In October AISWA held a series of language specific workshops for Arabic, Italian, Modern Greek, Spanish, Japanese, French, Chinese and Indonesian on the Australian Curriculum: Languages and the P-10 Western Australian Curriculum for Languages. More than 90 Languages teachers from AISWA member schools attended.
Each workshop was facilitated by the AISWA Languages Consultant, Kate Reitzenstein and a workshop leader who received training in March on the Australian Curriculum: Languages through the national training package Ready? Set? Go! by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA). Adriana Douglas, Principal Consultant: Curriculum from the School Curriculum and Standards Authority, provided valuable insight into the timeline for implementation of the P-10 Australian Curriculum for Languages and what it will mean for Languages teachers in WA:
- The P-10 Curriculum will be available for familiarisation from the beginning of Semester 2, 2016. It will be adapted from the Australian Curriculum: Languages and include content that must be taught to all students.
- Year level syllabuses will be written for French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese and Italian. No decision has yet been made to develop syllabuses for other languages. These syllabuses will include a year level description, content descriptions specifying what teachers are expected to teach and year level achievement standards.
- Judging Standards resources will be produced to make on-balance judgements about student achievement and include grade descriptions and annotated work samples.
- Full implementation of the P-10 Curriculum for Languages is expected to be in place in schools with the first reporting on student achievements to parents by the end of Semester 1, 2018.
The School Curriculum and Standards Authority is currently developing a policy for Languages which will provide schools with guidelines as to what constitutes language learning and the mandating of time on task and what years Languages is to be taught in schools. This is certain to provide schools with greater clarity about the delivery of Languages and support implementation of the new curriculum. The policy is due to be launched in Term 4.
AISWA would like to thank the workshop leaders who co-led the sessions: Stella Mitchell (French), Li Liu (Chinese), Sally Parr (Spanish), Alessandra Tomassi (Italian), Tavish Redgrave (Indonesian), Muhammad Agherdien (Arabic), Natalie Pearce (Japanese) and Magda Hasapopoulos (Modern Greek). A very big grazie also to Adriana Douglas for coming in every day to deliver the short session in the morning.
