Curriculum

The development, design and interpretation of the competition questions and themes have curriculum relevance within the learning areas outlined below. Content descriptions from the Australian Curriculum and Western Australian Syllabus have been applied in the approach to the tasks.

The competition tasks and associated focus questions provide opportunities for the development of broader values such as respect, civility, equity, justice and responsibility.

Civics and Citizenship

  • Develop an understanding and contribute to the world in which they live
  • Planning for action
  • Analyse ways individuals can be active and informed citizens in different context
  • The importance of shared values, and explain the diverse nature of Australian society
  • How individuals and groups can influence civic life
  • Active and informed citizens
  • Develop and present evidence-based arguments on civics and citizenship issues
  • Problem solving and decision making
  • Reflect on their role as a citizen in Australia’s democracy
  • Opportunities to explore the nature of citizenship, diversity and identity in contemporary society
  • Develop students’ understanding of broader values such as respect, civility, equity, justice
    and responsibility

For more resources about Civics and Citizenship for Year 7, Year 8 or Year 9, visit our dedicated teacher resources section.

Handy Tip: We even have a dedicated curriculum-approved Year 9 teacher resource for “Graffiti: Art or Vandalism” that could help guide your classroom discussion.

The Arts

  • Explore ideas and improvising with ways to represent ideas
  • Express ideas, thoughts and opinions as they discover and interpret the world
  • Share artworks through performance, presentation or display
  • Provide opportunities for students to learn how to create, design, represent, communicate
    and share their imagined and conceptual ideas, emotions, observations and experiences.
  • Develop critical understanding that informs decision making and aesthetic choices.

Health and Physical Education

  • Opportunities to enhance their own and others’ health, safety, wellbeing
  • Contribute to healthy and active communities
  • Development of the skills they require to make healthy, safe and active choices
  • Connect to natural and built environments to promote the health and wellbeing of their communities
  • Use resources for the benefit of themselves and for the communities with which they identify and to which they belong
  • Strategies to minimise risk
  • Enhancing safety
  • Develop communication skills
  • Opportunities to develop skills, self-efficacy and dispositions to advocate for, and positively influence their own and others’ health and wellbeing

English

  • Opportunities to create confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens
  • Interacting with others
  • Development of the skills to analyse, understand, communicate with and build relationships with others and with the world around them
  • Texts in context
  • Discussion topics that challenge and develop ethical, thoughtful, informed and active members of society
  • Opportunities to practise effective communication strategies

Technologies

  • Design and Technologies processes and production skills
  • Opportunities to generate, develop, test and communicate design ideas, plans and processes for various audiences using appropriate technical terms and technologies including graphical representation techniques
  • Document and communicate the generation and development of design ideas for an intended audience

General capabilities

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability

  • Opportunities to use, develop and communicate with ICT
  • Creating with ICT
  • Development of the ability to appropriately access, create and communicate information and ideas, solve problems and work collaboratively.

Critical and creative thinking

  • Generate and evaluate knowledge
  • Clarify concepts and ideas
  • Seek possibilities
  • Consider alternatives and solve problems
  • Use skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school.

Personal and social capability

  • How and when to assist others
  • Showing respect for and understanding others’ perspectives, emotional states and needs
  • Recognise and regulating emotions
  • Learn how to negotiate and communicate effectively with others
  • Develop empathy for others and understanding relationships
  • Establishing and building positive relationships
  • Making responsible decisions
  • Working effectively in teams
  • Handling challenging situations constructively
  • Development of leadership skills

Ethical understanding

  • Opportunities to develop an awareness of the influence that their values and behaviour have on others
  • Identify and investigate the nature of ethical concepts
  • Enhance the ability to navigate a world of competing values, rights, interests and norms

Intercultural understanding

  • Reflect on how to value their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others
  • Ways that recognise commonalities and differences, create connections with others and cultivate mutual respect