The year 7 – 10 English program is designed to facilitate interesting, innovative, analytical and creative outcomes for students. The English curriculum is built around three interrelated strands: language, literature and literacy. 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 Year Seven students communicate 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 that relate to the school curriculum, local community, regional and global contexts.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view, interpret, evaluate and perform a range of texts that are also designed to inform and persuade. These include media texts such as newspapers, magazines and digital texts; early adolescent novels and other non-fiction; poetry; and dramatic performances. Students develop understandings of how these texts are influenced by context, purpose and audience.
Students create a range of imaginative, informative and persuasive types of texts, for example narratives, procedures, performances, reports and discussions, and are beginning to create literary analyses and transformations of texts.
Humanities and Social Science provides students with the knowledge, skills and values to be well rounded citizens of the community – both locally and more broadly. Year 7 – 10 students engage with the WA Curriculum which includes ancient history, economics, geography, modern history, law and politics.
Students develop increasing independence in critical thinking and skill application, which includes questioning, researching, analysing, evaluating, communicating and reflecting. They apply these skills to investigate events, developments, issues, and phenomena, both historical and contemporary.
Students continue to build on their understanding of the concepts of the Westminster system and democracy by examining the key features of Australia’s democracy, and how it is shaped through the Australian Constitution and constitutional change. The concepts of justice, rights and responsibilities are further developed through a focus on Australia’s legal system.
An understanding of the concepts making choices and allocation is further developed through a focus on the interdependence of consumers and producers in the market, and the characteristics of successful businesses, including how entrepreneurial behaviour contributes to business success. Work and work futures are introduced, as students consider why people work. Students focus on national issues, with opportunities for the concepts to also be considered in relation to local community or global issues where appropriate.
The concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability and change continue to be developed as a way of thinking and provide students with the opportunity to inquire into the nature of water as a natural resource. The concept of place is expanded through students’ investigation of the liveability of their own place. They apply this understanding to a wide range of places and environments at the full range of scales, from local to global, and in a range of locations.
Students develop their historical understanding through key concepts, including evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, perspectives, empathy, significance and contestability. These concepts are investigated within the historical context of how we know about the ancient past, and why and where the earliest societies developed.
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.
In Year Seven:
- understanding includes describing patterns in uses of indices with whole numbers, recognising equivalences between fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios, plotting points on the Cartesian plane, identifying angles formed by a transversal crossing a pair of lines, and connecting the laws and properties of numbers to algebraic terms and expressions
- fluency includes calculating accurately with integers, representing fractions and decimals in various ways, investigating best buys, finding measures of central tendency and calculating areas of shapes and volumes of prisms
- problem-solving includes formulating and solving authentic problems using numbers and measurements, working with transformations and identifying symmetry, calculating angles and interpreting sets of data collected through chance experiments
- reasoning includes applying the number laws to calculations, applying known geometric facts to draw conclusions about shapes, applying an understanding of ratio and interpreting data displays.
Over Years 7 to 10, students develop their understanding of microscopic and atomic structures; how systems at a range of scales are shaped by flows of energy and matter and interactions due to forces; and develop the ability to quantify changes and relative amounts.
In Year seven, students explore the diversity of life on Earth and continue to develop their understanding of the role of classification in ordering and organising information. They use and develop models such as food chains, food webs and the water cycle to represent and analyse the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems and explore the impact of changing components within these systems. They consider the interaction between multiple forces when explaining changes in an object’s motion. They explore the notion of renewable and non-renewable resources and consider how this classification depends on the timescale considered. They investigate relationships in the Earth-sun-moon system and use models to predict and explain events. Students make accurate measurements and control variables to analyse relationships between system components. They explore and explain these relationships through appropriate representations and consider the role of science in decision-making processes.
Regular health and physical education activities are designed to improve students’ skill levels, interpersonal abilities and general well-being. These things also contribute and enhance academic performance and overall happiness. Students will also have the opportunity to access a full range of sporting activities and interschool teams.
All students yr 7 – 10 will participate in Physical Education.
The underlying principle of the health education program is to produce well informed young people who are able to make well considered decisions to ensure their physical, mental, emotional and social well-being. Every yr 7 – 10 students participates in Health Education.
All students are required to study at least two of the five Arts subjects from Pre-primary to Year 8, including at least one performance subject and one visual subject.
Learning in Design and Technologies builds on concepts, skills and processes developed in earlier years, and teachers will revisit, strengthen and extend these as needed.
Students have opportunities to learn about technologies in society at least once in the following contexts: engineering principles and systems; food and fibre production; food specialisations; and materials and technologies specialisations. Students are provided with opportunities to design and produce products, services and environments.
Students have opportunities to select from a range of technologies, materials, components, tools and equipment. They consider the ways characteristics and properties of technologies can be combined to design and produce sustainable solutions. They develop strategies which enable them to consider society and ethics; economic, environmental and social sustainability factors. Students’ use of creativity, innovation and enterprise skills is encouraged to increase independence and collaboration.
Students are given opportunities to respond to feedback from others and evaluate their design processes and solutions. They investigate design and technology solutions and the implications for each on society, locally, regionally and globally. Students develop their techniques for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of design ideas.
Students have opportunities to engage with a range of technologies, including a variety of graphical representation techniques to communicate ideas. Students generate and clarify ideas through sketching, modelling and perspective drawings.
Students identify the increasingly complex sequences and steps involved in design tasks. They develop plans to manage design tasks, including safe and responsible use of materials and tools to successfully complete design tasks.
Learning in Digital Technologies focuses on further developing understanding and skills in computational thinking, such as decomposing problems and engaging students with a wider range of information systems as they broaden their experiences and involvement in national, regional and global activities.
Students have opportunities to create a range of solutions, such as interactive web applications or simulations.
Students explore the properties of networked systems. They acquire data from a range of digital systems. Students use data to model objects and events. They further develop their understanding of the vital role that data plays in their lives.
Students are provided with further opportunities to develop abstractions, identifying common elements, while decomposing apparently different problems and systems to define requirements; and recognise that abstractions hide irrelevant details for particular purposes. When defining problems, students identify the key elements of the problems and the factors and constraints at play. They design increasingly complex algorithms that allow data to be manipulated automatically.
Students predict and evaluate their developed and existing solutions, considering time, tasks, data and the safe and sustainable use of information systems.
Students plan and manage individual and team projects with some autonomy. They consider ways of managing the exchange of ideas, tasks and files and feedback. When communicating and collaborating online, students develop an understanding of different social contexts; for example, acknowledging cultural practices and meeting legal obligations.
In Year Seven students reflect on changes in their own use of language(s) over time, noticing how and when new ways are adopted or existing ways adapted. The practice of reviewing and consolidating prior learning is balanced against the provision of engaging and relevant new experiences and connections.