Speaker

The New South Wales Curriculum Reform, provided NESA with the opportunity to build all of the syllabuses in the primary curriculum in a coherent manner. Over time, syllabuses had been developed at different times with different emphasis and different structures, and the curriculum reform offered an opportunity to look at what the student learning entitlement is and to make the syllabuses easier for teachers to navigate. NESA has put students and teachers first. For teachers, how do we make a curriculum that is clear and easy to navigate and for students? How do we make it rigorous? Clear for our teachers and rigorous for our students. To do that, these questions were front and centre during the development of the curriculum. What do all students have a right to learn? What is the curriculum entitlement? What are the essential learnings in the foundations of the learning area and how can teachers be supported to provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge, across the curriculum in primary school? We all know the importance of literacy and numeracy. The syllabuses were built purposefully to develop the foundational knowledge of the learning area and the skills of the domain, but also to provide opportunities for students to practice and apply their literacy and numeracy skills in context.

The syllabuses are evidence-based. We researched how students learn and what is needed in a curriculum to support learning and how a world-class curriculum needs to be structured to support learning. Much of the research is summarised in the AERO paper, ‘How students learn best’. The research about how students learn aligns with the research about how students learn to read. We know the English curriculum does a lot of heavy lifting in the area of how students learn to read and it has a particular emphasis in the early years, ensuring that students can lift the words off the page to become automatic and fluent readers. One of the things that the research shows clearly is that students need background knowledge to understand what the words mean.

Language comprehension and lifting the words off the page, play an equal part in learning to read. The English syllabus does a lot of work in comprehension and fluency, and these can be considered the keys to reading, but the rest of the curriculum needs to support students by providing background knowledge and vocabulary, so that students can understand what their reading. Research shows that to develop language comprehension, background knowledge is key, because background knowledge supports the development of vocabulary. When students have language comprehension and vocabulary, they are more able to reason and infer and so the building of knowledge in the curriculum is of the utmost importance. You'll find a summary of that in the AERO paper, ‘A knowledge rich approach to curriculum design’.

What do we mean by knowledge? Knowledge means the disciplinary knowledge. Knowledge of the approaches or general principles in a specific learning area, such as how you might use a source in history or why using sources are important. And then of course, this also means the factual or declarative knowledge, which are facts and theories and information that can be explicitly stated. Historically, New South Wales primary syllabuses had been quite strong on the disciplinary knowledge, but the factual knowledge got lost, so you'll find the factual knowledge is much clearer. Shared knowledge nurtures belonging and cross-cultural understanding in our society. Shared knowledge and understanding emphasises the importance of knowledge as a lever for equity and excellence. The research is clear, knowledge builds knowledge, and it's a pathway for the development of skills. Students must have something to communicate about, to communicate effectively. For example, students must know something about science to be able to think critically and creatively and communicate their understanding about science. So, there are many reasons why building knowledge is really important for our students.

Let's look at the primary curriculum. It is selective. Content has been purposefully selected for each subject with the alignment to the vision of education, which is excellence and equity. Content is designed to build a student's background knowledge and vocabulary in the learning area. It is coherent. The content within the syllabuses is coherent, not only within the learning area itself, but also across learning areas. For example, the geography focus area is aligned to mathematics and the writing in science is aligned with English. This coherence provides opportunities to connect the learning and for students to apply learning from one area to another. It is sequenced. The learning progresses over time from Kindergarten to Year 6 and then of course to Year 10. The content progresses in complexity, across each stage of learning, it is specific and clear. There is clarity for teachers. What we expect our students to know, understand and do by the end of each stage is explicit.

There is creating written texts content in the curriculum to ensure all students have an opportunity to write, across a range of areas in the curriculum. Writing builds understanding in a learning area. It also supports the development of reasoning and critical thinking. The curriculum allows time for our youngest learners to develop language and vocabulary to communicate in creative arts and PDHPE, being immersed in the practicalities of the learning area, have been prioritised. When students reach Stage 2 and 3, there are explicit writing expectations. In HSIE, the explicit writing content is in the history focus area, and there's a content group from Kindergarten that progresses right through to an outcome in Stage 3. The syllabuses include the language that our students will need to understand and control to write and learn in HSIE. It is similar in science and technology, the focus centres on the language students will need to communicate and express their learning as they learn to control that language. Specific content in the Stage 3 outcome, shows this progression of learning and this progression supports students' writing, well into their secondary education.

Another feature of the primary curriculum is the inclusion of access content points, which are in all of the primary syllabuses. These are specifically to support students with a significant intellectual disability who are working towards Early Stage 1 outcomes. Access content points guide teachers to lean into a student's abilities and support them in their education journey. Decisions regarding curriculum options for students with a disability should always be made in the context of collaborative curriculum planning with families and the school. Let's take a look at human society and its environment.

