Prep Curriculum
The Prep Curriculum is based on the Australian
Curriculum for English, Mathematics, Science, History and Geography and
teachers continue to use the Early Years Curriculum Guidelines for the learning
areas where the Australian Curriculum in not yet available.
The Early Years Curriculum Guidelines (EYCG) provides
teachers with a framework for interacting with children, and planning,
assessing and reflecting on an effective Preparatory Year curriculum.
The guidelines are based on active learning for
children through real-life situations, investigation and play. The active
learning areas include Health and Physical learning, Thinking, Investigating,
and Imagining and Responding. The guidelines incorporate descriptions
of four early learning and development phases to help teachers to monitor
children's progress and preparedness for Year 1.
English
The Australian
Curriculum: English Foundation to Year 10 is organised into three interrelated
strands that support students' growing understanding and use of Standard
Australian English (English). Together the three strands focus on developing
students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing,
speaking and writing. The three strands are:
- Language: knowing about the English language.
- Literature: understanding, appreciating, responding to, analysing
and creating literature.
- Literacy: expanding the repertoire of English usage.
Mathematics
The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics is organised
around the interaction of three content strands and four proficiency strands.
The content strands are Number and Algebra,
Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. They describe what is
to be taught and learnt.
The proficiency strands are Understanding, Fluency,
Problem Solving, and Reasoning. They describe how content is explored or
developed, that is, the thinking and doing of mathematics. They provide the
language to build in the developmental aspects of the learning of mathematics
and have been incorporated into the content descriptions of the three content
strands described above. This approach has been adopted to ensure students’
proficiency in mathematical skills develops throughout the curriculum and
becomes increasingly sophisticated over the years of schooling
Science
The Australian Curriculum: Science has three
interrelated strands: Science Understanding, Science as a Human Endeavour and
Science Inquiry Skills. (Science understanding has four sub strands –
Biological science, chemical science, Physical science and Earth and Space
sciences.)
Together, the three strands of the science curriculum
provide students with understanding, knowledge and skills through which they
can develop a scientific view of the world. Students are challenged to explore
science, its concepts, nature and uses through clearly described inquiry
processes.
History
The Australian Curriculum: History is organised into
two interrelated strands: Historical Knowledge and Understanding and Historical
Skills.
Historical Knowledge and Understanding: This strand
includes personal, family, local, state or territory, national, regional and
world history. There is an emphasis on Australian history in its world history
context at Foundation to Year 10. The strand includes a study of societies,
events, movements and developments that have shaped world history from the time
of the earliest human communities to the present day. This strand explores
key concepts for developing historical understanding, such as: evidence,
continuity and change, cause and effect, significance, perspectives, empathy and
contestability. These concepts may be investigated within a particular
historical context to facilitate an understanding of the past and to provide a
focus for historical inquiries.
Historical Skills: This strand promotes skills used in
the process of historical inquiry: chronology, terms and concepts; historical
questions and research; the analysis and use of sources; perspectives and
interpretations; explanation and communication. Within this strand there is an
increasing emphasis on historical interpretation and the use of evidence.
Geography
The Australian
Curriculum: Geography is organised in two related strands: Geographical
Knowledge and Understanding, and Geographical Inquiry and Skills.
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 uses an inquiry approach to assist students
to make meaning of their world. It teaches them to respond to questions in a
geographically distinctive way, plan an inquiry; collect, evaluate, analyse and
interpret information; and suggest responses to what they have learned.
Technology
Education Queensland’s Essential Learnings and
Standards: Technology focuses on design elements and has two
strands: Technology as a Human Endeavour and Information, Materials and
Systems.
Students use their imagination and creativity to make
sense of the designed world as they investigate products used in everyday
situations and identify how these meet needs and wants. They develop an
understanding of characteristics of a range of resources (information,
materials and/or systems). They gain an awareness of local Australian resources
and how these have contributed to technology processes and products, in the
past and present. They see the place of technology in people’s work and
community lives.
Students work technologically, individually and
collaboratively to develop creative responses to design situations. They
explore the use of technology practice. They suggest and communicate design
ideas based on their own experiences and investigations. They manipulate and
process resources and consider what has worked well and what could be improved.
