[Screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country plaque at Leichhardt Public School. Decorative Aboriginal artwork appears on the left side of the plaque. Text on the plaque acknowledges the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora Nation and pays respect to Elders past and present.]

Jodie Wherry – APC&I, Leichhardt Public School

[Text on screen reads 'Leichhardt public school context.']

Leichhardt Public School is located in the inner west of Sydney. We have 530 enrolments, 21 mainstream classes, and 3 multi-stage support unit classes. At Leichhardt Public School, all students are supported to be safe, respectful, and responsible.

The school has a strong focus on explicit teaching differentiation and data informed practices, and we offer enhanced opportunities for learning in philosophy, the arts, sports, technology, Italian language, First Nations education and sustainability.

At Leichhardt Public School, high expectations, collaboration and wellbeing are prioritised to ensure excellence and equity for students, staff, and the community.

[Text on screen reads 'Curriculum planning processes to support student learning.']

Melanie Takkos – K–6 Autism class, Leichhardt Public School

So we begin by assessing the needs strength and current levels of each student. Our curriculum planning process begins with assessing each student's needs, strengths, and current levels. Using tools like ILP goals, diagnostic assessments, such as phonological and spelling diagnostics, Best Start and formative class assessments. We use the precursors and literacy progressions to break down the outcomes into smaller steps. This helps us personalise learning goals and support students working at different ability levels across various stages.

Madi James – K–6 IO class, Leichhardt Public School

So we designed lessons to be accessible and supportive of student communication needs. So we use strategies such as teacher prompted oral responses, guided and gestural responses, oral independent responses, written responses and communication device responses such as Proloquo and Boardmaker. This is to allow students to provide their learning and evidence of their learning in their preferred method of communication. Collaboration is key.

We maintain consistent communication with external providers, such as behavioural therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, paediatricians, and parents. This is to ensure our goals are consistent across school and home, and we are providing students with strategies that effectively meet their learning goals.

We also work closely with school learning support officers in our classrooms every day, and they help us help the students achieve their learning goals.

Melanie

Finally, we continuously reflect and adapt, adjusting teaching strategies in real time based on student engagement and regulation, ensuring ongoing growth and responsiveness to each student's evolving needs.

Madi

To develop a scope and sequence, we first start by looking at individual student learning profiles and learning goals.

[Text on screen reads 'Developing a scope and sequence for support classes.']

This way we can identify student learning needs since students remain in their classes from K–6, we use a 2-year scope and sequence to ensure students are learning the appropriate outcomes for their stage.

Melanie

We base our planning on the Stage 1 department units of work, we cover 2–3 units per term, placing strong emphasis on repetition of prior learning, as many students need consistent reinforcement to retain information.

[Text on screen reads 'Developing a scope and sequence for support classes.']

Even when units are repeated, the way students engage with the content varies depending on their current goals. Our scope and sequence aligns with curriculum and syllabus outcomes, using access content points, and literacy and numeracy precursors to ensure accessibility. We sequence learning logically and scaffold new skills to build on prior knowledge with flexible pacing tailored to each student's progression.

Madi

Collaboration with specialists, classroom teachers and families supports ongoing review and adjustment of the scope and sequence in response to students' progress. This ensures relevance and effectiveness.

Jodie

We analyse our student profiles first, we look at their individual learning goals. We use data from any testing we have. It might be standardised or our formative assessment within our classes that we've completed and then we use that as a starting point to look at how we're going to differentiate the units.

[Text on screen reads 'Adapting the department’s sample units to effectively support diverse student needs.']

We modify the units by adjusting the complexity, um, by adjusting the type of task or the way that they might complete the task, so they're able to complete it in a way that's going to demonstrate their learning within their capabilities.

When we're organising our tasks, we make sure that there's a range of different tasks. It might be hands-on tasks, it might be some written tasks. Uh, it might be engaging in a conversation and we also need to provide some students with assistive technology to help them communicate and engage with a task as well.

When we're assessing student learning, we provide them with flexible ways to show their learning, just like the task that we differentiate. We need to make sure that we are also differentiating the way that we assess the students, to allow them to show us and demonstrate their learning of what they have completed throughout the unit.

Madi

We collaboratively plan and program each lesson, keeping in mind the distinct learning profiles and grouping of each student. We group students into 4 distinct groups. We have Group one, which is our non-verbal and sensory group. Students are working towards identifying visuals and relevant information in their life, such as identifying a visual of a key and matching it to a communication device, visual of a key.

Group 2 is working towards simple sentences with teacher support. Group 3 is working towards writing compound sentences, also with teacher support, but leaning more towards independence and using punctuation such as capital letters, full stops, and finger spaces. Group 4 is our extension group, and they are working towards writing paragraphs and researching more information about a topic.

Melanie

We use EduChat to input lessons with prompts for each group, giving us a structured guide, we further adapt during teaching based on student responses.

Madi

Sometimes not all students fit into a distinct group, so this is a great resource to help us find where each student fits so that they're able to demonstrate and learn effectively.

Melanie

We adjust and refine our adaptations based on student needs and regulation. Throughout this process, we incorporate multiple modalities, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and assistive technology to ensure accessibility and engagement. Assessments are also flexible, allowing students to demonstrate their learning in ways suited to their abilities.

Collaboration with specialists and ongoing reflection helps us refine adaptations to maximise student success.

[Screen shows the NSW Government logo with the text '© State of New South Wales (Department of Education) 2026'.]

[End of transcript]

The department would like to acknowledge and thank Leichhardt Public School for their participation in this video.