Overview
Learning and teaching in the latter middle years of learning (Years 7 to 9) in selected learning areas, is the focus of this unit. The influences, interpretation and implementation of lower secondary school curriculum frameworks are examined critically for the purposes of designing effective pedagogies. A range of topics is examined including curriculum development, teaching and learning resources, teaching strategies, pedagogical approaches, assessment and school work programs relevant to the pre-service teacher’s two teaching areas. Critical use is made of relevant sources of information including curriculum and policy documents to promote professional teaching through the selection of appropriate teachable content to enable the design of quality learning experiences using a range of pedagogies and the development of assessment strategies that promote learning in lower secondary school contexts.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
Students must have successfully accumulated 48 credit points to be eligible to enrol in this unit. This includes the successful completion of 1 x Level 1 and 1 x Advanced level unit per Discipline Teaching Area.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 2 - 2022
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes – in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 12-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 25 hours of study per week, making a total of 300 hours for the unit.
Class Timetable
Assessment Overview
Assessment Grading
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of 'pass' in order to pass the unit. If any 'pass/fail' tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully ('pass' grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the 'assessment task' section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%). Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades.
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - Domestic Students
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - International Students
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Student Feedback - Compliments and Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Feedback from Student evaluation, UC observations
Clarify expectations for Discipline Expert feedback for the two formative tasks.
Scaffolding of feedback to ensure consistency of commentary to students across each of the Discipline areas.
Feedback from UC observations
Scale mark allocation for each formative task.
Scaled assessment of formative feedback to ensure equity.
- Use and understand curriculum frameworks relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Engage with teaching and learning resources relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Interpret and manipulate teaching strategies relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Design pedagogies appropriate for the implementation of your relevant curriculum frameworks
- Outline assessment strategies both formative and summative relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
Successful completion of this unit provides opportunities for students to engage with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Graduate Career Stage) focus areas of:
1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
2.2 Content selection and organisation
2.3 Curriculum, assessment and reporting
2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programs
3.3 Use teaching strategies
3.4 Select and use resources
5.1 Assess student learning
7.2 Comply with legislative, administrative and organisational requirements
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Portfolio - 50% | |||||
| 2 - Portfolio - 50% | |||||
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Communication | |||||
| 2 - Problem Solving | |||||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | |||||
| 4 - Information Literacy | |||||
| 5 - Team Work | |||||
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | |||||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | |||||
| 8 - Ethical practice | |||||
| 9 - Social Innovation | |||||
| 10 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | |||||
Textbooks
There are no required textbooks.
IT Resources
- CQUniversity Student Email
- Internet
- Unit Website (Moodle)
All submissions for this unit must use the referencing style: American Psychological Association 7th Edition (APA 7th edition)
For further information, see the Assessment Tasks.
m.felsch@cqu.edu.au
Module/Topic
Topic 1: The Australian Curriculum
Chapter
- Main, K., Bahr N., & Pendergast, D. (Eds). (2017). Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group. (Chapter 1 - Middle years education and Chapter 10 – Curriculum)
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Topic 2: Unit Planning
Chapter
- Ritchhart, R. (2007) The seven Rʼs of a quality curriculum. Education Quarterly Australia, 1-6.
- Killen, R. (2015). Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from Research and Practice. (7th ed.). pp. 81-89.
Events and Submissions/Topic
TEAMS Session 1 with Discipline Expert for Teaching Areas 1 and 2 - date and time to be advised
Module/Topic
Topic 3: School Contexts and Planning the Curriculum
Chapter
- Ewing, R., Le Cornu, R. & Groundwater-Smith, S. (2014). Teaching challenges and dilemmas. Cengage Learning Australia. (Chapter 5 - The learning environment).
Events and Submissions/Topic
TEAMS Session 2 with Discipline Expert for Teaching Areas 1 and 2 - date and time to be advised
Module/Topic
Topic 4: Middle Years Learners and DIfferentiation
Chapter
- Main, K., Bahr N., & Pendergast, D. (Eds). (2017). Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group. (Chapter 5 – Catering for individual students).
