The Languages and Culture team at the department has published its first set of language-specific resources to support the Modern Languages K-10 Syllabus. 🎉
While the team has started with Japanese, we encourage teachers of all modern languages to take a look because the support looks totally different to anything that's been done before.
The units are 'pick up and teach' for a full term of teaching in Stage 4 and a full term in Stage 5. This includes all student resources.
The units not only provide the teaching, learning and assessment activities, they also guide you through the pedagogy of the new syllabus. The intent of curriculum reform is to strengthen and streamline what is taught in schools, presenting the opportunity to engage and reenergise what we teach and how we teach it. In our context, this means emphasising depth rather than breadth - focusing on practising, reinforcing and building on language structures that facilitate communication, rather than focusing on large amounts of vocabulary. This allows for deep learning.
Here are some of the features in each unit, to support you with planning, quality pedagogy and syllabus content:
The summative assessment task is the bedrock of the unit. By providing this at the start, you have a clear understanding of what students are expected to understand, know and do by the end of the unit.
Explicit teaching and learning activities, aligned to syllabus dot points. You may have noticed that the outcomes are very broad in our context. The true 'richness' of the syllabus lies in the content dot points. By aligning these dot points to activities, it showcases what the syllabus 'looks like' in the classroom, across a broad range of content.
The teaching, learning and assessment activities have been 'chunked', each with their own underpinning learning intentions and success criteria, as well as the vocabulary and grammatical structures (and, where relevant, script).
'Mini task - progress checkpoints' are included, which are formative assessment opportunities backward mapped from the end-of-unit summative task. These support students to identify where they are on their learning journey, in relation to meeting the requirements of the summative task.
Opportunities for feedback and student self-reflection, to support students to gain ownership of their own learning, build a deeper understanding of how the language can be applied to the summative task, as well as identify which skills they need to strengthen and where to go for help.
Differentiation strategies, for students requiring additional support, high potential and gifted students and students with advanced proficiency.
Timeframes, formative and summative assessment tasks, teaching and learning activities and reflection and feedback opportunities should be adjusted to suit your context, including the specific strengths and needs of students. The first language to be published is Japanese. The 'set' includes:
Stage 4 and Stage 5 scope and sequence documents, with assessment ideas
2 complete units of work - one for Stage 4 (on festivals) and one for Stage 5 (on travel) - from the relevant scope and sequence. These include the final summative task, marking guidelines, all teaching, learning and assessment activities and all student resources.
student-friendly infographics of the scope and sequence documents and the units of work, to engage them in the learning.
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