1. Welcome to ‘Whole-school curriculum planning’
The webinar will start
promptly at 3:45pm on 25 July 2019.

2. Professional Learning Aims
To develop an understanding of the levels of curriculum planning To use the Victorian F-10 English Curriculum Mapping Tools to audit the curriculum and to analyse the result
Today you are all going to build your knowledge and skills in utilising some of the curriculum documents available that will support your school in developing a comprehensive picture of how the English curriculum is addressed providing continuum of learning that is both sequential and cumulative.

3. Four interrelated layers
By School – a high-level summary of the coverage of all the curriculum areas, reflecting the school’s goals, vision and any particular areas of specialisation or innovation
By Curriculum Area – the sequencing of key knowledge and skills across the years of schooling to support a progression of learning
By Year Level – a coherent program from a student perspective that enables effective connections across curriculum areas
By Unit / Lessons – specifying Victorian Curriculum F–10 content descriptions and achievement standards, activities and resources to ensure students of all achievement levels are able to progress
The curriculum planning website provides details and supporting documents and tools regarding these four layers of planning. Through understanding and developing documentation in each of the layers, planning becomes streamlined, it builds consistency of curriculum provision across the school and frees up time to focus on teaching and learning.

4. Where are you at?
In the poll rate yourself from 1-5 in each of the levels of planning
Poll
Rating 1-5
Whole school curriculum overview
Curriculum level scope and sequence
Year level planning
Term planning
Weekly planning
For many schools planning at the weekly level and to some extent the term level is where it is most comprehensive, however if you start at the top level it ensures accountability for providing a comprehensive curriculum.
There is a self assessment tool available on the website which can be used to identify the strengths and areas for improvement.

5. Self Assessment Tool
This is a snapshot of the school level self assessment tool.
The self assessment tool comes in a printable format such as this or can be undertaken online with a print out indicating where you are doing well, areas for review and priority areas for action.
In a small school undertaking it with the whole staff is quite achievable, however, with a larger staff it may be best undertaken in professional learning teams or teaching teams and then collating to gain a whole school profile.

6. Guidelines
The guidelines provide advice on the effective use of the curriculum to develop whole-school teaching and learning plans and to report student learning achievement
Curriculum design including what is in the curriculum, why the change from Ausvels was undertaken etc.
Stages of Learning Foundation Stage – (F - 2) Breadth Stage (Years 3 – 8) Pathways Stage (Years 9 – 10)
Talks about what subjects are taught
Reporting student achievement – What you need to report on at each of the stages and how often.
English is taught and accessed at all stages of learning

7. Key points from the guidelines
the defined curriculum content (knowledge, skills and understanding) is the basis for student learning
schools should develop and publish a whole-school curriculum plan that documents their teaching and learning program
schools have flexibility in the development of the teaching and learning program to reflect decisions, resources, expertise and priorities of the school

8. Connected components-what needs to be considered for effective curriculum planning
Each component is an integral aspect in the provision of student learning.
The curriculum provides the content of what needs to be covered. Which is also one of the four components of that supports the provision of excellence in Teaching and learning
How we deliver the content is essential to supporting students to engage with the content and to then actively make connections that growth their knowledge and skills and drive their thirst to continue their learning. The recently released High Impact Teaching and Learning Strategies are targeted toward improving pedagogy.
When planning for learning knowing where to begin and what you hope to achieve is crucial, therefore using assessment to gauge a starting point to establish provision then providing learning that is focused toward the achievement of the next goal is essential.
Reporting reflects the growth that students are making and should be transparent to students and parents.

9. Why is curriculum planning so important?
a guaranteed and viable curriculum is the school level factor that has the most impact on student achievement
a guaranteed and viable curriculum is defined as a combination of opportunity to learn and time to learn (What works in schools: Translating research into action Marzano 2003)
it is not enough for a curriculum to be implicit, it must be explicit and it must be coherent
effective planning and documentation is a significant part of providing a guaranteed and viable curriculum
At a school level having a guaranteed and viable curriculum that is sequential, rigorous and reflects the local context is crucial to student growth. It must be explicitly planned for, taught and assessed against the achievement standards. It needs to provide multiple entry and exit points for student learning within a cumulative and spiralling format.

10. Whole-school Curriculum planning
is not the responsibility of the individual teacher – it is a team effort
recognises that we are educating the whole child across many years of schooling - curriculum is designed as a continuum of learning
without the “what” students should learn, pedagogy is a process without purpose
deep familiarity with the curriculum is essential
A whole school curriculum plan needs input from all of the teaching staff, as each member looks at the curriculum through different lenses and this supports the building of depth of knowledge that reflects their beliefs.
When reviewing curriculum provision it is also helpful to obtain parent input into what they feel is essential for their children and how student learning is reflective of community values and linked with the community.
Therefore to build a cohesive curriculum it is essential that teachers have had prior opportunity to develop familiarity and understanding through working with the achievement standards, scope and sequence documents and elaborations. It is quite difficult to undertake curriculum auditing when people do not have a knowledge base to work from.