- Tomlinson, C. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. (Instructional Strategies - from Chapters 7 & 8).
Events and Submissions/Topic
Submit Milestone Task 1 Teaching Area 1 through Moodle Milestone Task Forum (upload by Friday 5 August 2022, 11:45 pm)
Module/Topic
Teaching Areas 1 and 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Main, K., Bahr N., & Pendergast, D. (Eds). (2017). Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group. (Chapter 7 – Literacy and/or Chapter 8 – Numeracy).
Events and Submissions/Topic
Forum Task: Provision of Targeted Feedback about Milestone Task 1 to peers (upload by Friday 12 August 2022, 11:45 pm)
Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Teaching Areas 1 and 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Butt, G. (2008). Lesson planning (3rd ed). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. pp. 60-68.
- Howell, J. (2014). Teaching & learning: building effective pedagogies. Oxford University Press. pp. 406-416.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 1: Assessment Finalisation
Chapter
No readings for this week.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Main, K., Bahr N., & Pendergast, D. (Eds). (2017). Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group. (Chapter 4 – Quality teaching and learning)
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Howell, J. (2014). Teaching & learning: building effective pedagogies. Oxford University Press. pp. 60-70.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Submit Milestone Task 2 Teaching Area 2 through Moodle Milestone Task Forum (upload by Monday 12 September 2022, 11:45 pm)
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Killen, R. (2015). Effective teaching strategies: Lessons from research and practice. (7th ed.) Cengage Publishing. (Teaching strategies selections across Chapters 5 -13)
Events and Submissions/Topic
Forum Task: Provision of Targeted Feedback about Milestone Task 2 to peers (upload by Monday 19 September 2022, 11:45 pm)
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 2: Topics 5 - 10
Chapter
- Main, K., Bahr N., & Pendergast, D. (Eds). (2017). Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group. (Classroom assessment pp.308-318)
- Howell, J. (2014). Teaching & learning: building effective pedagogies. Oxford University Press. pp. 427-434.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Teaching Area 2: Assessment Finalisation
Chapter
No readings for this week.
Events and Submissions/Topic
1 Portfolio
Task 1 must be completed for a different teaching area than that used to complete Task 2
Task Overview:
This task requires you to apply core concepts of the unit to develop a Portfolio of Teaching and Learning materials based around a unit of work in one of your teaching areas for a Middle Years class. The Portfolio will demonstrate your ability to apply curriculum subject knowledge and pedagogy skills in the selected teaching area, using a school context and a detailed class profile of a Middle Years class.
The unit requirements include formative and summative assessment.
The milestone task components will be used to build the skills and knowledge required for you to complete the summative task and to provide opportunities for you to receive feedback as you start to build and develop your ideas. The milestone task components will be supported through the unit materials provided on the Moodle site.
The summative task requires you to develop a unit overview, design one detailed lesson plan from this unit of work with a focus on literacy or numeracy and differentiated instruction, and provide a justification of your planning choices in order to demonstrate your understanding of curriculum and pedagogy in one of your teaching areas.
Task Details:
Task 1 is to be completed for ONE of your Middle Years teaching areas.
The teaching area chosen for Task 1 MUST BE DIFFERENT to that chosen for Task 2.
Task 1 contributes 50% to the overall grade for this unit.
Task 1 is graded using criteria and standards descriptors aligned to numerical scores out of 50.
Task 1 has TWO parts.
- Part A - Milestone task components and the provision of feedback to peers (5 marks)
- Part B - Summative task components (45 marks)
Descriptions of the Milestone and Summative Tasks
Part A: Milestone assessment task and the provision of feedback
The following milestone task components are to be completed on the supplied Unit of Work Overview and Lesson Plan template in the Task 1 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile and uploaded to your teaching area forum. The teaching area discipline expert will provide you with feedback on your milestone task components.
The milestone task components include:
- providing a description of the unit of work
- selecting the content descriptions to be used in the unit
- highlighting the aspects of the achievement standard that will be the focus of the summative assessment for the unit, and outlining the summative assessment
- identifying the lesson topics and the learning intention for each of the lessons throughout the unit
- identifying initial planning for a lesson that is focused on developing subject-specific literacy or numeracy skills that are key to the unit of work, and that cater to the diverse learners in your class.
