Every year school year, I sit down to begin planning and look at the curriculum, get quite overwhelmed and walk away for 24 hours (Pinterest is a great distracting tool!). The Australian National curriculum is soooo incredibly full it’s easy to get confused about what to cover each term, what you’ve already taught and what still needs to be taught.

I’m a BIG lover of checklists – they help me keep focused and I feel so accomplished when I can tick things off!

Here’s my solutions to my planning issue…. Curriculum checklists!

These checklists that I have put together cover ALL learning areas for each year level, with clearly defined strands, sub-strands and content descriptions to keep you on track. Each checklist includes 4 tick boxes – one for each term to allow you to keep track of what has been covered each term and what still needs to be addressed.

I have intentionally avoided using colour and distracting clipart to keep the documents professional looking and adaptable.

 

How do you use the checklists?

Step 1: Print off the checklists of the area/s you wish to keep track of.

Step 2: Place the checklists in a folder, with the pages back to back. This allows you to see whole curriculum areas in one glance.

 

Step 3: Decide which of the content descriptor you are going to cover each term and as it is covered, tick it off in the appropriate column for that term. This is what my checklist looks like by the end of the year:

 

You can see I have intentionally used different colours for each term to help me personally visualize how I’m going. You’ll notice that for one content descriptor I covered one part in one term and another in a different term, hence the highlighting.

 

Learning areas covered for Years Foundation to 6 Checklists:

English, Math, Science, HASS (Geography and History), Digital Technologies, Design Technologies, The Arts (Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts), Physical Education and the newly updated Child Protection Curriculum.

 

I have found these to be so successful that even my fellow colleagues are now using them. These checklists are also ideal to take with you when you participate in your annual performance review.

NOTE – Every time the curriculum is updated – I will also update these checklists to make them continually relevant and useful. The current version of the checklists is version 9.0

 

Happy planning!

✏️❤️ Katie