Your+views+Di+11

Your Views
What do **//you//** think should be in the curriculum?

Please use your name as a subheading and ensure you include a justification of your view.

Laura Reynolds In my opinion, the curriculum should be less focussed on academic minds and slightly more focussed on practical skills.

If the aim of schools is to prepare children for a successful life in the community, surely it goes without saying that the community requires a variety of different people filling different roles. There are many occupations which are academically based but I would say there are just as many, if not more, that involve practical skills.

In my education, I believe I was trained to sit and work at a desk rather than create, build, experiment, try, fix or design. The focus of school was literacy and numeracy. I know these are essential, but how much is really needed. In my life since school, I have not used any of my maths knowledge gained after year 8. I would far rather have been learning how to renovate a house, grow vegies, service a car, draw up plans for a house, drive a forklift, cook a meal, maintain a lawn mower or light a campfire without matches. These are everyday things that anyone should be able to do, but no one is taught these things in school. They are practical skills that I guess in generations past, parents would teach their children as part of growing up in a family and helping out around the house. However there seems to have been a shift from doing these things yourself to working longer hours, spending less time with your family and paying someone else to do them for you. This is really sad.

Another reason I would like to see a more practically geared curriculum is that so many children are not academic and have no reason to be. They are not dumb or stupid, they are different and often far more clever than their high IQ classmates. The curriculum needs to address the learning needs of these children as well as the academic ones.

Emma Wisby I believe that a more intergrated curriculum is the way to go in schools - combining the skills that are essential, such as reading, numeracy, literacy, etc and combinig them with other areas such as practical and hands on learning. I think the curriculum should be geared towards preparing students for life, not just preparing them for jobs. In talking to parents there were many things they wished they had of learned at school - such as about our tax system, the way voting works, the history of australia to more practical skills such as nutrition and cooking, self defense and first aid. I believe there are ways that these skills can be included while still incorporating essential skills - making numeracy and liteacy more "real life" skills.

I think that doing this is important as not every child learns in the same way, not every child will be leaving school and pursuing the same life and children need skills for life, not just for work.

My Views (Vanessa Triffitt) I believe that Literacy is the framework of the curriculum and should be a large part of it right through our schooling, as in order to succeed in life we need to be literate people. Numeracy and Science play an important part of our curriculum as well, as they provide us with skills that we carry with us through our lives. I believe that Visual Arts are an important part of schooling and should be seperate subjects in our schools with specialist teachers taking the class. I believe that the Visual Arts are an important part of schoolong because they offer all students the opportunity to try new things. Not all students are acedemics, and for the students who are kinesthetic learners, the visual arts is a vital part of their schooling, as it helps students to become creative and opens them up to new possibilities. I think that it is fine for students to learn a language in school but I think that it is important for the teacher to learn the language alongside the students so that the teacher can extend this into the classroom, for eg, an extra five minutes in the classroom every morning whilst doing the role call would benefit the students and help them widen their understanding of the language.

I think that it is vital for students in primary and secondary schools to learn about drug awareness and suicide prevention. In a society where drug use is at record highs, it is essential for students to understand the effects that taking drugs has on ones life. Students need to be introduced to videos where they show people who have been affected by drugs, this would help get rid of the idea that drugs are cool (the belief that so many children have) and give a realistic outlook that drugs are dangerous and ruin lives. Children need to be exposed to videos that show the aftermath of drug abuse, the visions of people who have been locked away in mental health facilities because they have lost their minds,or the people that have lost their teeth due to taking other illicit drugs. This may be harsh, but in times where children in Primary School are being introduced to drugs, we need to get the message across that drugs are dangerous.

All students should be learning about different cultures, their religions and their beliefs. Australia is a multi-cultural country, and we should be teaching students about others cultures. The more knowledge that students have about other cultures, the less racism we are going to have amongst our community. The world is a huge place, and we should be teaching our students about the different wonders that the world has to offer.

Students need to be made aware of the issues of suicide. It is not a pleasant subject to teach students, but suicide is now in a state of emergency, this is proved by the Federal Governments plans to pump money into suicide prevention. With bullying being a constant problem in schools, students need to be aware of the damage that bullying can have on students, it can result in loss of life. Students need to be taught that there are people out there who can help you when you are in trouble and that things can get better. I think that lessons about drugs and suicide prevention should be taught to students from grade 5 onwards.