You are to provide targeted feedback to two peers about the milestone task components. Guidelines for this feedback are located in the Task 1 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile.
Further explanation of these components will be provided during Zoom sessions and on the Zoom PowerPoints.
Due Dates:
- The milestone task components will be posted on the teaching area discussion forum by Friday of Week 4
- The provision of targeted feedback about the milestone task components to two peers will be posted on the teaching area discussion forum by Friday of Week 5
The evidence of the forum entries will be recorded on the Milestone Task Table – AT1 located in the Task 1 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile and submitted with your summative task.
Part B: Summative assessment task
Summative assessment task components that are to be submitted will reflect the key understandings explored in online Moodle materials and the work you have already done in the milestone assessment task. These tasks are as follows:
- A finalised unit of work overview (with annotations), using the template that you used for Milestone Task 1. For the purposes of this assessment task, you will be planning the teaching and learning for a unit of work that is 4-5 weeks in duration (or if your teaching area typically delivers longer units of work, your planning will focus on the first or last 4-5 weeks of the unit of work). Therefore, the unit encompasses the period of learning before and leading up to a significant formative or summative piece of work. Please see the Moodle site for further information.
- A detailed lesson plan (with annotations) drawn from the unit of work that demonstrates your understanding of targeted and purposeful teaching strategies and resources suitable for the needs of Middle Years learners in this teaching area. This lesson plan must demonstrate the development of subject-specific literacy or numeracy skills specific to the unit of work and the teaching area. The lesson plan must also demonstrate an understanding of differentiation for diverse learners through teaching strategies and the use of resources.
- You will create all of the resources to be used in this lesson with students (focused on literacy or numeracy; demonstrating how resources can be differentiated for different students' needs) and submit these (with annotations).
You will also write a critical analysis of your planning process that will include references to literature as well as to the appropriate curriculum and provide examples from your planning to support your reflection and evaluation (1600 words). This section will address the following areas:
Middle Years Context: a statement about the contextual elements that influenced your planning for teaching. (approx. 450 words)
- Discuss how your unit of work is informed by the intent of the curriculum in your selected teaching area.
- Explain how your knowledge of the particular cohort of learners (include a detailed profile as an appendix) and the particular school context influenced the design of the unit.
Curriculum and Pedagogy – Unit Planning: a critical reflection of the planning elements that informed the unit design. (approx. 450 words)
- Justify the choices that you made for the unit’s teaching and learning sequence and how the planned approach to teaching supports and engages your students in their learning.
- Explain how resources have been selected and utilised to support teaching and learning in this unit.
Curriculum and Pedagogy – Lesson Planning: justification of how your lesson plan is an example of subject-specific literacy or numeracy pedagogical strategies and differentiation to promote learning. (approx. 600 words)
- Explain the purpose of this lesson in the overall unit of work and how the focus on literacy or numeracy in the detailed lesson plan assists students to prepare for the unit’s summative assessment task.
- Justify how the lesson’s approach to pedagogy and learning activities contributes to developing students’ subject specific literacy or numeracy skills.
- Justify the choices you have made when planning teaching strategies and the use of resources for this lesson and how you have considered the learning needs of your cohort profile.
Feedback:
- Outline how you used the feedback provided by your discipline expert (and peers if appropriate) on the milestone assessment task components. Provide examples. (approx. 100 words)
Essential elements of the task:
- Include explicit links between your discussion in the critical analysis and the lesson plan, resources and unit overview (i.e., use annotations on the lesson plan, resources and unit overview to clearly identify those aspects considered in your critical analysis).
- Make references to literature as well as to the curriculum framework in your critical analysis.
Appendices:
- A detailed class profile: Assessment Task 1 requires you to include a detailed class profile and must show evidence that you meet the needs of a particular group of identified learners. You can create your own or you may choose to use the compiled student data - Class Profiles - that have been provided in the Task 1 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile. Should you choose to create your own detailed class profile, a Class Profile Template has been provided in the Task 1 Resources section.
