Schools plan their curriculum and assessment programs to ensure what is taught informs how it is taught, how students are assessed, and how progress and learning is reported.
Exemplars based on previous versions of the Australian Curriculum can be accessed through the planning resources page.
The cognitive verb overviews support teachers and school leaders in the explicit teaching of thinking. The overviews highlight the most common cognitive verbs used across learning areas in the Australian Curriculum.
Note: These cognitive verb overviews are for use with the P–10 Australian Curriculum. The cognitive verbs glossary for Years 11–12 students is available under the Teaching tab for each subject in the senior secondary section.
The cognitive verbs are categorised using Marzano and Kendall's four levels of cognitive process: retrieval, comprehension, analysis and knowledge utilisation (2007).
Integrating learning areas involves curriculum and assessment planning that draws on two or three subjects within a learning area, or planning across multiple learning areas or subjects.
Techniques and conditions provide advice that supports teachers to develop a range and balance within an assessment program. A range and balance of assessment gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills across a year or band of years.
Judgments about evidence of student learning are made against the Australian Curriculum achievement standard, which represents the C standard (or equivalent).
Teachers make judgments about the evidence in student work using task-specific standards that contribute to a planned assessment folio containing evidence of student learning. Teachers can use the standards elaborations to create task-specific standards for making judgments about student work.
The QCAA has developed standards elaborations from the Australian Curriculum achievement standards. The standards elaborations provide teachers with a tool for making consistent, comparable and defensible judgments about how well, on a five-point scale, students have demonstrated what they know, understand and can do.
The standards elaborations can be used to:
- align curriculum, assessment and reporting
- develop task-specific standards (marking guides)
- make consistent, comparable and defensible judgments on a five-point scale, based on evidence of learning in an individual assessment or a folio of student work.
The QCAA has developed sample assessments in partnership with Queensland schools to provide illustrations of the use of the achievement standards in making judgments about student work.
Quality assurance processes enable schools and teachers to develop a shared understanding of the expected quality of learning performance.
Moderation of assessment is a process whereby teachers engage in focused professional conversations to share their observations and judgments. They do so to improve the consistency of their decisions, and to ensure their judgments are as valid, reliable and fair as possible.
Schools are required to provide parents/carers with a report on each student twice a year. In most schools, this takes place at the end of each semester.
Reports should be:
- aligned to the curriculum, assessment and achievement standards
- accurate, defensible and comparable
- individualised and meaningful
- in plain language so they are easy to interpret and understand.
Schooling sectors and/or employing authorities provide advice for schools about reporting requirements.
- Last updated:
- 3 May 2022
