From Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum focuses on developing the knowledge, skills and understanding to express reasoning and to problem solve and learn more effectively. Students become familiar with key vocabulary and simple strategies to structure and improve thinking. Students develop an understanding that thinking can be made explicit.
By the end of Level 2, students use and give examples of different kinds of questions. Students generate ideas that are new to them and make choices after considering personal preferences.
Students identify words that indicate components of a point of view. They use reasons and examples for different purposes.
Students express and describe thinking activity. They practise some learning strategies. Students demonstrate and articulate some problem-solving approaches.
In Foundation, students explore dance and learn about how they can dance. They share their dance with peers and experience dance as audiences.
The starting point for Dance learning is ‘everyday movements’. Students learn about dancing safely and become aware of their bodies’ movement capabilities. They explore movement possibilities using space, time, dynamics and relationships. As audience, they observe how other dancers communicate through movement.
Students are introduced to dances found in their local community and on screen.
By the end of Foundation, students make and perform dance sequences and demonstrate safe dance practice.
Students describe what happens in dance they make, perform and view.
In Foundation to Level 2 students explore and investigate technologies, including their purpose and how they meet personal and social needs within local settings. Students develop an understanding of how society and environmental sustainability factors influence design and technologies decisions. They begin to consider the impact of their decisions and of technologies on others and the environment...
In Foundation to Level 2 students explore and investigate technologies, including their purpose and how they meet personal and social needs within local settings. Students develop an understanding of how society and environmental sustainability factors influence design and technologies decisions. They begin to consider the impact of their decisions and of technologies on others and the environment including in relation to preferred futures.
Students reflect on their participation in a design process. This involves students developing new perspectives, and engaging in different forms of evaluating and critiquing designed solutions based on personal preferences.
Using a range of technologies including a variety of graphical representation techniques to communicate, students draw, model and explain design ideas; label drawings; draw objects as two-dimensional images from different views; draw products and simple environments and verbalise design ideas.
With teacher support, they plan simple steps and follow directions to complete their own or group design ideas or projects, and manage their own role within team projects. Students are aware of others around them and the need to work safely and collaboratively when creating designed solutions.
Students will have the opportunity to create designed solutions at least once in each of the following technologies contexts:
By the end of Level 2, students describe the purpose of familiar designed solutions and how they meet the needs of users and affect others and environments. They identify the features and uses of some technologies for each of the prescribed technologies contexts.
With guidance, students create designed solutions for each of the prescribed technologies contexts. They describe given needs or opportunities. Students create and evaluate their ideas and designed solutions based on personal preferences. They communicate design ideas for their designed solutions, using modelling and simple drawings. Following sequenced steps, students demonstrate safe use of tools and equipment when producing designed solutions.
In Foundation to Level 2, students are introduced to common digital systems and patterns that exist within data they collect. Students organise, manipulate and present this data, including numerical, categorical, text, image, audio and video data, in creative ways to create meaning.
Students use the concept of abstraction when defining problems, to identify the most important information. They...
In Foundation to Level 2, students are introduced to common digital systems and patterns that exist within data they collect. Students organise, manipulate and present this data, including numerical, categorical, text, image, audio and video data, in creative ways to create meaning.
Students use the concept of abstraction when defining problems, to identify the most important information. They begin to develop their design thinking skills by conceptualising algorithms as a sequence of steps for carrying out instructions, such as identifying steps in a process or controlling robotic devices. Students describe how information systems meet information, communication and recreation needs.
Through discussion with teachers, students learn to apply safe practices to protect themselves and others as they interact online for learning and communicating.
Across the band, students will have had the opportunity to create a range of digital solutions through guided play and integrated learning, such as using robotic toys to navigate a map or recording science data with software applications.
By the end of Level 2, students identify how common digital systems are used to meet specific purposes.
Students use digital systems to represent simple patterns in data in different ways and collect familiar data and display them to convey meaning.
Students design solutions to simple problems using a sequence of steps and decisions. They create and organise ideas and information using information systems and share these in safe online environments.
In Foundation, students explore drama and learn about how they can make drama to communicate ideas and stories. They share their drama with peers and experience drama as audiences.
Students are introduced to processes that assist them to make drama about real and imagined situations. They learn that drama involves pretending that what is happening in the drama is real.
Drama in the local community is the focus for learning. Students talk about their observations of drama they see in their community, on television and film and online.
Students learn about safety in dramatic play and in interaction with others.
