Turner School is implementing the Australian Curriculum. Our aim is to develop happy, competent, articulate, creative and thinking students. We emphasise the acquisition of effective literacy skills, numeracy skills and the development of a variety of learning processes. Opportunities to create, reflect, seek solutions to problems, engage in meaningful social interactions, demonstrate a sense of individual responsibility and display an enjoyment of life is valued and pursued through our learning and teaching programs at Turner. To make learning the content of the Australian Curriculum connected for our children, we plan our curriculum using an inquiry approach that integrates a number of learning areas.
The Australian Curriculum focuses on learning area content and achievement standards that describe what students will learn and teachers will teach. In each curriculum, the content descriptions specify what all young people should be taught, and the achievement standards set out the depth of understanding and sophistication of skill expected of students at points in their schooling.
Students with additional learning needs at Turner all have an Individual Learning Plan (ILP), which is developed in consultation with parents, therapists and other appropriate people to establish the learning goals for the child each year. The Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority, ACARA is writing a framework to accompany the Australian Curriculum that caters for students with disabilities and we access as it is being further developed. At present we access the pre-Foundation curriculum for some students with a disability developed by the Victorian Education Department called AUSVELS.
Our Preschool teachers use the national Early Years Learning Framework to develop learning programs that respond to children's ideas, interests, strengths and abilities, and recognise that children learn through their play.
General Capabilities
The Australian Curriculum also gives attention to seven general capabilities that are important for life and work in the 21st century and to three issues identified in the Melbourne Declaration as needing more attention than they have received in curricula to date. The general capabilities and the cross-curriculum priorities are not added as additional subjects. They are dealt with, where relevant, through the learning area content on which the curriculum is built.