The Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum is designed to help students to
become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and
informed citizens. At Norman Park SS, we teach and assess in alignment with the
Australian Curriculum, to ensure the sequence of learning from Prep to Year 6
maintains rigor and appropriateness.
The Curriculum includes a variety of learning areas. Each
learning area focuses on developing subject-specific knowledges, skills,
vocabulary and understanding. The eight
learning areas of the Australian Curriculum include English, Mathematics,
Science, Health and Physical Education, Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS),
The Arts, Technologies (Digital and Design) and Languages (French in Years 2-
6).
Curriculum at Norman Park SS is
regulated by the ‘DET P–12 Curriculum,
assessment and reporting framework’ which specifies the requirements for
Queensland State schools to deliver the curriculum. It is based on
the belief that every student can learn and that responding to the student’s
learning needs is vital for achieving success.
Science Technology Engineering Mathematics
(STEM)
Australian
educators are being required to place more emphasis on science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) to ensure that today’s students will be
prepared for their future careers. With a STEM focussed curriculum it improves
collaboration and guarantees that 21st-century skills are fully integrated into
the curriculum, while supporting students’ academic and socio-emotional growth.
Norman Park SS has begun the
development of embedding STEM based learning into classroom teaching and
learning. The STEM focus offers all our students a transdisciplinary approach
across a range of learning areas with each learning area connected to enhance
the life- like context of the project/ problem without losing the rigor and impact
of each learning area. For example, in Science, students following the
scientific inquiry process when conducting experiments or in HASS identifying
solutions to make our world/ community a better place. With a strong emphasis
in using digital technologies, teachers and students are using iPads as part of
the learning to enhance and share their findings. The teaching of critical and creative
thinking skills, how to work collaboratively and the process of generating ideas
through planning, developing, testing and reflecting is the central vision for
STEM. Students will engage in different projects each year with some developed
from the Engquest program; each unit planned in accordance with the Australian
Curriculum.
Refer to curriculum overviews
for examples of the projects.