WA English Curriculum
The Western Australian Curriculum: English Pre-primary to Year 10 is organised into three interrelated strands that support students’ growing understanding and use of Standard Australian English (English). Together the three strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking and writing. The three strands are:
- Language: knowing about the English language
- Literature: understanding, appreciating, responding to, analysing and creating literature
- Literacy: expanding the repertoire of English usage.
Strands and sub-strands
Content descriptions in each strand are grouped into sub-strands that, across the year levels, present a sequence of development of knowledge, understanding and skills. The sub-strands are:
| language | literature | literacy |
| Language variation and change | Literature and context | Texts in context |
| Language for interaction | Responding to literature | Interacting with others |
| Text structure and organisation | Examining literature | Interpreting, analysing and evaluating |
| Expressing and developing ideas | Creating literature | Creating texts |
| Sound and letter knowledge |
WA Maths Curriculum
Learning mathematics creates opportunities for and enriches the lives of all Australians. The Western Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. It develops the numeracy capabilities that all students need in their personal, work and civic life, and provides the fundamentals on which mathematical specialties and professional applications of mathematics are built.
Mathematics has its own value and beauty and the Western Australian Curriculum: Mathematics aims to instil in students an appreciation of the elegance and power of mathematical reasoning. Mathematical ideas have evolved across all cultures over thousands of years, and are constantly developing. Digital technologies are facilitating this expansion of ideas and providing access to new tools for continuing mathematical exploration and invention. The curriculum focuses on developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, logical reasoning, analytical thought and problem-solving skills. These capabilities enable students to respond to familiar and unfamiliar situations by employing mathematical strategies to make informed decisions and solve problems efficiently.
WA HASS Curriculum
Humanities and Social Sciences is the study of human behaviour and interaction in social, cultural, environmental, economic and political contexts. Humanities and Social Sciences has a historical and contemporary focus, from personal to global contexts, and considers opportunities and challenges for the future.
In the Western Australian Curriculum, the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area comprises four subjects: Civics and Citizenship, Economics and Business, Geography and History.
By studying Humanities and Social Sciences, students will develop the ability to question; think critically; make decisions based on evidence; devise proposals for actions; and communicate effectively.
Thinking about, reflecting on, and responding to issues requires an understanding of the key historical, geographical, political, legal, economic, business and societal factors involved, and how these different factors interrelate.
The Humanities and Social Sciences subjects provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to develop a broad understanding of the world in which we live and how people can participate as active and informed citizens in the 21st century.
WA Health Curriculum
Personal, social and community health
- Being healthy, safe and active
The content focuses on supporting students to make decisions about their own health, safety and wellbeing. The content develops the knowledge, understanding and skills to support students to be resilient. It also enables them to access and understand health information and empowers them to make healthy, safe and active choices. In addition, the content explores personal identities and emotions, and the contextual factors that influence students’ health, safety and wellbeing. Students also learn about the behavioural aspects related to regular physical activity and develop the dispositions required to be an active individual.
- Communicating and interacting for health and wellbeing
The content develops knowledge, understanding and skills to enable students to critically engage with a range of health focus areas and issues. It also helps them apply new information to changing circumstances and environments that influence their own and others’ health, safety and wellbeing.
- Contributing to healthy and active communities
The content develops knowledge, understanding and skills to enable students to critically analyse contextual factors that influence the health and wellbeing of communities. The content supports students to selectively access information, products, services and environments to take action to promote the health and wellbeing of their communities.
WA Art Curriculum
The Arts have the capacity to engage, inspire and enrich all students, exciting the imagination and encouraging them to reach their creative and expressive potential. The term ‘creativity’ plays a critical role in all arts subjects. For the Western Australian Curriculum, the following explanation of the creative process is useful:
[There are] … four characteristics of creative processes. First, they always involve thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, overall this imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the objective. We therefore define creativity as: Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value. Robinson, K. (1999) National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education: “All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education”. p. 30
The Arts learning area comprises five subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. Together they provide opportunities for students to learn how to create, design, represent, communicate and share their imagined and conceptual ideas, emotions, observations and experiences, as they discover and interpret the world.
The Arts entertain, inform, challenge, and encourage responses, and enrich our knowledge of self, communities, world cultures and histories. The Arts contribute to the development of confident and creative individuals, nurturing and challenging active and informed citizens. Learning in the Arts is based on cognitive, affective and sensory/kinaesthetic response to arts practices as students revisit increasingly complex content, skills and processes with developing confidence and sophistication through the years of schooling.
WA Digital Technologies Curriculum
Technologies enrich and impact on the lives of people and societies globally. Society needs enterprising students who can make discerning decisions about the development and use of technologies, develop solutions to complex challenges and contribute to sustainable patterns of living. Technologies can play an important role in transforming, restoring and sustaining societies and natural, managed and constructed environments.
The Western Australian Curriculum: Technologies describes two distinct but related subjects:
- Design and Technologies, in which students use design thinking and technologies to generate and produce solutions for authentic needs and opportunities
- Digital Technologies, in which students use computational thinking and information systems to define, design and implement solutions.
In an increasingly technological and complex world, it is important to develop knowledge and skills to analyse and creatively respond to design and/or digital challenges.
Through the practical application of technologies including digital technologies, students develop dexterity and coordination through experiential activities. Technologies motivates young people and engages them in a range of learning experiences that are transferable to family and home, constructive leisure activities, community contribution and the world of work.
Technologies provides students with authentic learning challenges that foster curiosity, confidence, persistence, innovation, creativity, respect and cooperation. These attributes are necessary when using and developing solutions to make sense of complex ideas and relationships in all areas of learning. Technologies helps students to be regional and global citizens, capable of actively and ethically communicating and collaborating.