CURRICULUM INNOVATIONS AT 

SACRED HEART

2003 ... AND BEYOND..

SECTION 1

BACKGROUND 

Catholic schools have been a part of Australian education for over 175 years.  Despite the historical changes over that period, the schools have been characterised by the attention they give to the development of the individual, academically, spiritually, emotionally and as a member of their community and their changing world.  Many aspects of Catholic school life combine to create this nurturing environment.  One of these aspects is the formal curriculum of the school – what is to be learnt, and how.

 Changes in Australian and global society have created the need for significant changes to the formal curriculum patterns in all Australian schools.  There are three major and appropriate changes which have occurred in education policy across the nation.  These changes provide all school with new opportunities to adapt their learning programs to the future needs of their students.  They also create a national approach to education.

 National Agreement

 In Australia, the states have the primary responsibility for education.  This is because the school systems existed before federation.  However, by the end of the 1980s, it became clear that the widespread changes taking place in Australian society necessitated some educational agreements among the states and between the Commonwealth and the states.  In Hobart in April 1989, the State, Territory and Commonwealth ministers for education endorsed a set of agreed national goals for Australian schooling.

 Key Learning Areas

 Prior to 1989, there was no continuity across the states regarding the actual subjects learnt in schools, nor about the naming of these subjects.  To add to the confusion, as knowledge expanded, the number of subjects was mushrooming out of control in some states.  The Hobart Declaration changed all this.  There was an agreement that, instead of allowing the number of subjects to increase, the curriculum across Australia would be limited to eight ‘Key Learning Areas’ or ‘KLAs’.  Within Catholic schools in Queensland Religious Education has been included as a ninth KLA.

 Outcomes

Perhaps even more significant than the Key Learning Areas themselves has been the introduction of an ‘outcomes’ approach governing the curriculum in the Australian states.  It is import to understand reasons for this change and for teachers, parents and students to appreciate the difference between an outcomes approach and what went before it.

 ‘Industrial age’ schooling

 There was nothing wrong with the education approach most Australian adults experienced when they went to school.  This approach suited the times well.  There was a shortage of labour in Australia until the late 1960s.  As late as 1970, the majority of people in the workforce needed no prior qualification to apply for and do their job.  Under these circumstances, it made good sense to have an educational approach which involved all students at the beginning, but encouraged those who found difficulty ‘keeping up’ to leave school in their early teens and take up positions in a workforce hungry for labour.

 Over the past few decades, the industrial society has given way to a post-industrial society where full time work requires substantial levels of skill and knowledge.  In the 21^st century it will be difficult to obtain unskilled work substantial enough to earn a living.

 This is why Australian education has opted for an outcomes approach to curriculum.

  The approach is similar to that used in getting a driver’s licence.  Instead of giving all students the same learning program and then sending them out on the roads with a licence labelled a, b, c, d or e, the outcomes are defined and the program modified to suit the needs of individual students. 

  An outcomes approach to schooling is just like this.  Across Australia, the new syllabuses are being written in ‘levels’ rather than in ‘year groups’.  Instead of the old pattern where students were moved through the curriculum at a common rate, in year groups, with some being unable to ‘keep up’, students are now given the opportunity to achieve one level of their learning before they move on to the next.  Parents should be reassured that the levels are equivalent to national standards of achievement.

SECTION 2

The Challenge

Like schools in all Dioceses and systems, Sacred Heart School needed to find an effective way of focusing on a learner-centred curriculum with clearly defined outcomes.    Our school needs to continue to enhance and resource a curriculum in which teaching and learning establishes improved student-learning outcomes.

The Strategy

LEARNING FRAMEWORK

Sacred Heart School, Yeppoon has embraced a Learning Framework as the beginning point for planning for learning at any level across the school. 

The adoption of the Learning Framework is a continuation of the school’s sustained move towards implementing an outcomes approach to education.  This framework has been refined in consultation with our teachers, the Catholic Education Rockhampton and school communities across Queensland.

Since July 2001 there has been a structured process of developing and refining applications of life performing roles as the overarching outcomes for learners in schools, in combination with syllabus outcomes at various levels.  These roles take the form of the Roles for Lifelong Learning which are described in the framework as:

                        Community Contributor, Quality Producer,

                        Leader & Collaborator, Designer & Creator,

                        Effective Communicator, Active Investigator,

                        Reflective Self-directed Learner.