- Milestone Task Table – AT1: The evidence of the forum entries will be recorded on this table. PLEASE NOTE - IF YOU DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR EVIDENCE DOCUMENT (MILESTONE TASK TABLE) YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE THE AVAILABLE MARKS.
The completed summative assessment task includes the following and is to be submitted as a Word document:
- Unit of Work Overview
- Detailed Lesson Plan – Literacy or Numeracy
- Detailed Lesson Plan – Resources
- Critical Analysis
- References
- Appendix A: Detailed Class Profile
- Appendix B: Milestone Task Table
Week 8 Monday (5 Sept 2022) 11:45 pm AEST
Feedback will be provided on formative task components in Weeks 5 and 6, prior to submission of Summative Task 1. Feedback on Summative Task 1 will be provided following moderation and prior to the required submission of Assessment Task 2.
- Knowledge and understanding of planning learning programs to implement the curriculum
- Knowledge and understanding of teaching strategies and resources appropriate to the teaching area and context
- Knowledge and understanding of differentiation strategies, including literacy and numeracy strategies, to meet the specific learning needs of students
- Design of assessment to promote learning
- Justification of planning decisions informed by theory, research, context and curriculum knowledge
- Written language communication skills
- Use and understand curriculum frameworks relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Engage with teaching and learning resources relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Interpret and manipulate teaching strategies relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Design pedagogies appropriate for the implementation of your relevant curriculum frameworks
- Outline assessment strategies both formative and summative relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
2 Portfolio
Task 2 must be completed for a different teaching area than that used to complete Task 1.
Task Overview:
This task requires you to apply core concepts of the unit to develop the teaching and learning materials for a unit of work in one of your teaching areas. The task will demonstrate your ability to apply subject knowledge and pedagogy skills in one of your Middle Years teaching areas.
The unit requirements include both formative and summative assessment.
The milestone task components will be used to build the skills and knowledge required for you to complete the summative task and to provide opportunities for you to get feedback as you start to build and develop your ideas. The milestone task components will be supported through the unit materials provided on the Moodle site.
The summative task requires you to develop a detailed unit of work and annotate this unit of work to demonstrate your understanding of curriculum and pedagogy in one of your teaching areas.
Task Details:
Task 2 is to be completed for ONE of your Middle Years teaching areas.
The teaching area chosen for Task 2 MUST BE DIFFERENT to that chosen for Task 1.
Task 2 contributes 50% to the overall grade for this unit.
Task 2 is graded using criteria and standards descriptors aligned to numerical scores out of 50.
Task 2 has TWO parts.
- Part A - Milestone task components and the provision of feedback to peers (5 marks)
- Part B - Summative task components (45 marks)
Descriptions of the Milestone and Summative Tasks
Part A: Milestone assessment task and the provision of feedback
The following milestone task components are to be completed on the supplied Unit Plan template in the Task 2 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile and uploaded to your teaching area forum. The teaching area discipline expert will provide you with feedback on your milestone task components.
The milestone task components include:
- providing a description of the unit of work
- selecting the content descriptions to be used in the unit
- highlighting the aspects of the achievement standard that will be the focus of the summative assessment for the unit
- describing the summative assessment task for the unit
- identifying the lesson topics and the learning intention for each of the lessons throughout the unit.
You are to provide targeted feedback to two peers about the milestone task components. Guidelines for this feedback are located in the Task 2 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile.
Further explanation of these components will be provided during Zoom sessions and on the Zoom PowerPoints.
Due Dates:
- The milestone task components will be posted on the teaching area discussion forum by Monday of Week 9
- The provision of targeted feedback about the milestone task components to two peers will be posted on the teaching area discussion forum by Monday of Week 10
The evidence of the forum entries will be recorded on the Milestone Task Table - AT2 located in the Task 2 Resources section of the Assessment Information and Resources tile and submitted with your summative task.
