Prep–Year 6 The Arts familiarisation and planning 2: Curriculum elements

Welcome to the Familiarisation and planning series of online sessions designed to introduce curriculum leaders and teachers to the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0: The Arts Prep–Year 6. In this second session in the series, we will be focusing on the Curriculum elements section of the curriculum. In our first session, we covered the Understand this learning area section of the curriculum and our final session in the series will address planning considerations for Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.

Acknowledgment of Country

The QCAA acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we meet today. We pay our respects to their Elders and their descendants who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country, and we extend that respect to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people here today. We thank them for sharing their cultures and spiritualities and recognise the important contribution of this knowledge to our understanding of this place we call home.

Learning goal and success criteria

In Session 2, our learning goal is to understand the implications of changes to the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0: The Arts to plan for the transition in your own context.

You will know you have been successful if you have more knowledge about the curriculum elements in Version 9.0 of The Arts curriculum and can identify actions for planning in your school.

Session 2 outline

This recording is accompanied by a worksheet for you to record your responses to the activities and reflection points throughout the presentation.

If you have not already done so, please take some time now to download or print the Session 2 outline resource.

Outline for Session 2

We will work through these three topics in the session.

Outline for Session 2: Introduction to Australian Curriculum v9.0

We began Session 1 in the series by orienting ourselves to a process we can use to engage with the changes in Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.

Let’s briefly review that process now.

Identifying actions for planning in your context

Here is the approach we proposed to assist schools in their implementation of Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.

In this second session, we are going to be looking at the specific elements of the curriculum that may have an impact on your teaching, learning and assessment.

As we consider this section of the curriculum, focus your thinking on how much you may need to refine, realign, reimagine or remove aspects of your current programs.

Organisation of The Arts and changes

On screen now, we have the organisation of The Arts outlining the main changes in structure between Version 8.4 and Version 9.0, which we discussed in more detail in Session 1 in the series.

Outline for Session 2: Curriculum elements

We will now move on to our core focus for this session, the Curriculum elements section.

Organisation of The Arts

On screen in the shaded box, you will see the sections that form the Curriculum elements. We will work through each of these sections throughout the presentation.

Identifying actions for planning in your context

As we work through The Arts Curriculum elements section and the changes we can see in Version 9.0, let’s keep our process for identifying actions for planning in mind.

Here is where we can begin to audit our current programs and consider what is the same in Australian Curriculum Version 9.0 and what is different.

Pause and reflect: Similarities and differences

You may wish to construct your own note-taking template like the one indicated on screen to help you identify the similarities and differences you notice in the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0 for The Arts that may shape your planning for the new curriculum.

A table has been provided for you in the Session 2 outline resource referred to at the start of this recording.

Organisation of The Arts

Let’s start with the Level description and Achievement standard in the Curriculum elements section.

The level descriptions provide a high-level overview of the learning students should experience each year.

With regards to the achievement standard, schools gather evidence against the relevant achievement standard across the teaching and learning cycle.

The Arts: Achievement standard structure

The organisation of the achievement standard in Version 9.0 has remained the same.

In The Arts, the achievement standard is still two paragraphs.

The content related to the Exploring and responding strand is represented first.

The content related to all other strands is represented in the second paragraph.

Structure of The Arts

Prep is now a separate year across all learning areas in Version 9.0, which highlights its distinctive pedagogies and provides continuity from kindergarten. Prep is therefore no longer grouped with Years 1 and 2 as it was in Version 8.4.

In Prep, a learning area achievement standard is used to cover all Arts subjects.

A learning area achievement standard and a subject-specific achievement standard is available for use in Years 1‒6. The learning area achievement standard allows for flexibility across The Arts. The learning area achievement standard is an overarching achievement standard across all Arts subjects which is a great starting point for planning connected or rotational Arts subjects. This means that teachers can choose which aspects of the achievement standard they will focus on for each of the subjects being taught across the year or band.

Schools might consider their unique contexts, and how the learning area achievement standard might streamline planning and assessment, if more than one Arts subject is offered across a year or band.

Achievement standard comparison: Years 3–4 example (Drama)

For Years 1–6, there are both learning area and subject-specific achievement standards available for each Arts subject.

The Years 3‒4 learning area achievement standard and the subject-specific Years 3–4 Drama achievement standard are now on screen.

As you can see, the learning area achievement standard (on the left-hand side of the table) provides an overarching achievement standard across all subjects in The Arts.

The subject-specific achievement standard (on the right-hand side of the table) refers to subject-specific knowledge, understanding and skills.

Some things to consider when planning whether to use the learning area or the subject-specific achievement standard are:

• if your school chooses to use the subject-specific achievement standard, the achievement standard for each of the five subjects in the program will need to be used
• if your school decides to use the learning area achievement standard, it can replace the subject-specific achievement standard across the year or band
• finally, if the Arts program includes more than one Arts subject in the year or band, using the learning area achievement standard provides greater flexibility and reduces the amount of assessment.

Achievement standard comparison: Years 3–4 example (Visual Arts)

Let’s now consider a Visual Arts Years 3‒4 achievement standard example. It aligns with the Arts learning area achievement standard for Years 3‒4 on the right of the screen.

The coloured highlighting emphasises this alignment.

The subject-specific achievement standard uses Visual Arts specific knowledge, understanding and skills, while the learning area achievement standard provides an overarching achievement standard across all subjects in The Arts, yet they both describe what a student should know, understand and be able to do at the end of Year 4.

