ACARA Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
- Contact us |
- Feedback |
- Technical |
- User guide |
- Site map |
- AA
ACARA Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
The English curriculum is built around the three interrelated strands of Language, Literature and Literacy. Teaching and learning programs should balance and integrate all three strands. Together the strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. Learning in English builds on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years, and teachers will revisit and strengthen these as needed.
In Years 9 and 10, students interact with peers, teachers, individuals, groups and community members in a range of face-to-face and online/virtual environments. They experience learning in familiar and unfamiliar contexts, including local community, vocational and global contexts.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They interpret, create, evaluate, discuss and perform a wide range of literary texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These include various types of media texts, including newspapers, film and digital texts, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, dramatic performances and multimodal texts, with themes and issues involving levels of abstraction, higher order reasoning and intertextual references. Students develop critical understanding of the contemporary media, and the differences between media texts.
The range of literary texts for Foundation to Year 10 comprises Australian literature, including the oral narrative traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as the contemporary literature of these two cultural groups, and classic and contemporary world literature, including texts from and about Asia.
Literary texts that support and extend students in Years 9 and 10 as independent readers are drawn from a range of genres and involve complex, challenging and unpredictable plot sequences and hybrid structures that may serve multiple purposes. These texts explore themes of human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and ethical and global dilemmas within real-world and fictional settings and represent a variety of perspectives. Informative texts represent a synthesis of technical and abstract information (from credible/verifiable sources) about a wide range of specialised topics. Text structures are more complex including chapters, headings and subheadings, tables of contents, indexes and glossaries. Language features include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and dense information supported by various types of graphics and images.
Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts including narratives, procedures, performances, reports, discussions, literary analyses, transformations of texts and reviews.
By the end of Year 10, students evaluate how text structures can be used in innovative ways by different authors. They explain how the choice of language features, images and vocabulary contributes to the development of individual style.
They develop and justify their own interpretations of texts. They evaluate other interpretations, analysing the evidence used to support them. They listen for ways features within texts can be manipulated to achieve particular effects.
Students show how the selection of language features can achieve precision and stylistic effect. They explain different viewpoints, attitudes and perspectives through the development of cohesive and logical arguments. They develop their own style by experimenting with language features, stylistic devices, text structures and images.
Students create a wide range of texts to articulate complex ideas. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, building on others' ideas, solving problems, justifying opinions and developing and expanding arguments. They demonstrate understanding of grammar, vary vocabulary choices for impact, and accurately use spelling and punctuation when creating and editing texts.
The proficiency strands Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning are an integral part of mathematics content across the three content strands: Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. The proficiencies reinforce the significance of working mathematically within the content and describe how the content is explored or developed. They provide the language to build in the developmental aspects of the learning of mathematics.
At this year level:
Understanding includes applying the four operations to algebraic fractions, finding unknowns in formulas after substitution, making the connection between equations of relations and their graphs, comparing simple and compound interest in financial contexts and determining probabilities of two and three step experiments
Fluency includes factorising and expanding algebraic expressions, using a range of strategies to solve equations and using calculations to investigate ing the shape of data sets
Problem Solving includes calculating the surface area and volume of a diverse range of prisms to solve practical problems, finding unknown lengths and angles using applications of trigonometry, using algebraic and graphical techniques to find solutions to simultaneous equations and inequalities, and investigating independence of events
Reasoning includes formulating geometric proofs involving congruence and similarity, interpreting and evaluating media statements and interpreting and comparing data sets
By the end of Year 10, students recognise the connection between simple and compound interest. They solve problems involving linear equations and inequalities. They make the connections between algebraic and graphical representations of relations. Students solve surface area and volume problems relating to composite solids. They recognise the relationships between parallel and perpendicular lines. Students apply deductive reasoning to proofs and numerical exercises involving plane shapes. They compare data sets by referring to the shapes of the various data displays. They describe bivariate data where the independent variable is time. Students describe statistical relationships between two continuous variables. They evaluate statistical reports.
Students expand binomial expressions and factorise monic quadratic expressions. They find unknown values after substitution into formulas. They perform the four operations with simple algebraic fractions. Students solve simple quadratic equations and pairs of simultaneous equations. They use triangle and angle properties to prove congruence and similarity. Students use trigonometry to calculate unknown angles in right-angled triangles. Students list outcomes for multi-step chance experiments and assign probabilities for these experiments. They calculate quartiles and inter-quartile ranges.
The Science Inquiry Skills and Science as a Human Endeavour strands are described across a two-year band. In their planning, schools and teachers refer to the expectations outlined in the Achievement Standard and also to the content of the Science Understanding strand for the relevant year level to ensure that these two strands are addressed over the two-year period. The three strands of the curriculum are interrelated and their content should be taught in an integrated way.
The order and detail in which the content descriptions are organised into teaching/learning programs are decisions to be made by the teacher.
