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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 Personal and Social Capability. 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 Personal and Social Capability remotely and flexibly

Keep in mind

  • Schools can review and adapt their teaching and learning program for Personal and Social Capability to enable the curriculum to be delivered at home via remote learning. This review and adaptation should take into account any linked learning areas.
  • 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 modified teaching and learning program should include learning activities that enable students to demonstrate aspects of the relevant achievement standards in Personal and Social Capability.
  • This advice focuses on the Collaboration sub-strand in Personal and Social Capability and also considers how Personal and Social Capability can be used to support adjusting to a remote and flexible learning environment through the Self-Awareness and Management strand.
  • The Collaboration sub-strand focuses on developing an explicit understanding of strategies for effective teamwork and conflict prevention and resolution, as well as a capacity to apply these to different learning area contexts. 
  • The Self-Awareness and Management strand focuses on students developing the knowledge and skills to regulate, manage and monitor their emotions, supporting them to build a sense of self-knowledge and self-confidence and develop the skills to work independently and show initiative. The Meta-Cognition strand in Critical and Creative Thinking can also be used to help develop skills to work independently; advice about this can be found in the resources section below and under Curriculum advice for remote and flexible learning – Critical and Creative Thinking.

Ideas and connections

  • Tasks that are designed to be difficult to complete independently will be most effective at developing collaboration skills; however, the resources available to each student should be taken into account and the tasks modified to suit.
  • Setting just a few high quality targeted collaboration tasks is preferable to setting many general collaborative tasks; setting fewer tasks will allow greater teacher guidance on tasks and can also mitigate issues for those with limited access to technology.
  • Good collaboration is fostered when teams have strong relationships. Teachers may consider whether further opportunities are required for students to get to know each other. 
  • Depending on the achievement standard students are progressing towards and the resources available at home, students could contribute to setting agreed protocols and processes for collaborating remotely and then refine them if required; use recordings of student conferencing and written dialogue associated with shared documents as a basis for reflection; and share journals in which they reflect on their application of collaboration strategies. 

  • The Development of resilience sub-strand includes three aspects that teachers can use to help students adjust to remote learning conditions. Selected learning activities should relate to relevant aspect of the achievement standard students are working towards.

    • With guidance, students can identify their personal strengths, consider how these can be used to meet the challenges of working remotely, reflect on their progress and adapt strategies accordingly.

    • Students can be explicitly introduced to particular strategies and attributes that will foster an increased capacity to cope with the changed situation of learning remotely, including reflecting on how they can take responsibility for completing challenging tasks

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    • Students can be explicitly introduced to strategies that foster skills for working independently and set and revise goals through practice and reflection.

  • For ideas for teaching and learning activities for Personal and Social Capability, see Ideas for remote and flexible learning.

Useful resources

Views on important skills required for collaboration vary. Finding resources aligned to individual skills that the school has identified may be more productive than finding resources simply about collaboration. For example, a school may identify the following areas to focus on with respect to developing students' collaboration skills:

  • communication (listening, speaking, writing)
  • negotiation
  • project management, including team roles
  • conflict prevention and resolution.

Finding resources in each of these focus areas is easier than finding a resource that agrees with the precise set of areas the school has identified. Many useful resources have a career management or workplace context and may require adaptation to suit student need; for example, Professor Wertheim's Negotiations and Resolving Conflicts: An Overview may not be suitable for all students to simply read and respond to, but it could form the basis for the teacher to construct a learning activity explicitly drawing on the unpacking of negotiation skills in his work.

Teachers may consider Open Colleges tips on facilitating collaborative learning, which could be adapted for remote learning and help to facilitate development of a focus area skill.

The VIA Institute on Character has an online youth survey and resources on character strengths.

The Personal and Social Capability Self-Awareness and Management strand includes a focus on developing personal attributes that enable successful learning, while the Critical and Creative Thinking strand of Meta-Cognition includes a focus on cognitive strategies to enable successful learning. There are numerous online resources on developing study skills that relate to either capability strand; for example, Building Learning Power has a mixture of activities related to attribute development and metacognition.

Assessment and achievement standards

  • Schools may consider reviewing the sequence and balance of learning activities and assessment tasks aligned to the relevant Personal and Social Capability achievement standards to account for how often and in what form teacher feedback will be given.
  • Schools should assess student learning against the relevant aspects of the achievement standards in the Victorian Curriculum F–10.
  • 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 will need to 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.

For more information

Monica Bini, Personal and Social Capability Curriculum Manager

Phone (03) 9032 1693 and email the Personal and Social Capability Curriculum Manager

 

 

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