This interconnectedness is evident in the first sentence in both achievement standards in the blue highlighted text, which describes students’ achievement across the three strands of Exploring and responding, Developing practices and skills, and Creating and making. The and/or language in this sentence allows for flexibility in assessment.

The orange highlighted text explicitly refers to the Exploring and responding strand.

The green highlighted text refers to both the Developing practices and skills strand and the Creating and making strand.

Finally, the purple highlight refers to the Presenting and performing strand where students perform, present, produce, share and/or display their artwork.

Although there is clear strand alignment across the leaning area and subject-specific achievement standards, all four strands work together as part of the creative process.

Pause and reflect: Achievement standards

We will now pause to reflect on what we have just heard about the changes to the achievement standards.

When you are exploring the changes, how might you approach this with your colleagues?

You may wish to use some of the strategies we have just outlined or download the QCAA resources mentioned for distribution to your teaching teams.

Use the Session 2 outline resource to record your thoughts.

Organisation of The Arts

Let’s now look at the content descriptions in the strands and sub-strands which inform teaching and learning and underpin assessment.

Content descriptions specify the knowledge, understanding and skills students learn and that teachers are expected to teach.

Comparison of AC v8.4 to v9.0 documents

All the significant changes to the content descriptions for The Arts subjects are shown in comparison documents on the QCAA website.

On screen now is an example of one of these resources.

Let’s unpack this example a little more to help you understand how you can use it in your planning for the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0: The Arts.

Shown on screen is a snip of the Music Prep document, which shows how the changes are colour-coded.

If something has been refined from Version 8.4, it may not be colour-coded, and therefore careful consideration is needed when working through a comparison document.

For example, in Version 8.4 the content description was: ‘create compositions and perform music to communicate ideas to an audience’.

Whereas in Version 9.0, the content description states: ‘share their arts works with audiences’.

If something has been removed from Version 8.4 and no longer appears in Version 9.0, it will be colour-coded red. As you can see on screen ‘including music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ has been removed as we stated earlier.

Shown on screen is a snip of the Year 2 document, which shows how the changes are colour-coded.

If there is something new that has been added to Version 9.0, which you will not have done in Version 8.4, then it will be highlighted green.

In this instance, there has been the addition of ‘play’ and ‘imagination’, which has been added to Developing practices and skills.

Pause and reflect: Key messages

What are the key messages from this section of the curriculum that have resonated with you? Take a moment now to note down your key messages from this session.

Outline for Session 2: Formulating next steps

That concludes our review of the Curriculum elements section and the changes to the achievement standards and content descriptions for The Arts.

Let’s pause and recap what we have considered in this second session in our Familiarisation and planning series and what we can do with our new base of knowledge to help us plan for Version 9.0.

Identifying actions for planning in your context

As we have worked through both Sessions 1 and 2, we’ve been in the review and audit phase, considering the similarities and differences we’ve observed in the Understand this learning area and Curriculum elements sections.

Let’s now turn our attention to what these similarities and differences might mean for our teaching and learning, and assessment plans to identify some actions for ourselves from here. With the information you now have from participating in these sessions, you can start to make some decisions about how much you may need to refine, realign, reimagine or remove from your current programs to meet the requirements of the revised curriculum.

Pause and reflect

Based on what you have heard about the changes, where do you need to focus your attention as you plan for the transition to the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0?

We’ll now pause for a moment to allow you to start that decision-making process.

Refine

Reflecting on what you’ve heard, and considering your current plans, you may be thinking that implementation of Version 9.0 in your context will largely be about making refinements to what you have already got. You’ve recognised that you have a solid foundation in your current program and the changes in Version 9.0 will only mean minor adjustments to your teaching and learning activities and assessments.

Realign

Alternatively, in other contexts, and perhaps in certain year levels only, you may need to consider realigning your activities and assessment based on changes to the content descriptions and achievement standards we’ve considered in this session.

Reimagine

Perhaps there are certain year levels where you want to reimagine some units. You may have been reflecting on the changes we’ve discussed in Sessions 1 and 2 and decided it is an opportunity to redesign some teaching and learning activities or assessment tasks. Therefore, has the Version 9.0 curriculum prompted some new thinking for you about how to move your plans forward?

Remove

Finally, are there some aspects that it will be necessary to remove in order to meet the requirements of the revised curriculum in your context?

Pause and reflect: Identifying actions

You may wish to use the tables in your Session 2 outline to plan your next steps.

Consider your current teaching, learning and assessment plans and use the scale (where 5 equals strongly agree) to evaluate how much you need to refine, realign, reimagine or remove material from your current plans.

Record some notes where you have identified particular actions.

Pause the session recording and take some time to determine where the majority of your work will be as you plan for Version 9.0.

Learning goal and success criteria

As the session comes to a close, let us reflect on our learning goal and success criteria.

We have built our knowledge about Australian Curriculum Version 9.0: The Arts and identified some actions for planning in our particular school context.

In the next session

That concludes the second session and our discussion on the Curriculum elements section.

In the final session of our series on Familiarisation and planning, we will be discussing how to plan with the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0.

On screen, you will see an infographic that is part of our Elements for effective planning resource.

For the next session

You may wish to access this resource to familiarise yourself with its contents prior to the next session.

On screen, you can see where this resource is available on the QCAA website.

Contact

If you have any queries regarding the information from this session, please reach out to the K–10 Curriculum and Assessment Branch​ with the contact details noted on screen.

We thank you for your time in completing this session and look forward to working with you in Session 3 of the Familiarisation and planning series.

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