Australian Curriculum Overview
English
In Year 1, students learn that language is communicated in ways that meet the needs of diverse learners. They learn to interact with familiar audiences for different purposes.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts. Texts may include picture books, various types of stories, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, various types of information texts, short films and animations and dramatic performances.
Students develop their reading in a text-rich environment through engagement with a range of texts. This range includes literature that expands and reflects their world and texts that support learning in English and across the curriculum.
Year 1 students create short texts whose purposes may be imaginative, informative and persuasive. These texts may explain simple procedures, recount real or imagined events or experiences, report and describe learning area content, retell stories, express opinions, and describe real or imagined people, places or things for an audience.
Mathematics
In Year 1, learning in Mathematics builds on each student's prior learning and experiences. Students engage in a range of approaches to learning and doing mathematics that develop their understanding of and fluency with concepts, procedures and processes by making connections, reasoning, problem-solving and practice.
Students further develop proficiency and positive dispositions towards mathematics and its use as they:
- use their curiosity and imagination to explore situations, recognise patterns in their environment and choose ways of representing their thinking when communicating with others
- demonstrate that numbers can be represented, partitioned and composed in various ways, recognise patterns in numbers and extend their knowledge of numbers beyond 2 digits
- use physical or virtual materials and diagrams when modelling practical problems through active learning experiences, recognise existing patterns, employ different strategies and discuss the reasonableness of answers
- explain ways of making direct and indirect comparisons and begin to use uniform, informal units to measure some attributes
- reason spatially and use spatial features to classify shapes and objects; they recognise these shapes and objects in their environment and use simple transformations, directions and pathways to move the positions of shapes and objects within a space
- use simple surveys to collect and sort data, based on a question of interest, recognise that data can be represented in different ways, and explain patterns that they see in the results
- develop a sense of equivalence, fairness, repetition and variability when they engage in play-based and practical activities
Science
In Year 1, students infer simple cause-and-effect relationships from their observations and experiences, and begin to link events and phenomena with observable effects and to ask questions. They observe changes that can be large or small and happen quickly or slowly. They explore the properties of familiar objects and phenomena, identifying similarities and differences. Students begin to value counting as a means of comparing observations, and are introduced to ways of organising their observations.
HASS
The Year 1 curriculum provides a study of the recent past, the present and the near future within the context of the student's own world. Students are given opportunities to explore how changes occur over time in relation to themselves, their own families, and the places they and others belong to. They examine their daily family life and how it is the same as and different to previous generations. They investigate their place and other places, their natural, managed and constructed features, and the activities located in them. They explore daily and seasonal weather patterns and how different groups describe them. They anticipate near future events such as personal milestones and seasons. The idea of active citizenship is introduced as students explore family roles and responsibilities and ways people care for places.
Health and Physical Education
The curriculum for Years 1 and 2 builds on the learning from Foundation and supports students to make decisions to enhance their health, safety and participation in physical activity. The content enables students to explore their own sense of self and the factors that contribute to and influence their identities. Students learn about emotions, how to enhance their interactions with others, and the physical and social changes they go through as they grow older.
The content explores health messages and how they relate to health decisions and behaviours and examines strategies students can use when they need help. The content also provides opportunities for students to learn through movement. It supports them in broadening the range and complexity of fundamental movement skills they are able to perform. They learn how to select, transfer and apply simple movement skills and sequences individually, in groups and in teams.