They reflect on their learning and consider the uses and impacts of technology
in familiar everyday situations.
The Arts
Education Queensland’s Essential Learnings
and Standards: The Arts focuses on five strands – Music, Visual Arts,
Dance, Drama and Media.
Students use their creativity, imagination and senses
to express their ideas, experiences and feelings through Dance, Drama, Music,
Media and Visual Art. They begin to develop their aesthetic understandings of
arts elements and languages. They create their own arts works, and present and
respond to their own and others’ arts works, considering particular audiences
and particular purposes. They see the place of the arts in people’s work and
community lives.
Students develop their arts practice through active
engagement, both individually and collaboratively, with arts elements,
techniques, skills and processes, working creatively and imaginatively to
relate the arts to their own experiences. They develop their interpretations of
arts works and reflect on the creative process that has occurred, within one or
across many arts disciplines.
Languages Other Than English (LOTE) – Japanese (Years
4, 5 and 6)
Education Queensland’s Essential Learnings
and Standards: Languages focuses on two strands – Comprehending and composing
the targeted language (Japanese) and Intercultural Competence and Language
Awareness.
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. They recognise the importance in contemporary society of
learning additional languages and using intercultural skills. Students learning
Asian, European and other languages expand their understanding and appreciation
of the diversity expressed in languages and the influence of language on
culture.
Students explore a range of text types in the
target language, noticing how communication needs and contextual challenges are
responded to for different purposes and audiences, and they communicate in a
range of controlled contexts on known topics, collaborating with peers. They
reflect on their learning and language choices in relation to purpose, context
and audience.
Music
Music is an important part of the school
community at Bracken Ridge and is offered to all students from Prep to Year 6.
Music within the school aims to develop creativity and potential in each
student and provide an opportunity for self-expression. Learning in the music
program is activity based and students are encouraged to discover the enjoyment and
understanding of music.
The school's extra-curricular activities provide an
opportunity to develop specific skills and give performance experience. Being a
part of the music program:
- teaches students to work as a team
- builds individual confidence
- gives students a sense of purpose and achievement
- is great fun!
Bracken Ridge students have a classroom music lesson
once a week with the music specialist. These weekly lessons are part of an
eight year program that feeds into secondary school. Music is one strand of the
Arts Syllabus and as such, is part of one of the key learning areas from
Years 1 to 10. During the 30 minute lessons, children are taught the basic
skills of music - beat, rhythm, pitch, singing, movement, listening, musical
literacy, creating and playing. Great emphasis is placed on the
"enjoyment" aspect.
Health and Physical
Education
In the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical
Education (F–10), the two strands, Personal, social and community health and
Movement and physical activity,
are interrelated and inform and support each other. Both strands of the Health
and Physical Education curriculum must be taught in each year from Prep to Year
6.
Health and Physical Education lessons will provide
students with the opportunity to participate in physical activity on a weekly
basis.
Prep–Year 2
When students transition into school, they bring
with them a wide range of health and movement experiences. Students’ sense of
self is evolving and they are beginning to develop the capacity to understand
and self-regulate their emotions in ways that account for their own feelings
and those of others. They develop skills to initiate social interactions and begin
to explore how their body is growing and changing as they get older. Through
the development of fundamental movement skills, physical play, manipulation of
equipment, and spatial awareness, children begin to develop movement
competence. They also become sufficiently skilled and confident to complete
everyday tasks, explore their physical surroundings and participate in movement
activities.
Year 3–Year 6
As students move through primary school, the
focus broadens to include the knowledge, understanding and skills required to
support and enhance their own health, safety and wellbeing and that of their
family and friends. Students are progressively more connected to their world
and their peers. Personal and social skills take on an increasing importance
and students become more aware of gender expectations and stereotypes. They
look to family, peers, the media, the Internet and the community for role
models. Students in Year 3 to Year 6 further develop and refine their
fundamental movement skills, learn about the common features of games, and
expand their understanding of movement concepts and strategies to engage more
confidently in a broad range of physical activities.