Part B: Summative assessment task
This summative assessment task will reflect the key understandings explored in online Moodle materials and the work you have already done in the milestone assessment task components. The task is as follows:
- A detailed unit of work that demonstrates your understanding of curriculum frameworks, planning processes, a range of teaching strategies, differentiation for a range of learners and the use of resources suitable for this teaching area. For the purposes of this assessment task, you will be planning the teaching and learning for a unit of work that is 4-5 weeks in duration (or if your teaching area typically delivers longer units of work, your planning will focus on the first or last 4-5 weeks of the unit of work). Therefore, the unit encompasses the period of learning before and leading up to a significant formative or summative piece of work. Please see the Moodle site for further information.
- Annotations on the unit of work that indicate and explain the unit design. The annotations must include references to literature and the appropriate curriculum. Annotations will indicate and explain:
- your choice of a range of targeted and purposeful teaching strategies and resources that have been utilised to enhance instruction and learning.
- where you have provided differentiated teaching strategies suited to the needs of Middle Years learners.
- where you have deliberately developed literacy or numeracy skills specific to the unit of work and the teaching area.
- where you have used formative assessment strategies to assess students' development of the knowledge and skills needed to demonstrate their learning in the final summative assessment task.
Appendix:
- Milestone Task Table - AT2: The evidence of the forum entries will be recorded on this table. PLEASE NOTE - IF YOU DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR EVIDENCE DOCUMENT (MILESTONE TASK TABLE) YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE THE AVAILABLE MARKS.
The completed summative assessment task includes the following and is to be submitted as a Word document:
- Detailed Unit of Work with Annotations
- References
- Appendix A: Milestone Task Table
Week 12 Friday (7 Oct 2022) 11:45 pm AEST
Feedback will be provided on formative task components in Weeks 9 and 10, prior to submission of Summative Task 2. Feedback on the final assessment response will be provided following moderation and prior to the Date of Certification of Grades for the Term.
- Knowledge and understanding of planning learning programs to implement the curriculum
- Knowledge and understanding of teaching strategies and resources appropriate to the teaching area and context
- Knowledge and understanding of differentiation strategies, including literacy and numeracy strategies, to meet the specific learning needs of students
- Design of assessment to promote learning
- Justification of planning decisions informed by theory, research, context and curriculum knowledge
- Written language communication skills
- Use and understand curriculum frameworks relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Engage with teaching and learning resources relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Interpret and manipulate teaching strategies relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
- Design pedagogies appropriate for the implementation of your relevant curriculum frameworks
- Outline assessment strategies both formative and summative relevant to your two teaching areas at a lower secondary school level
As a CQUniversity student you are expected to act honestly in all aspects of your academic work.
Any assessable work undertaken or submitted for review or assessment must be your own work. Assessable work is any type of work you do to meet the assessment requirements in the unit, including draft work submitted for review and feedback and final work to be assessed.
When you use the ideas, words or data of others in your assessment, you must thoroughly and clearly acknowledge the source of this information by using the correct referencing style for your unit. Using others’ work without proper acknowledgement may be considered a form of intellectual dishonesty.
Participating honestly, respectfully, responsibly, and fairly in your university study ensures the CQUniversity qualification you earn will be valued as a true indication of your individual academic achievement and will continue to receive the respect and recognition it deserves.
As a student, you are responsible for reading and following CQUniversity’s policies, including the Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure. This policy sets out CQUniversity’s expectations of you to act with integrity, examples of academic integrity breaches to avoid, the processes used to address alleged breaches of academic integrity, and potential penalties.
What is a breach of academic integrity?
A breach of academic integrity includes but is not limited to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, cheating, contract cheating, and academic misconduct. The Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure defines what these terms mean and gives examples.
Why is academic integrity important?
A breach of academic integrity may result in one or more penalties, including suspension or even expulsion from the University. It can also have negative implications for student visas and future enrolment at CQUniversity or elsewhere. Students who engage in contract cheating also risk being blackmailed by contract cheating services.
Where can I get assistance?
For academic advice and guidance, the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) can support you in becoming confident in completing assessments with integrity and of high standard.
What can you do to act with integrity?