The curriculum needs to address all of these things so children have the opportunity to find what their strengths are. Many of he subjects can be combined to broaden the students knowledge, for example, if we're learning about Africa, incorporate this with our Art class and create forms of African Art and in Music we can learn about traditional African music. We need to make the most of the school day and make our classrooms effective learning spaces.

__** My Views **__ I believe that Literacy and Numeracy should be taught in schools. Literacy skills including; speaking, reading, listening, writing and critical thinking are needed for the majority of curriculum areas and to function successfully in society it is essential to be literate. Numeracy is a part of everyday life and is an important skill that enables children to participate in cooking, shopping, reading the newspaper and many more everyday activities. In addition, I believe that Science needs to be included in the curriculum. Within these three subjects I think it is important to teach children to think critically and problem solve.

I believe the arts (including visual, music, dance and drama) should be included in the curriculum. The arts enable children to express themselves in a different way and encourage creative skills. The arts also give those children that are kinasthetic learners the chance to participate in hands on learning.

I believe p.e, and IT are also important parts of the curriculum. P.e is not only a chance for children to participate actively outside, it also enables children to work as a team, build their eye-hand co-ordination and gross motor skills. IT is such a big part of today's world and I know many teachers who believe their students could teach them more about computers and other technologies. IT should be integrated into the curriculum to allow children to practice their skills by researching, producing documents and utilising different programs.

Within today's society I believe we must also include social skills into the curriculum. I have witnessed classes where children have been taught positive self talk and respecting people's property through stories and then activities. I believe social skills and stories enable children to build self-confidence, self acceptance, accepting other people and many other worthwhile skills.

As Emma Wisby stated, I believe we need to work towards an integrated curriculum. I think an integrated curriculum enables the work to be more contextualised for children and is a way to fit everything into the time a teacher has to teach. In addition, I believe that we should provide children with the skills for life, not just skills to enable them to acquire a job. **Katie Powell**

__What I think should be taught in schools (Amanda West)__ I agree with those of you that believe an “integrated” curriculum is what is needed. I definitely think that time must be spent on the basics of numeracy and literacy, but so often that is all kids get. I was very surprised when I went on practical experience to see that the class I was with pretty much ONLY did numeracy and literacy. The morning block was devoted to numeracy, the middle block was devoted to literacy and the afternoon block was generally a catch up session or the kids went to library or PE. If the delivery of the content was more “holistic” then I would not have had a problem with the schedule, but the teacher really only taught literacy as “literacy” and numeracy as “numeracy”. There was no real creativity or inventiveness to her teaching, and I felt like the kids were missing out. One of my tasks involved planning and implementing an art lesson. I asked the teacher if the kids had done any other art work throughout the year and they said no, which for me was really sad because they were all so excited to do it!

We need to teach kids to read, write and spell. We also need to teach them the basics of numeracy. They need to know about science and history to a certain degree, but I think that a lot of the aspects of these can be integrated with literacy and/or numeracy. They need to learn how to express themselves through music and art. They need to learn about their country and the world they live in. They also need to learn how to interact with one another and how to engage in society. We need to teach them about life – family, happiness, employment and finance. One would assume that a lot of these “life skills” would be taught at home, but unfortunately inequality surfaces so often because of differences in socio-economic backgrounds and ever increasing societal demands.

As teachers we need to remember that we are there for the kids and to help them succeed in all aspects of life. Our job is hard but growing up without a proper education is so much harder. We need to work together to learn from each other and to model best practice for each other.

Lynn Watson I feel there should be a larger curriculum outlining all subjects that could be taught. The standard numeracy and literacy would be covered like usual but then they could set out more guidelines for life skills such as gardening, cooking and accountancy at a basic level. This allows for a National curriculum outline but allows for state and individual schools to offer the best curriculum for their students. This does not mean that every school will teach all the subjects and every student will do it. But if we at least have a standardized curriculum for it then the ones who would want to enjoy it gain the same recognition as someone doing maths. These skills are more practical in an everyday life and even some of these skills can be implemented into the standard curriculum. I think, as a whole we are too set on this is work, sit at a desk and finish it then I will give you a mark to tell you how smart you are. I believe you should almost take ‘learning through play’ attitude to teaching but obviously age appropriate. Why not learn about science by gardening, you learn about the life cycle of plants, how to care for them, understanding the right nutrient levels the plant must have and the final test is if they get a good yield out of their garden. I feel this approach could work but it would be up to individual schools to choose what would be best for their students and not just follow every other school to make the exact same kind of student. Everyone is different why can’t we embrace this and make a more varied and happy society.