11. How does purposeful planning makes a difference to teaching?
“Good planning, like good instruction, is as intentional as it is adaptable.”
(David Pearson, personal interview, 1995)
How does purposeful planning makes a difference to teaching?
Discuss
Good planning provides structure to learning, however it also needs to maintain an element of flexibility to cater for additional learning opportunities. For example incursions and local events.
Please add to the discussion

12. Four interrelated layers
By School – a high-level summary of the coverage of all the curriculum areas, reflecting the school’s goals, vision and any particular areas of specialisation or innovation
By Curriculum Area – the sequencing of key knowledge and skills across the years of schooling to support a progression of learning
By Year Level – a coherent program from a student perspective that enables effective connections across curriculum areas
By Unit / Lessons – specifying Victorian Curriculum F–10 content descriptions and achievement standards, activities and resources to ensure students of all achievement levels are able to progress

13. Why audit the English Curriculum?
to gain a comprehensive picture of how the curriculum is provided across the school.
to build a picture of what learning is planned for, explicitly taught, assessed and reported on at various levels and across the school.
to ensure that links between the curriculum and the achievement standards and reporting to parents are established.

14. Whole school Curriculum Audit
In order to provide a comprehensive curriculum that has balance and reflects the values and priorities of the school, you need to audit what is currently occurring and then strategically plan to ensure that all students have access to the breadth of curriculum as outlined in the stages of schooling.
The tools for this audit can be found on the VCAA curriculum planning website under whole school

15. Four interrelated layers
By School – a high-level summary of the coverage of all the curriculum areas, reflecting the school’s goals, vision and any particular areas of specialisation or innovation
By Curriculum Area – the sequencing of key knowledge and skills across the years of schooling to support a progression of learning
By Year Level – a coherent program from a student perspective that enables effective connections across curriculum areas
By Unit / Lessons – specifying Victorian Curriculum F–10 content descriptions and achievement standards, activities and resources to ensure students of all achievement levels are able to progress
Now we are moving on to a more detailed look at our provision of learning in English.

16. Where do you start?
schools are not expected to be starting from a blank page
documentation at the curriculum area layer and the unit/lesson layer is often the most comprehensive, although there may be gaps
schools are advised to use this ‘stock-taking’ opportunity to bring already existing materials together in a coordinated manner, ensuring the essential elements are included, and that there is consistency within and between the layers.
Link the discussion here back to the whole school self assessment poll at the beginning of the session.

17. Curriculum mapping
Why? Mapping identifies the extent of curriculum coverage in units of work and clearly links teaching, learning and assessment while working with the curriculum continuum. How? Mapping templates support teachers to identify where content descriptions and achievement standards are being explicitly addressed within the school’s teaching and learning program.
The self assessment poll provides an outline of the overall strengths and weaknesses however it does not provide the detail required at curriculum level to identify your current coverage on the Victorian Curriculum. That is why the next step to ensuring that the curriculum is comprehensively covered in each area of the curriculum is to use the mapping tools.

19. Step 1
Now I am going to take you through how to complete the mapping tool as a means to auditing your current curriculum provision. The first task is to fill in the unit and/or term space.
If you plan by units, then in the spaces provided list the units, indicating which term you taught each unit.
Or, as many schools teach English as a stand alone subject, under the semester/year column you could just write Term 1, term 2. term 3 and term 4.
Alternatively you may teach some aspects of the curriculum by term and some through units, you would then list a combination of both.

20. Step 2
The next step is to decide on which of the content descriptions you explicitly taught and collected evidence of student learning. The evidence should be related to the achievement standard and may well be collected through any of the modes of English. To do this you just check the box relating to the content descriptions. Don’t over analyse and go with best fit at this point in time.

21. Create a highlight code
Identify features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text, and understand how texts vary in complexity and technicality depending on the approach to the topic, the purpose and the intended audience (VCELA277)
Since English has a large number of content descriptions, some schools will focus on different text types for explicit teaching each term, therefore, the use of colour coding may support you with your auditing. This does not mean that your students are restricted to this text type for a term. It is just that this text type is where your explicit teaching and the related collection of evidence for that text type is focused.

22. Term 1
Term 2
Term 4
Term 3
Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (VCELY288)
Compare and evaluate two texts presenting the same ideas and analyse why one is more comprehensible or engaging than the other
(VCELY289)
This is a reading and viewing example of where differing aspects of these content descriptions are focused on at different times of the year.