For a long time in New South Wales education, HSIE has been the mirror, reflecting back students' immediate experience. The cognitive research is quite clear that young children can learn about interesting things, beyond their immediate experiences. Not only can they do this, but they need to because the brain needs inputs to learn. The new HSIE syllabus acts as not only a mirror for students to see themselves and their experiences, but a window into the world, a window through which to view the world at different times and places, and as a result, there is new and exciting content in the HSIE syllabus.

Teachers will be familiar with the Australian focus that we have in HSIE, but there is now more of a global focus in both history and geography. You will notice a strong civics and citizenship thread that runs right through geography and also in history as well as a democracy outcome in Stage 3. The HSIE syllabus contains a progression of learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander priority content, under a single unifying outcome. Students learn the ways Aboriginal peoples connect to country in geography and in history. They can use this knowledge to provide context when exploring significant Aboriginal sites and objects as evidence of Aboriginal cultures and histories. Diverse cultures are represented not only in the content, but in the examples. Geography content is closely aligned to mathematics and history is closely aligned to English.

Here is an example of how the content is selective in line with the vision for education of excellence and equity. The 2012 syllabus for history in Stage 1, looks at family structures and continuing to keep the concept of excellence and equity as drivers and building background knowledge and vocabulary for all our students in New South Wales. The syllabuses are designed to provide a window into the world. The ancient past, China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome are referenced and re-referenced throughout a student's learning experience at school and in daily life. Building this learning into the primary curriculum is a gentle way of beginning to build a schema, about these ancient cultures and their influence and legacies on today's world. There is also a lovely alignment to geography as students learn to locate these places on globes, maps, and images. There are a number of elements of literacy that this learning will start to build, not only a students' vocabulary, but their knowledge and understanding about stories, myths, and legends, and this builds the schema of learning about how stories, images, objects and sites help archaeologists understand the past.

Personal development, health and physical education. In PDHPE, the new syllabus is very clear about what to teach in each focus area. There is a new focus area called self-management and interpersonal skills. We all understand that self-management and interpersonal skills are key to being able to function well in society and develop respectful relationships and the syllabus is clear about how those skills progress, across the primary curriculum. The PDHPE content is comprehensive and age appropriate, and you'll see strengthened content for respectful relationships and online safety. There is a focus on movement and physical activity, because we know movement and physical activity are so important and that moving helps a student learn, it can improve their health and wellbeing and many other aspects of their life. The focus on movement also includes the educative purpose of movement and students will learn about the differences, between sedentary and active lifestyles. As with all of the curriculum, the implementation of the PDHPE syllabus is supported with teaching advice.

Let's focus for a moment on how movement is valued in the primary curriculum. Researchers once thought that the movement proficiency developed naturally. Movement proficiency was attributed to maturation and possibly to heredity, but what we know now is that instruction and practice are significant in movement development and competence. That's why across the curriculum, there are many opportunities for instruction and practice of gross and fine motor development. Motor control is important in and of itself and it enhances learning. Fine motor skills in visual arts, gross motor for dancing, motor skills for handwriting in English and fine and gross motor skills in music, especially percussion and performing and composing. In PDHPE, the fundamental movement skills expectations are explicit.

Here is an example of specific and clear content. The 2018 syllabus has dots and dashes and sometimes there are examples within the examples. To help teachers and make the syllabus user friendly and to be clear about what students need to know, understand, and do at particular points in time, essential content has been provided and the content works with the content group headings and the outcomes. It's essential that all students in New South Wales, have the opportunity to learn how important it is to protect their personal information, their identity in online environments and to learn about respectful digital citizen behaviours.

Now, let's take a closer look at science and technology. The syllabus is clear for teachers about where to develop concepts and skills. The content provides the foundations for the development of complex concepts, because the learning that occurs in primary school, supports the building of knowledge and skills as students move into secondary learning. The examples in science and technology, support teachers to build their background knowledge, the content is practical and engaging for students. Data is important in science and technology and where possible, it has been aligned to provide an opportunity for students to apply mathematical knowledge and skills in context and there is new content about the human body, earth and space.

Here is an example of how the content is carefully sequenced. In Stage 1, students investigate the human body's sense organs to learn how the human body sense organs detect its environment. Then in Stage 2, students learn how body systems work together to enable movement. And then in Stage 3, they learn how body systems coordinate for survival. Again, the idea of this learning about the human body is purposeful and selective. This knowledge develops across the stages of learning. It is acknowledged that when concepts and ideas are referenced and re-referenced, they build a schema which includes language and vocabulary over time. Just like in HSIE, science and technology writing has a content group that starts from Kindergarten and progresses through to Stage 3. This is an example of how the syllabus is coherent. It aligns to the English syllabus and you can see the language that students will need to use to be able to communicate in science and technology and to specifically create written texts in science has been included, because we know creating written texts is not only a mechanism for communication, but it is also something that helps students learn. It helps students learn to think and it helps them reason and be critical about what they're learning. Also, in Stage 3, right across the curriculum, there is content about note-taking, journaling and annotations, et cetera, to support students as they learn to start taking notes for their own study.