The Roles for Lifelong Learning have their basis in the five criteria and 49 common curriculum elements of the current Queensland Core Skills Test.  Another basis is the attributes of the lifelong learner from the Queensland Schools Authority Years 1-10 Key Learning Area syllabuses.  A further basis is the learning outcomes underpinning the Foundation Learning Areas of the Preschool Curriculum Guidelines.  The framework has a specific Catholic context and draws upon values central to Catholic schooling.

The Learning Framework challenges and supports our educators to create learning opportunities that meet the needs of our learners in the 21^st century.

BELIEFS

Our school community plans from the Roles for Lifelong Learning based on these beliefs:

LEARNERS

LEARNING

LEARNING COMMUNITIES

VALUES

As Catholic educators we hold fundamental values that are foundations for our work with students, parents and colleagues.  Our school community plans from the Roles for Lifelong Learners based on these values:

ROLES FOR LIFELONG LEARNERS

Sacred Heart School plans from the Roles for Lifelong Learning, consistently, explicitly and creatively for every learner.

ROLES FOR LIFELONG LEARNING - DESCRIPTORS  

A CONNECTED CURRICULUM

 Sacred Heart School is using a connected curriculum strategy.  Our strategy essentially has five elements. 

1)      the teaching of religious education

2)      the teaching of literacy skills (reading and writing)

3)      the teaching of numeracy skills (number, space and measurement)

4)      the teaching of a major topic or theme, allowing students to use their literacy & numeracy tools to explore a range of integrated Key Learning Area insights.  We refer to this element of the curriculum as an Integrated Unit. 

5)      Specialist, part-time or ‘home’ teachers then teach the other Key Learning Areas.

The first element recognises the Sacred Heart School is a Catholic school that actively espouses and promotes a set of Christian Values and that a formal part of our curriculum is Religious Education.  In all aspects of our school life we endeavour to bear witness to the Gospel values.

The second and third elements involve a continuum of learning across the stages of the school.  In many ways, these are complimentary to the levels in the Queensland curriculum.  These elements involve ‘journey groups’.  These journey groups avoid having teachers trying to cater for too wide a range of developmental needs within one class.  To achieve ‘journey groups’ students in each stage of the school are divided into like ability groupings for the delivery of numeracy and literacy skills.

See “Journey Groups’ section for details.

The third element involves KLAs such as SOSE, Science, The Arts, Technology and the Health strands of HPE and elements of Mathematics and English. The school has created a 2-year cycle (Year A & B) of Rich Concepts that provides meaningful curricula scaffolding.  Consequently, the child’s learning journey, through the stages and levels will be rich with diverse and universal concepts for deep and powerful learning. These Rich Concepts are large, real-life concepts with links to students’ interests and needs.

 The fifth element involves specialist teachers providing important learning for students and, at the same time, providing teachers with non-contact time for their planning and evaluation.    

Languages Other Than English (LOTE) – Japanese - Upper Stage – 45mins per week. 

Music – Yr 1, Lower, Middle & Upper Stages – 45 mins per week + choir (optional).

 Physical Education – Yr 1, Lower, Middle & Upper Stages – 45 mins per week.

SECTION 3

STAGE BASED LEARNING ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

Sacred Heart School has implemented a Stage Based Learning organisational structure.  This means that the old lockstep age based groupings have been replaced.

Working with outcomes means that the teaching learning process is more individualistic.  Teachers are required to plan a progression of level outcomes, which a child is able to learn and achieve.  These outcomes are written for teachers across the Key Learning Areas, in four levels, which suit the needs of most students in primary school.  Teachers are required to plan their teaching program using these outcomes.  The outcomes are to be assessed, mapped and the results are to be reported to parents.

Using outcomes has introduced a new element into curriculum.  We are now able to have a system of programming where all teachers are using the same set of outcomes.  Because the four levels do not correspond to the ‘old seven’ year levels, teachers now find it necessary to work with other teachers when planning their work.

Learning from small school experiences, it was discovered that if you had two ‘old year’ levels together, the programming was now at one level and teachers had two years to teach the level.  As an education system, Catholic Education Rockhampton is committed to using the QSCC (now QSA) syllabuses.

The ‘old’ structure no longer offers sufficient support to teachers, in fact it has made planning more difficult.  A teacher can no longer plan their students’ work in isolation.  Because the outcomes take two years to cover, a teacher has to monitor the coverage of outcomes.  The outcomes demand vertical co-operative action.  A school that chooses to continue to encourage its teachers to work across the ‘old year’ levels must develop a vertical, co-operative process of monitoring teachers’ choice of outcomes to ensure that there is no repetition or neglect of outcomes across the gap.

Sacred Heart School has moved to the more efficient and more effective grouping of students vertically at the syllabus levels.