23. Step 2
Remember that what you are trying to do is to have best fit for what you have taught. You may have some content descriptions that have several ticks over a year and some that only have one. At this point in time just getting the information into the template is the most important and we can look at balance etc. once this is complete.

24. Content description: Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (VCELY288)
Elaborations:
making connections between the text and students’ own experience and other texts
making connections between information in print and images
building and using prior knowledge and vocabulary
finding specific literal information
asking and answering questions
creating mental images
finding the main idea of a text
inferring meaning from the ways communication occurs in digital environments including the interplay between words, images, and sounds
bringing subject and technical vocabulary and concept knowledge to new reading tasks, selecting and using texts for their pertinence to the task and the accuracy of their information
If you are unsure of what a content description means, then click on the active link and it will take you to the elaborations. The elaborations provide examples of what you may be teaching that relates to the content description. You do not have to teach every elaboration. Remember they are related examples only.

25. Step 3
By the end of Level 4
Students understand that texts have different structures depending on the purpose and context. (1)
They explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used to engage the interest of audiences and can describe literal and implied meaning connecting ideas in different texts. (2)
They express preferences for particular types of texts, and respond to others’ viewpoints. (3)
Now that you have thought about what you have taught and where it takes place, you need to start thinking further about how this feeds into student achievement. This is the next step toward completing the curriculum mapping tool.
Shown in green are the major components of the achievement standard. You will notice that each major component has a number next to it. Your task at this step is to match the content descriptions to the achievement standard. As can be seen in the example the first identifiable content description matches the first achievement standard component and is marked as 1 in the achievement standard box. The second and fourth content descriptions above both relate to the second achievement standard component and are marked in the example with 2.
Through completing this step you will be strengthening your knowledge of how the content descriptions feed into the achievement standards. It is the achievement standards that we are assessing students on, and the content descriptions are what we are teaching to grow student skills and knowledge.

26. Undertaking the mapping
Take a unit of work/sequence of lessons, fill in the unit name and the semester/year when it is taught.
An alternative option is to examine what aspects of the curriculum are explicitly taught and assessed each term.
Use the check box or place a  in the relevant content description cell.
Indicate within each marked cell the connection to the relevant sentence/s in the achievement standard, using the numbering scheme provided.
NB: You may find that a content description does not address the entire sentence from the achievement standard. This exercise is to highlight the contribution towards the achievement standard so that assessment can be discussed
Provide English Curriculum Maps and have a go at filling it in for a particular unit of work or term.
After an initial start of mapping unit or term with feedback provided, this could then be completed back at school level in readiness for the next session.
It will need to be completed prior to moving onto the scoping of a yearly planner.

27. Analysing the findings
The following questions could be used as prompts:
Are all content descriptions equal? Do you think they all take the same amount of time to teach?
Is anything being over taught?
Is anything being missed completely or given insufficient attention?
Is there sufficient ‘time on task’? Are you allowing enough time to develop knowledge, understanding and skills that are included in the curriculum and thus enable students to progress along the continuum?

28. Where to find them
VCAA>Curriculum F-10>Curriculum Area Advice>Curriculum Planning and Mapping Templates
The mapping tools are available in all curriculum areas and can be found on the VCAA website under each of curriculum areas.

29. Why develop a year level plan?
To ensure that students are provided with learning opportunities that enable them to gain success in establishing their skills and knowledge at a level as set out in the achievement standards.
To ensure that the mandated curriculum is explicitly taught to enable student success.
To reflect the vision and values of the school.
To allow for the flexibility of when and how the teaching will be addressed

30. Year Level Planning
This is a single level year planner which you have a copy of in front of you

31. To this Hard copy provided on the back of your blank document
This is where you will meld you school context with the curriculum to make it a living breathing document.
The first thing that you need to do is to drop in the achievement standard for the level or levels that the document reflects.
The next step will be to decide how you want to organise the categories that you wish to have in your document.
Do you want it to stay as Reading and Viewing, Writing and Speaking and Listening or do you want to add further depth through outlining programs or specific teaching foci?
There are 2 non negotiables: 1. The document must contain the achievement standard or standards (If using the multi level plan) 2. It must cover all mandated Content Descriptions, but how you record this is your choice.

32. Resources Curriculum Planning Curriculum Mapping Tool
Curriculum Mapping Tool
Video resources on Curriculum planning

33. Professional Learning Aims
To develop an understanding of the levels of curriculum planning To use the Victorian F-10 English Curriculum Mapping Tools to audit the curriculum and to analyse the result
Today you are all going to build your knowledge and skills in utilising some of the curriculum documents available that will support your school in developing a comprehensive picture of how the English curriculum is addressed providing continuum of learning that is both sequential and cumulative.

34. Curriculum support For advice regarding the F-10 curriculum, contact
VCAA F-10 Unit: T