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Curriculum advice for remote and flexible learning

Implementing the Victorian Curriculum F–10

The following information outlines curriculum area advice to schools to support remote learning and continuity for students in F–10 History. This advice should be read in conjunction with broader advice provided to schools regarding the Victorian Curriculum F–10 on the VCAA and Victorian Curriculum F–10 websites.

Delivering F–10 History remotely and flexibly

Keep in mind

  • Schools can review and adapt their teaching and learning program for History to enable the curriculum to be delivered at home via remote learning.
  • Teachers are best placed to make teaching and learning decisions and assessment modifications that are appropriate to their own circumstances. Teachers need to take into account their access to remote learning tools (such as online learning platforms) and the strengths and limitations of their student cohort.
  • A weekly program of teaching and learning, based on the original teaching and learning program, can be developed for students to complete at home. This should include learning activities that enable students to demonstrate aspects of the relevant achievement standards in History.

Ideas and connections

  • Schools and teachers can select teaching and learning activities that integrate History with another learning area and/or capability to enhance efficiency of curriculum delivery.
  • Schools may select one historical context to focus on for the term.

  • Teachers can design and select targeted teaching and learning activities, including practical activities, that focus on one or more of the specific Historical Concepts and Skills in the History curriculum, such as sequencing chronology, using historical sources as evidence, identifying continuity and change, analysing causes and effect, or determining historical significance. Please refer to Learning in History on the Victorian Curriculum F–10 website for a more detailed explanation of these historical concepts and skills. For ideas and tips for teaching and learning activities using historical sources, including templates to support students' use of historical sources, download Using historical sources – History F–10.

  • Schools may develop a student-centred, teacher-directed historical inquiry into one historical context, event and/or significant individual. Schools may provide templates that scaffold students’ historical inquiry.
  • Teachers can select teaching and learning activities, practical activities, models, dioramas and historical inquiries that are able to be undertaken with materials readily available in students’ homes.

Useful resources

In addition to VCAA resources, teachers may consider the following resources:

Teachers may consider:

Teachers may also consider the following book list:

  • Allender, T, Clark, A & Parkes, R 2019, Historical Thinking for History Teachers: A new approach to engaging students and developing historical consciousness, Allen & Unwin, Crow's Nest.
  • Lévesque, S 2008, Thinking historically: Educating students for the twenty-first century, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
  • Seixas, P, Morton, T, Colyer, J & Fornazzari, S 2013, The Big Six: Historical thinking concepts, Nelson Education, Toronto.
  • Van Drie, J & Van Boxtel, C 2008, 'Historical reasoning: Towards a framework for analyzing students' reasoning about the past', Educational Psychology Review, 20, 87–110.
  • Whitehouse, JA 2008, 'Teaching the historians', Agora, 43(2), 4–8.
  • Whitehouse, J 2019, 'Critical analysis of sources in history: Developing historical thinking', Education and Society.
  • Wineburg, S 2001, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

Assessment and achievement standards

  • Teachers should design teaching and learning activities for the selected historical context by targeting the Historical Concepts and Skills strand content descriptions and the relevant sections of the achievement standards. Assessment of these targeted activities will allow teachers to identify where students are at and to continue to support their progression.
  • Schools should assess student learning, including evidence from practical activities and/or historical inquiries, against the relevant aspects of the achievement standards in the Victorian Curriculum F–10.
  • Depending on the resources available at home and the aspect of the achievement standard being assessed, students may draw, graph, timeline, photograph, label, create an electronic artefact, create a video, generate and respond to blogs, construct models and/or write a response to communicate their historical understanding.
  • Teachers can select and use a variety of assessment types to provide timely feedback to students and to monitor learning progress. Schools can review the range of assessment tasks to achieve a balance between short inquiry-based activities that focus student attention on particular skills and understanding and more open-ended, rich assessment tasks that can be completed over a period of time at home.
  • On the resumption of face-to-face learning, schools may undertake a variety of assessments to determine students’ actual progression of learning, considering the original teaching and learning program and making the necessary adjustments to this program as required.

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