The end of the year is here! The Australian National Curriculum has been updated from Version 8.4 to Version 9.0, with an overall reduction in content and strengthening of alignment. Follow the steps here to ensure that your Atlas site and curriculum maps are updated and that your teachers are prepared for the start of the new school year with a refreshed curriculum.
Annual Site Maintenance
Archive this school year
Each year, a snapshot of the current year’s curriculum is automatically copied as an archived record. This is usually scheduled for a date shortly after the last day of instruction. Check to ensure that your annual archive is completed before making updates for the upcoming school year.
Update academic calendar
Also located under the heading Annual Site Maintenance is your Academic Calendar. Update the start and end dates of the upcoming school year and edit any key academic dates across the calendar as needed.
Update teacher roster and course assignments
Take the time to remove from your Atlas system any teachers who are moving on and add teachers who are joining your teaching team. As you update your teaching roster, also update what courses each of these teachers are assigned to as developers and teachers. Within Atlas, developers are users with full editing access of courses, teachers are listed as an instructor of a course and can create lessons within a unit, but they cannot edit the unit calendar nor units within the course.
Newly Released F-10 Australian National Curriculum (Version 9.0)
Familiarize yourself and staff with the general updates to the curriculum by referencing the summary provided by ACARA. Once everyone is familiar with the broad changes to the curriculum, you can begin the process of modifying curriculum maps with updated achievement standards and other updates to the scope and sequence.
For each learning area team, provide the comparative information from Version 8.4 to 9.0.
Each of these documents provided by ACARA details the achievement standards from both versions and specifically notes any changes to each standard. Contact your Atlas account manager for information about updating the achievement standards within your Atlas site and potentially marking achievement standards from the Version 8.4 curriculum as obsolete to aid in the updating process.
Once the proficiency standards are updated across curriculum maps, review the curriculum for alignment to these new standards. This is also an opportunity for teachers to familiarize themselves with the achievement standards and scope and sequence of the levels above and below the ones they teach. Use these different reports to guide your analysis:
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Standards Analysis
Identify exactly how many and which standards have been targeted in a single course, grade level, or subject area.
Use this information to identify any standards that might have somehow been missed, as well as those that are targeted across more units than is appropriate. -
Standards Overview
Track standards that you have prioritized at the school, course, or unit level.
Use this information to ensure that they build in depth and rigor as students move through them. Also check for gaps or redundancies as well as scaffolding in the prioritization of key content and skills standards. -
Scope and Sequence
Compare individual components of a unit plan across a few or several courses in one place.
Use this information to review the new progression of units, including standards, but also across assessments, learning targets, or any other component of your unit template that should be reviewed for scaffolding, gaps, or redundancies.
Keep the momentum going! For consultation, coaching, or guidance to support any step or this whole process, see our menu of professional development options at onatlas.com/pd.
About The Author
Kelly McCurdy
Professional Development Content Specialist
Atlas Team
Kelly McCurdy is a Professional Development Content Specialist with Faria Education Group, based in Portland, Oregon. She consults with educators domestically and internationally facilitating conversations about curriculum development and pedagogy. Kelly’s first experience in education was teaching secondary Humanities, and has since supported public schools as lead teacher, committee chair, and program director. Kelly earned her Bachelor of Arts in English and her Masters in Teaching from Washington State University.
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