Teachers take a group of students from two age/year levels.  This equates approximately to one syllabus level. Eg. The ‘old’ Years 4 and 5 use the syllabus outcomes from Level 3.  The ‘old’ Years 6 and 7 use Level 4 syllabus outcomes.  They teach that group of students for two years in normal circumstances.

The advantages of teaching the same students for two years include:

From the beginning of the 2003, our school has implemented a stage based learning organizational structure.  This involves students moving in turn through four stages of the schooling.  Students would normally spend two years in each stage.  At each stage, teachers plan their programs together as teams.

 Sacred Heart School has moving towards staged based approach for the following reasons::

·          to match syllabuses which are now written in levels

·          to accord with an outcomes based philosophy

·          to make ‘teams of teachers’ or ‘team teaching’ more possible and attractive

·          to model teamwork for student learners

·          to allow for alternative pathways for students affected by illness, by mobility, etc.

·          to facilitate consolidation (8 year primary) without ‘penalty’

·          to facilitate acceleration (6 year primary) without ‘penalty’

·          to provide two year parent-student-teacher relationships

SECTION 4

JOURNEY GROUPS 

Sacred Heart School uses Journey Grouping for the delivery of curriculum in the areas of Literacy & Numeracy skills.  This means that each individual student’s learning journey is mapped and tracked to allow for continual development through the stages.  Each student, relative to where the individual is on their learning journey, is placed in like ability groupings for Literacy & Numeracy. 

Teachers have always used a variety of strategies to target and cater for individuals as they progress on their learning journey.   Across a typical class grouping, students generally possess a wide range of numeracy and literacy skills and abilities.  A teacher’s ability to cater for and respond appropriately to each individual’s learning needs, within this typical class grouping, has been identified and recognised as a constant challenge. 

 In responding to this challenge, our school has grouped students across each level in Journey Groups for Literacy & Numeracy.

 If a student was experiencing some difficulties in maintaining year or level expectations, in a typical class grouping they may experience:

 On the other hand, if a student is achieving beyond year or level expectations, in a typical class grouping they may be:

  Journey Grouping aims to address these issues by providing a continual development through the stages of the school.  The journey of learning for each individual is suitably paced and mindful of appropriate learning styles.  Each student’s progress is tracked and mapped to ensure the most appropriate placement of the student into a Journey Group. 

Journey Grouping provides:

Placement of Students into Journey Groups

In each of the Lower, Middle and Upper stages of the school, exists at least five identified Journey Groups.  These groups cater for like ability grouped students across a continuum of learning in both Literacy & Numeracy.

 These groups are identified as follows:

The natures of the Journey Groups at each stage across the school are structured for and responsive to the identified learning needs of the students within each stage.

 Each Journey Group, by name and by nature, provides a journey of learning, whereby each group experiences a tailored curriculum delivery at an appropriate, yet challenging rate.  The group progresses on the journey of learning together, for the most part, because for their like ability grouping.  If an individual is identified by the Journey Group Teacher to be performing consistently below or above the journey rate of his/her current grouping, then the individual may be moved to another journey group that best suits his/her learning journey.  This movement may occur at anytime of the year, however most commonly at the end of a school term or unit of work.

INITIAL PLACEMENT IN 2003

The placement of students into the initial Journey Groups for 2003 used a variety of criteria including:

NEW ENROLMENTS

 The procedural steps taken by the school when placing a newly enrolled student into a Journey Group include:

1. The Home Group Teacher notifies the Learning Support Teacher of a new enrolment.
2. Initially the new student stays with the Home Group Teacher for consistency, unless there is a substantial difference in ability of the newly enrolled and that of the other students within Home Group Teacher’s Learning Group.
3. Generic assessment administered by the Learning Support Teacher.
4. Learning Support Teacher consults with the appropriate Journey Group Teacher.
5. The new student is then tentatively placed in a journey group.
6. The Journey Group Teacher monitors student ability.
7. If the consistent class performance differs from the original assessment, the teacher collects assessment pieces that demonstrate the student’s ability.  This teacher then contacts the Journey Group Teacher best suited to the child’s performance.  They then moderate the new student’s ability and performance with other children in that group.
8. Through consultation the teachers decide the best group for the child and notify Administration of the proposed changes.  The original Journey Group Teacher notifies the parents of the change and reasons for the change.
9. New Journey Group Teacher continues to monitor performance.

EXISTING STUDENT MOVEMENT ACROSS JOURNEY GROUPS

 The procedural steps taken by the school when moving an existing student from one
Journey Group to another may include: