VCE Vcd statement of intention

To begin developing the planner, I first aimed to discover what were the learning requirements for the whole year, and at what points in each term that content needed to be implemented. It was important to learn in detail about each Area of Study (AOS), the accompanying assessment tasks, and their role in the scope of units 3-4 so that I could begin laying out key timeframes and dates. Once I understood this information, I began to section each term into weeks, layering important AOS study timeframes and assignment dates into the terms to prepare a greater overview of how the year would run. Furthermore, it was essential to build my understanding of the important study specifications that are provided in the VCD Study Design, so that I could identify where each scaffold of the design process would be implemented and how to prepare any supporting resources/approaches.

To interact with the planner, each week first outlines and summarises the AOS, key tasks, and topic areas students will be working on in the week’s timeframe, providing students with an overview of what needs to be completed along with important learning prompts. Following this, the key knowledge and skills that are relevant to each week's learning progress are highlighted, taken directly from the VCD Study Design to link practical learning progression markers to AOS requirements. The lesson planning/content incorporated through each week is quite substantial and clearly outlines in detail what tasks are expected to be completed while additionally providing approaches to questioning, indicators for success, and consistent reminders of AOS assessment workloads. Furthermore, to support students specifically through stages of the design process, I have included content recaps, assessment-specific overviews, and explicit examples of important technical focus points for the AOS timeframe, providing students with an array of explanations and information that helps decipher learning content and responsibilities.

Within the VCD planner, a column is outlined with a list of pedagogical strategies that are best applied to the learning of that week, aimed to guide teachers in their approaches and influence student engagement. Across all four terms, the planner has a highly focused inquiry approach integrated into all the content and AOS learning tasks, encouraging students to use a dispositional way of thinking and stimulate their ability to “ask questions, design investigations, interpret evidence, [and] form explanations” (Department of Education, 2023). As students purposefully engage with inquiry approaches, they are often challenged to think at higher levels, drawing on “several ways of investigating and expressing their growing understandings” (Murdoch, 2006, p. 33). When this learning autonomy is present, so to usually is an intrinsic motivation, where students will explore and learn because they have a desire to discover and answer questions defined by their own interests (Churchill et al., 2021).

 A range of High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS, 2019) are integrated into the planner to support the delivery of VCD learning outcomes and advocate for a variety of learning needs. The use of Multiple Exposures is highly present in the planner, providing students with frequent opportunities to engage in different activities and explorations to extend their knowledge of concepts (HITS, 2019). Throughout each AOS stage of the planner, questioning strategies are consistently used to support inquiry and challenge students to generate and analyse their own understandings (Churchill et al., 2021). Furthermore, additional strategies such as goal setting, worked examples, collaborative learning, feedback, and differentiation are all integrated through the planner to support the implementation of content and learning outcomes (HITS, 2019).