Strategies and resources for curriculum planning – representation
Resources about representation supporting content from ‘Curriculum planning for every student in every classroom’ online professional learning available in MyPL.
Representation – the ‘what’ of learning
Representation refers to the way teachers plan flexible and multiple options for learners to access content. Students access and understand information in a variety of ways. By understanding learner variability, we can plan learning experiences that are flexible and provide opportunities for all students to access the curriculum.
Representing lesson content in multiple ways increases the likelihood of students meaningfully accessing content. Effective teachers purposefully use many different strategies to enable students to access lesson content.
These questions can guide you when curriculum planning. Strategies to support students to access content and links to further resources are grouped under each guiding question.
- Provide content using a range of auditory, visual and multi-modal formats.
- Provide practical, experiential learning.
- Enable universal settings on devices and platforms, such as display and screen reading settings.
Resources
- Provide multiple options for students to make connections and activate prior knowledge.
- Make abstract concepts concrete by using practical and authentic learning experiences.
- Highlight key vocabulary, ideas and relationships with cues and prompts.
Resources
- Use a range of learning tools, such as checklists, scaffolds, organisers and mnemonics.
- Incorporate opportunities to revisit key lesson ideas.
- Assist students to transfer and generalise skills.
- Provide options to compact the curriculum.
Resources
- highlight patterns and relationships
- sample tools from the digital learning selector
- explicit teaching
- maximise transfer and generalise skills
- modify lesson pace to compact the curriculum
- Consider the language, cultural and cognitive demands of lesson content and materials.
- Consider bilingual resources and modes, such as videos, audio, gestures and sign, photos and illustrations.
- Use inbuilt options in digital platforms to translate written and oral text into different languages.