Are you content with the content? A presentation by Chelsea Mouritz and Gillian Goldsworthy St Mary’s College, Hobart

You have 30 seconds, list as many Australian Curriculum General Capabilities as you can Sticky Note Activity Ensure the delivery is light hearted.

Photographic Slam Dunk Observe each image that flashes on the screen. Write down the first 5 words that come to your mind. Each image will appear for 20 seconds There are 7 images.

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The General Capabilities

Which task did you prefer? 1.Sticky note activity OR 2. Photographic Slam Dunk Which task did you prefer? Share your reasons with people at your table. Hands up for either. Share reasons with group.

Deeper Learning: The ‘Photographic Slam Dunk’ introduces deeper learning and allows opportunities to transfer one's own knowledge and experiences. There will be a resource with lots of ideas of different activities like photographic SD. This activity (Photographic slam dunk) is an example of creative thinking. create and connect complex ideas using imagery, analogies and symbolism

So, why are we here? Learning Intention: ✅ To explore the purpose and the possibilities of using the General Capabilities to enrich student learning. Success Criteria: ✅ To be able to incorporate teaching and learning strategies into curriculum design based on GC. ✅ To apply the GC to your learning sequences and school situation. So, why are we here?

(Pellegrino and Hilton, 2012) Students need transferable skills that they can apply to a range of experiences and situations Education focus = Global citizens Preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist Meaningful ‘deeper’ learning Deeper learning is the process of learning for transfer, meaning it allows a student to take what’s learned in one situation and apply it to another. (Pellegrino and Hilton, 2012) What do we want for our students? Don’t want them to memorise texts we teach or simply recall historical and geographical knowledge. Can be a crowded curriculum where we feel like we need to tick off everything in the list. GC give us a language for interdisciplinary skills relevant to all subjects and transferable

Making the General Capabilities Explicit How do we do this? We all teach the General Capabilities However, these could be improved by explicitly teaching these IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT? Example: In a History research task, we often expect students to conduct research using a range of sources. Is the focus on the topic being researched or is the focus on the process? Do you make these capabilities explicit in your learning goals? The topic is not transferable but the process is.

Making the General Capabilities Explicit LEARNING SEQUENCE GENERAL CAPABILITY FOCUS SKILLS Year 7 History: Investigating the Past ICT Literacy Selecting reliable sources. Note taking. Avoiding plagiarism by summarising work in your own words. Year 7 Geography: Field work investigating local area Numeracy Collecting and recording data. Deciding best way to display data. Year 7 English: Chinese Cinderella novel study Intercultural understanding Investigate culture and cultural identity, explore and compare beliefs and practices to do with family. Your unit??

Curriculum Connection Does this mean adding onto an already crowded curriculum? No. All Australian Curriculum subjects have suggestions on how the content descriptors align with the General Capabilities. Example: Year 7 English Helps you to select

Australian Curriculum Website Learning Continuum Australian Curriculum Website General Capabilities

What do the GCs look like in a learning sequence? Originally, all GCs were highlighted that a learning sequence touched on. Yes, we are all teachers of ‘literacy’ and students are ‘creative’ when writing stories. However, is each skill explicitly taught in this learning sequence? SMC as a model - different schools, different sequence Use the SMC before/after as a model Show the several highlighted capabilities Aim is two choose 1, max 2 and explicitly teach Present new learning sequence with practical application and connections to learning opportunities and assessments. Creative Writing sequence as an example Allow time for attendees to apply one GC to a learning sequence

When GCs are explicitly taught. 1-2 identified Strands from the learning continuums Connect to key skills Link to specific tasks Explain that less is more Ask yourself, do I specifically teach this? How does it link to the learning continuum? Allow time to have a go on a learning sequence?

Your turn: connecting your units to the GCs Choose a unit that you are currently teaching Choose 1-2 appropriate General Capabilities Use the learning continuum to help you select relevant skills Copies of the learning continuum on the desks

Exit Pass - Transfer Journal Task Idea Interpretation Application To explore the purpose and the possibilities of using the General Capabilities to enrich student learning. What does this mean? How can you apply or transfer this to your own context? The ‘idea’ column has been completed for you. Complete both the ‘interpretation’ and ‘application’ columns about this workshop. Task taken from ‘Transfer Journal Task’. This task, along with Photographic Slam Dunk and many other interesting strategies are found in the A-Z handout.

Works Cited “General Capabilities.” The Australian Curriculum, www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/. National Research Council. 2012. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13398.

Contact details Gillian Goldsworthy ggoldsworthy@smc.tas.edu.au Chelsea Mouritz cmouritz@smc.tas.edu.au