In the Year 10 curriculum students explore systems at different scales and connect microscopic and macroscopic properties to explain phenomena. Students explore the biological, chemical, geological and physical evidence for different theories, such as the theories of natural selection and the Big Bang. Atomic theory is developed to understand relationships within the periodic table. Understanding motion and forces are related by applying physical laws. Relationships between aspects of the living, physical and chemical world are applied to systems on a local and global scale and this enables students to predict how changes will affect equilibrium within these systems.
By the end of Year 10, students analyse how the periodic table organises elements and use it to make predictions about the properties of elements. They explain how chemical reactions are used to produce particular products and how different factors influence the rate of reactions. They explain the concept of energy conservation and represent energy transfer and transformation within systems. They apply relationships between force, mass and acceleration to predict changes in the motion of objects. Students describe and analyse interactions and cycles within and between Earth’s spheres. They evaluate the evidence for scientific theories that explain the origin of the universe and the diversity of life on Earth. They explain the processes that underpin heredity and evolution. Students analyse how the models and theories they use have developed over time and discuss the factors that prompted their review.
Students develop questions and hypotheses and independently design and improve appropriate methods of investigation, including field work and laboratory experimentation. They explain how they have considered reliability, safety, fairness and ethical actions in their methods and identify where digital technologies can be used to enhance the quality of data. When analysing data, selecting evidence and developing and justifying conclusions, they identify alternative explanations for findings and explain any sources of uncertainty. Students evaluate the validity and reliability of claims made in secondary sources with reference to currently held scientific views, the quality of the methodology and the evidence cited. They construct evidence-based arguments and select appropriate representations and text types to communicate science ideas for specific purposes.
The Modern World and Australia
The Year 10 curriculum provides a study of the history of the modern world and Australia from 1918 to the present, with an emphasis on Australia in its global context. The twentieth century...
By the end of Year 10, students refer to key events, the actions of individuals and groups, and beliefs and values to explain patterns of change and continuity over time. They analyse the causes and effects of events and developments and explain their relative importance. They explain the context for people’s actions in the past. Students explain the significance of events and developments from a range of perspectives. They explain different interpretations of the past and recognise the evidence used to support these interpretations.
Students sequence events and developments within a chronological framework, and identify relationships between events across different places and periods of time. When researching, students develop, evaluate and modify questions to frame an historical inquiry...
There are two units of study in the Year 10 curriculum for Geography: Environmental change and management and Geographies of human wellbeing.
Environmental change and management focuses on investigating environmental geography through an in-depth study of a specific environment. The unit begins with an overview of the environmental functions that support all life, the major challenges to their sustainability, and the environmental worldviews - including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples - that influence how people perceive and respond to these challenges. Students investigate a specific type of environment and environmental change in Australia and one other country. They apply human-environment systems thinking to understand the causes and consequences of the change and geographical concepts and methods to evaluate and select strategies to manage the change.
Geographies of human wellbeing focuses on investigating global, national and local differences in human wellbeing between places. This unit examines the different concepts and measures of human wellbeing, and the causes of global differences in these measures between countries. Students explore spatial differences in wellbeing within and between countries, and evaluate the differences from a variety of perspectives. They explore programs designed to reduce the gap between differences in wellbeing. These distinctive aspects of human wellbeing are investigated using studies drawn from Australia, India and across the world as appropriate.
The content of this year level is organised into two strands: Geographical Knowledge and Understanding and Geographical Inquiry and Skills. These strands are interrelated and should be taught in an integrated manner, and in ways that are appropriate to specific local contexts. The order and detail in which they are taught are programming decisions.
A framework for developing students’ geographical knowledge, understanding and skills is provided through the inclusion of inquiry questions and specific inquiry skills, including the use and interpretation of maps, photographs and other representations of geographical data.
The key inquiry questions for Year 10 are articulated below.
Unit 1: Environmental change and management
Select ONE of the following types of environment as the context for study: land, inland water, coast, marine or urban. A comparative study of examples selected from Australia and at least one other country should be included.
Unit 2: Geographies of human wellbeing
Year 10
By the end of Year 10, students explain how the interaction between geographical processes at different scales change the characteristics of places. They predict changes in the characteristics of places and environments over time, across space and at different scales and explain the predicted consequences of change. Students identify, analyse and explain significant interconnections between people, places and environments and explain changes that result from these interconnections and their consequences. They propose explanations for distributions, patterns and spatial variations over time, across space and at different scales, and identify and describe significant associations between distribution patterns. They evaluate alternative views on a geographical challenge and alternative strategies to address this challenge using environmental, social and economic criteria and propose and justify a response.
Students use initial research to develop and modify geographically significant questions to frame an inquiry. They collect and critically evaluate a range of primary and secondary sources and select relevant geographical data and information to answer inquiry questions...
© Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
Copyright
| Privacy policy
| Accessibility Statement