Curriculum is all of the planned learning that a school offers and enacts. Curriculum intent is what we want students to learn from the Australian curriculum. At Bowen State High School, we establish curriculum intent using Lyn Sharatt’s High Impact Practice of Clarity and our Alignment planning process. (This process is outlined in our whole school curriculum planning document – see attachment). Establishing Teacher Clarity is essential as it has an effect size on learning of 0.90. Our focus at Bowen State High School is on being experts in understanding and delivering the Australian Curriculum and respective Senior Syllabuses.
Teachers decide how best to plan and deliver the curriculum to ensure that all students have opportunities to engage in meaningful learning. Curriculum planning however, is not a linear process and needs to be constantly adjusted throughout the teaching and learning sequence to reflect the needs of learners. Effective teachers plan and enact curriculum that meets the learning needs of the diverse range of students in their classes. At Bowen State High School, teachers plan teaching and learning that aligns with the Australian and mandated curriculum:
Teachers front-end assessment using our Alignment process and develop curriculum clarity to become assessment literate. Teachers use the achievement standard, assessed content descriptors, criteria and the assessment task to identify what the students need to know and be able to do in the unit. Once this is achieved, teachers can teach the required salient elements of the curriculum and assessment.