By the end of Foundation, students make and perform drama that communicates ideas and stories.
Students discuss characters and situations in drama they make, perform and view.
In the Foundation level, students communicate with peers, teachers, known adults, and students from other classes.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as some texts designed to inform. These include traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of...
In the Foundation level, students communicate with peers, teachers, known adults, and students from other classes.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as some texts designed to inform. These include traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of stories, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts and dramatic performances. They participate in shared reading, viewing and storytelling using a range of literary texts, and recognise the entertaining nature of literature.
Literary texts that support and extend Foundation students as beginner readers include predictable texts that range from caption books to books with one or more sentences per page. These texts involve straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings with recognisable, realistic or imaginary characters. Informative texts present a small amount of new content about familiar topics of interest; a small range of language features, including simple and compound sentences; mostly familiar vocabulary, known high- frequency words and single-syllable words that can be decoded phonically, and illustrations that strongly support the printed text.
Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts including pictorial representations, short statements, performances, recounts and poetry.
By the end of the Foundation level, students use questioning and monitoring strategies to make meaning from texts. They recall one or two events from texts with familiar topics. They understand that there are different types of texts and that these can have similar characteristics. They identify connections between texts and their personal experience. They read short predictable texts with familiar vocabulary and supportive images, drawing on their developing knowledge of concepts about print, and sound and letters. They identify all the letters of the English alphabet in both upper- and lower-case, and know and can use the sounds represented by most letters.
When writing, students use familiar words and phrases and images to convey ideas. Their writing shows evidence of letter and sound knowledge, beginning writing behaviours and experimentation with capital letters and full stops. They correctly form all upper- and lower-case letters.
Students listen to and use appropriate interaction skills to respond to others in a familiar environment. They can identify rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words. Students understand that their texts can reflect their own experiences. They identify and describe likes and dislikes about familiar texts, objects, characters and events. In informal group and whole-class settings, students communicate clearly. They retell events and experiences with peers and known adults. They identify and use rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words.
From Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum focuses on developing the knowledge, skills and understandings to approach ethical problems and evaluate outcomes. Students develop a vocabulary to engage with ethical problems and an understanding that personal feelings can effect decision-making and actions.
By the end of Level 2, students identify and describe ethical concepts using illustrative examples from familiar situations and a basic vocabulary about ethical problems and their outcomes.
Students identify and explain acts and situations that have ethical dimensions, using illustrative examples. They explain that personal feelings may influence the way people behave in situations where ethical issues are involved.
From Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum develops the concept of place through a study of what places are like over time and how they are defined. The emphasis in F-2 is on the places in which students live, but they also start to investigate other places of similar size that are familiar to them or that they are curious about.
Examining the influence of distance and accessibility on the frequency...
From Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum develops the concept of place through a study of what places are like over time and how they are defined. The emphasis in F-2 is on the places in which students live, but they also start to investigate other places of similar size that are familiar to them or that they are curious about.
Examining the influence of distance and accessibility on the frequency of visits to places starts students thinking about the concept of space. This is further developed through an introduction to location, including exploring where activities are located and the reasons for this.
The idea of active citizenship is developed as students start to explore their feelings about special places, and the wider importance of places to people and how places can be cared for.
The concept of environment is introduced as students study the daily and seasonal weather patterns and natural features of their place and of other places, including how seasonal change is perceived by different cultures.
Students are introduced to the concept of scale as they learn about the hierarchy of scale by which places are defined - from the personal scale of their home to the national scale of their country. Students’ understanding of the concept of interconnection is developed by investigating the links people have with places locally and globally.
Key questions:
By the end of Level 2, students define place and identify and describe features of places and changes in these, at a local scale. They identify how people are connected to different places and explain the value of places to people. They describe different ways that places can be cared for.
They collect and record geographical data and information. They represent data and information in tables, plans and labelled maps and interpret it to draw conclusions.
They describe and explain location and distance using geographical terms, and describe the location of the major geographical divisions of the world.
The Foundation Level curriculum provides the basis for developing the knowledge, understanding and skills students need to lead healthy, safe and active lives. The content provides opportunities for students to learn about their strengths and describes simple actions they can take to keep themselves and their classmates healthy and safe.
The content explores the people that are important to students...
The Foundation Level curriculum provides the basis for developing the knowledge, understanding and skills students need to lead healthy, safe and active lives. The content provides opportunities for students to learn about their strengths and describes simple actions they can take to keep themselves and their classmates healthy and safe.
