage children, equipping them with a range of skills and knowledge to become successful learners within the school context and beyond.
The Australian Curriculum sets consistent high standards for what all young Australians should learn as they progress through schooling. It prepares Australia’s next generation for the future and lays the building blocks for generations to come.
The Australian Curriculum focuses on learning area content and achievement standards that describe what students will learn and teachers will teach. It also gives attention to seven general capabilities that are important for life and work in the 21st century and to three issues identified in the Melbourne Declaration as needing more attention than they have received in curricula to date. The general capabilities and the cross-curriculum priorities are not added as additional subjects. They are dealt with, where relevant, through the learning area content on which the curriculum is built.
The Australian Curriculum is being implemented progressively into Wooloowin State School. The Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum for English, Mathematics, Science, History and Geography are already embedded into the Wooloowin curriculum.
Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education was introduced last year continuing into this year. The Arts is being introduced this year.
For other Key Learning Areas (i.e. Technology and Languages Other than English) we will still be working to the current Queensland Curriculum.
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 each learning area.
The seven general capabilities are literacy, numeracy, information and communication technology capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical understanding, and intercultural understanding. Learning continua are available for each capability, which describe the relevant knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions at particular points of schooling.
The Australian Curriculum focuses on three cross-curriculum priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and sustainability.
English
English aims to ensure that students:
learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning.
Mathematics
Mathematics aims to ensure that students:
are confident, creative users and communicators of mathematics, able to investigate, represent and interpret situations in their personal and work lives and as active citizens
develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of mathematical concepts and fluency with processes, and are able to pose and solve problems and reason in Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability.
Science
Science aims to ensure that students develop:
an interest in science as a means of expanding their curiosity and willingness to explore, ask questions about and speculate on the changing world in which they live
an understanding of the vision that science provides of the nature of living things, of the Earth and its place in the cosmos, and of the physical and chemical processes that explain the behaviour of all material things
an understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry and the ability to use a range of scientific inquiry methods, including questioning; planning and conducting experiments and investigations based on ethical principles; collecting and analysing data; evaluating results; and drawing critical, evidence-based conclusions
an ability to communicate scientific understanding and findings to a range of audiences, to justify ideas on the basis of evidence, and to evaluate and debate scientific arguments and claims
an ability to solve problems and make informed, evidence-based decisions about current and future applications of science while taking into account ethical and social implications of decisions
an understanding of historical and cultural contributions to science as well as contemporary science issues and activities and an understanding of the diversity of careers related to science
a solid foundation of knowledge of the biological, chemical, physical, Earth and space sciences, including being able to select and integrate the scientific knowledge and methods needed to explain and predict phenomena, to apply that understanding to new situations and events, and to appreciate the dynamic nature of science knowledge.
History
History aims to ensure that students develop:
interest in, and enjoyment of, historical study for lifelong learning and work, including their capacity and willingness to be informed and active citizens
knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the past and the forces that shape societies, including Australian society
understanding and use of historical concepts, such as evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, perspectives, empathy, significance and contestability
capacity to undertake historical inquiry, including skills in the analysis and use of sources, and in explanation and communication.
Geography
Geography is a structured way of exploring, analysing and understanding the characteristics of the places that make up our world, using the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change. It addresses scales from the personal to the global and time periods from a few years to thousands of years.
Geography integrates knowledge from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to build a holistic understanding of the world. Students learn to question why the world is the way it is, reflect on their relationships with and responsibilities for that world, and propose actions designed to shape a socially just and sustainable future.
Health and Physical Education
Health and Physical Education teaches students how to enhance their own and others’ health, safety, wellbeing and physical activity participation in varied and changing contexts. The Health and Physical Education learning area has strong foundations in scientific fields such as physiology, nutrition, biomechanics and psychology which inform what we understand about healthy, safe and active choices. The Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (F–10) is informed by these sciences and offers students an experiential curriculum that is contemporary, relevant, challenging, enjoyable and physically active
In Health and Physical Education, students develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to strengthen their sense of self, and build and manage satisfying relationships. The curriculum helps them to be resilient, and to make decisions and take actions to promote their health, safety and physical activity participation. As students mature, they develop and use critical inquiry skills to research and analyse the knowledge of the field and to understand the influences on their own and others’ health, safety and wellbeing. They also learn to use resources for the benefit of themselves and for the communities with which they identify and to which they belong.
Technology
Students use their understandings of the relationships between technology and society to consider the roles people play in shaping products and processes. They use their imagination and creativity to investigate and identify needs, wants, design specifications and constraints.
The Arts
In the Australian Curriculum, the Arts is a learning area that draws together related but distinct art forms. While these art forms have close relationships and are often used in interrelated ways, each involves different approaches to arts practices and critical and creative thinking that reflect distinct bodies of knowledge, understanding and skills. The curriculum examines past, current and emerging arts practices in each art form across a range of cultures and places.
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation to Year 10 comprises five subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts.
Each subject focuses on its own practices, terminology and unique ways of looking at the world.
In Dance, students use the body to communicate and express meaning through purposeful movement. Dance practice integrates choreography, performance, and appreciation of and responses to dance and dance making.
In Drama, students explore and depict real and fictional worlds through use of body language, gesture and space to make meaning as performers and audience. They create, rehearse, perform and respond to drama.
In Media Arts, students use communications technologies to creatively explore, make and interpret stories about people, ideas and the world around them. They engage their senses, imagination and intellect through media artworks that respond to diverse cultural, social and organisational influences on communications practices today.
In Music, students listen to, compose and perform music from a diverse range of styles, traditions and contexts. They create, shape and share sounds in time and space and critically analyse music. Music practice is aurally based and focuses on acquiring and using knowledge, understanding and skills about music and musicians.
In Visual Arts, students experience and explore the concepts of artists, artworks, world and audience. Students learn in, through and about visual arts practices, including the fields of art, craft and design. Students develop practical skills and critical thinking which inform their work as artists and audience.
Languages other than English (LOTE) – Japanese
Students use their existing understandings of the target language and cultures to further explore societal views and norms, and how these are enacted in the functions, conventions and patterns of each language. They develop their repertoire of process skills and strategies to acquire and manipulate the verbal, non-verbal and written features of the target language.
Religious Instruction at Wooloowin State School
Queensland legislation allows for religious instruction (RI) to be offered in Queensland state schools.