Let's look at creative arts. As with all of the primary syllabuses, front and centre in the design is equity. Equity for all of our students and in creative arts, the content is clear and explicit, so that all teachers teaching creative arts, understand what the learning expectations are for our students. There is a progression of learning that builds the practices for the arts in all 4 of the focus areas. All of the art forms in this syllabus are unique, but they do come together under the banner of the creative arts syllabus. There is dance, drama, music and visual arts and they're all acknowledged as unique art forms. The syllabus makes it clear what the learning expectations are for each of those art forms. From Stage 1, there is content about the arts through time and for our students to understand the importance of the arts, it's also important for them to know that they're not just something that they practice at school, but creative arts are intrinsic to the human experience and whilst creative arts can be contemporary and new, there is also a strong tradition in the arts. There's a strong history and the art forms, have been around since time began. From Kindergarten, students will explore the arts across cultures. Content over the seven years of primary school, illustrate a variety of cultures and contexts. As it is in all the learning areas, the examples and teaching advice in creative arts, supports teacher background knowledge.

This is an example of how to navigate the syllabus and here we're looking at Stage 2 dance. Each of the art forms have practices and in this case, dance is the example. You can see that the content groups are highlighted, these being, composing, performing and appreciating. If we zero in on the content group, composing, dance is composed using the elements of dance to communicate ideas. You can see that this statement supports teachers to understand the intent of the content clustered underneath. You'll also see that the vocabulary expectations are explicit, making sure that students are learning the vocabulary of the art forms. And you can see that writing content is embedded here, so students will create written sentences to describe and give an opinion about in this instance, a dance performance.

Here you can see an example from Stage 1, visual arts. Students will observe artworks from cultures and contexts around the world to explore how art making connects to place. There is a strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural practices thread in each of the art forms and you'll also see in the syllabus, students will explore ancient and historical artworks to understand how art making practices are influenced by time and place. All of the primary syllabuses are supported with teaching advice and some have additional downloadable teaching advice as well. Connections to mathematics and English and to other learning areas have been identified in the section at the bottom there, labelled ‘Making connections through related content’ and these are just suggested connections. They're there to help you start to see the coherence, across the curriculum and how they might support students to apply their learning in different contexts. When we think about applying knowledge, it's important to consider how a student might develop their understanding and how prior knowledge is important, right across the curriculum.

Let's use this content as an example, because it's new to the primary curriculum from HSIE Stage 1. As mentioned earlier, the ancient past is referenced and re-referenced in modern-day life. Stage 1, students learn about ancient China, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and they begin to develop an understanding of the ancient past and continuing in Stage 1, creative arts, where students are looking at ancient and historical artworks, teachers may explore with their students ancient and historical artworks such as Egyptian paintings, some Greek urns or the Chinese terracotta warriors.

Still in Stage 1, science and technology in the content group, the sky is our window to the universe, students examine the cultural representations of the sun, moon, and stars, and we'll learn that there are many ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese stories that are linked to the sun, moon, and stars. And there are also references to many of these cultures in arts and music. As we progress into Stage 2 when students are learning about the solar system in science and technology, there is content for students to research cultural references to the solar system, including Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander knowledges of the night sky, and they'll learn that the names of the planets are named after Roman and Greek gods, which gently continues building on the learning, about the ancient past that they began in Stage 1, but also provides a deeper understanding of the solar system.

In Stage 3, students learn about democracy and democratic roles and responsibilities and they will describe the origins and values underpinning the Australian bicameral parliamentary system of government. As per the examples in the syllabus, students may learn the origin of the word democracy, which comes from the Greek term and means, ruled by the people. In these illustrations, students are developing layers of understanding, about democracy and the solar system, which supports a rich understanding about ideas and topics that may at first glance appear to be completely disconnected. To further this example, consider that in the English syllabus, Stage 3 students explain the etymology of taught roots and apply this knowledge when creating written texts. And so when learning about etymology and the spelling and meaning of some words roots, students have some context of where these roots come from and may have also collected their own examples, along their schooling journey.

That's a brief look at how learning can be interconnected and build slowly over time and how a student's background knowledge in one area can be leveraged and used to lean into another area. To view the New South Wales primary curriculum, please scan the QR code or follow the link.

Primary (K–6) syllabuses

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