The content explores the people that are important to students and develops students’ capacity to initiate and maintain respectful relationships in different contexts, including at school, at home, in the classroom and when participating in physical activities.
The Foundation Level curriculum provides opportunities for students to learn through movement. The content enables students to develop and practise fundamental movement skills through active play and structured movement activities. This improves competence and confidence in their movement abilities. The content also provides opportunities for students to learn about movement as they participate in physical activity in a range of different settings, including indoor, outdoor and aquatic.
The focus areas to be addressed in Foundation include, but are not limited to:
By the end of Foundation Level, students recognise how they are growing and changing. They identify and describe the different emotions people experience. They identify actions that help them be healthy, safe and physically active. They identify different settings where they can be active and how to move and play safely. They describe how their body responds to movement.
Students use personal and social skills when working with others in a range of activities. They demonstrate, with guidance, practices to keep themselves safe and healthy in different situations and activities. They perform fundamental movement skills and solve movement challenges.
Personal and Community Histories
In Foundation to Level 2, students study personal, family and local history. Students learn about their own history and that of their family, including stories from different cultures and other parts of the world. As participants in their own history, students develop their knowledge and understanding of how the past is different from the present. Students also...
Personal and Community Histories
In Foundation to Level 2, students study personal, family and local history. Students learn about their own history and that of their family, including stories from different cultures and other parts of the world. As participants in their own history, students develop their knowledge and understanding of how the past is different from the present. Students also learn about continuity and change in family life by comparing the present with the past. They begin to explore the links, and the changes that occur, over time. Students explore, recognise and appreciate the history of their local area by examining remains of the past and considering why they should be preserved.
In this band, students will apply the following historical concepts and skills to the historical knowledge: sequencing chronology, using historical sources as evidence, identifying continuity and change, and determining historical significance.
Key questions:
• What is my personal and family history?
• How has family life changed or remained the same over time?
• What remains of the past are important to the local community? Why?
• How have changes in technology shaped our daily life?
By the end of Level 2, students explain aspects of daily life to identify how some aspects have changed over time, while others have remained the same. They describe personal and family life, a person, a site, or an event of significance in the local community.
Students use sources (physical, visual, oral) including the perspectives of others (parents, grandparents) to describe changes to daily life and the significance of people, places or events. They compare objects from the past and present. Students create a narrative about the past using terms and a range of sources.
From Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum focus is on developing the knowledge, skills and understandings to enable students to learn about cultures in their immediate world. For students at Foundation to level 2, learning typically focuses on their immediate family, home, school and friends. This includes cultural practices relevant to their lived experiences such as choice of food, clothing or housing, cultural celebrations and language.
The curriculum provides the opportunity for students to begin to explore similarities and difference in cultural practices. They begin to understand the concept of cultural diversity.
By the end of Level 2, students begin to distinguish what is familiar and different in the ways culturally diverse individuals and families live. They describe their experiences of intercultural encounters, and identify cultural diversity in their school and/or community.
Students explain how they might respond in different cultural situations.
In Foundation level, students play with objects and draw pictures to develop links between their immediate environment, everyday language and mathematical activity.
Students classify and sort objects into sets and form simple correspondences between them. They decide when two sets are of equal size, or one is smaller or bigger than another. They develop an understanding of the concepts of number...
In Foundation level, students play with objects and draw pictures to develop links between their immediate environment, everyday language and mathematical activity.
Students classify and sort objects into sets and form simple correspondences between them. They decide when two sets are of equal size, or one is smaller or bigger than another. They develop an understanding of the concepts of number and numeral, count, order, add and share using small sets of objects. They create and continue simple patterns.
Students compare common objects with respect to length, mass and capacity, and order events and compare their duration. They make rough estimates and simple measurements with respect to informal units. Students name, sort and describe familiar everyday shapes and objects, and describe position and movement in their immediate environment.
Students investigate situations requiring data collection and presentation in simple displays, and recognise unpredictability and uncertainty in some events.
Number and Algebra
Students connect number names and numerals with sets of up to 20 elements, estimate the size of these sets, and use counting strategies to solve problems that involve comparing, combining and separating these sets. They match individual objects with counting sequences up to and back from 20. Students order the first 10 elements of a set. They represent, continue and create simple patterns.
Measurement and Geometry
Students identify measurement attributes in practical situations and compare lengths, masses and capacities of familiar objects. They order events, explain their duration, and match days of the week to familiar events. Students identify simple shapes in their environment and sort shapes by their common and distinctive features. They use simple statements and gestures to describe location.
Statistics and Probability
Students sort familiar categorical data into sets and use these to answer yes/no questions and make simple true/false statements about the data.
In Foundation, students explore media arts and learn how media artworks represent the world in which they live. Students make media artworks with their peers, and experience media artworks as audiences.
Students become aware of character and settings as they explore ideas and construct stories. They learn about the elements of media arts such as composition and sound, and experience media arts from a range of cultures, times and locations.
Students experience the role of artist in their media arts making, and as an audience, learn to respond to media artworks they view.
By end of Foundation, students describe the media art works they make and view.
They make and share media artworks representing stories with settings and characters.
In Foundation level, students explore music. They experiment with diverse sounds and discover how they can be effectively combined. They share their music with peers and experience a range of music as audiences.
Students learn to listen and respond to music, becoming aware of the elements of beat, rhythm, pitch, dynamics and tempo as they sing, play, improvise and move to music. They learn to feel the beat, sing with pitch accuracy and to discriminate between sound and silence, loud and soft, and fast and slow. They experiment with contrasting sounds on non-melodic and melodic percussion instruments, learning to use instruments appropriately and safely.
Students talk about their experiences of music they hear in their community, identifying what they enjoy and why.
By the end of Foundation, students sing and play instruments to communicate their experiences and ideas. They explore contrasting sounds and improvise with them. Students match pitch when singing. They understand and respond to the beat and simple rhythm patterns.
Students describe the music to which they listen, identifying what they enjoy and why.
In Foundation, this curriculum focuses on enabling students to interact and play constructively with others and to establish friendships with peers. Students develop a vocabulary to describe the emotions they experience when interacting with others. Students begin to develop an understanding that individuals are unique but also have characteristics in common. The curriculum provides opportunity for students to begin establishing and naming the skills required to work in groups.
By the end of Foundation Level, students identify and express a range of emotions in their interactions with others. They recognise personal qualities and achievements by describing activities they enjoy at school and home, noting their strengths. They recognise that attempting new and challenging tasks are an important part of their development.
Students identify different types of relationships. They begin to identify and practise basic skills for including and working with others in groups.
In Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum focus is on awareness of self and the local world. Students observe changes that can be large or small and happen quickly or slowly. They explore the properties of familiar objects and phenomena, identifying similarities and differences. Students observe patterns of growth and change in the world around them, including weather and living things. They...
In Foundation to Level 2, the curriculum focus is on awareness of self and the local world. Students observe changes that can be large or small and happen quickly or slowly. They explore the properties of familiar objects and phenomena, identifying similarities and differences. Students observe patterns of growth and change in the world around them, including weather and living things. They explore the use of resources from Earth and are introduced to the idea of the flow of matter when considering how water is used. Students describe the components of simple systems, such as stationary objects subjected to pushes or pulls, or combinations of materials, and show how objects and materials interact through direct manipulation. They learn that seeking answers to questions and making observations is a core part of science and use their senses to gather different types of information. They infer simple cause and effect relationships from their observations and experiences, and link events and phenomena with observable effects. Students use counting and informal measurements to make and compare observations and begin to recognise that organising these observations, including in pictograms and in tables, makes it easier to show and describe patterns. They use patterns to make predictions about phenomena.
By the end of Level 2, students describe examples of how people use science in their daily lives. They identify and describe examples of the external features and basic needs of living things. They describe how different places meet the needs of living things. They describe the properties, behaviour, uses and the effects of interacting with familiar materials and objects. They discuss how light and sound can be produced and sensed. They identify and describe the changes to objects, materials, resources, living things and things in their local environment. They suggest how the environment affects them and other living things.
Students pose and respond to questions about familiar objects and events and predict outcomes of investigations. They use their senses to explore the world around them and record informal measurements to make and compare observations. They record, sort and represent their observations and communicate their ideas to others.
In Foundation, students explore visual arts. They make and share their artworks with peers and experience visual arts as audiences.
Students become aware of whom artists, craftspeople and designers are, and that they express their ideas through different art forms and visual expressions.
As they make and respond to visual artworks, students identify art forms in different social and cultural contexts. They make artworks as an artist and view them as an audience.
By the end of Foundation, students make artworks using different materials and techniques that express their ideas, observations and imagination.
Students identify and describe the subject matter and ideas in artworks they make and view.
