Assessment Task 1 - Curriculum Development
Curriculum Informed Statement
This coherent plan for Units 3 & 4 has been created for 2027 VCD on the basis of ensuring adequate time is allocated for completing the triage of assessment tasks throughout the year - the SAT tasks contributing to 20%, the folio SAC assessment and lastly, exam preparation. With the end goal being to minimise students running out of time to produce high quality final pieces, given this is typically the main concern when choosing a folio subject in Units 3 & 4 for students. This way teachers can focus entirely on implementing an achievable and effective plan that does not contribute to stress in their final year - ensuring the Year 12 students are at the centre of every teaching decision.
This will ultimately be dependent on following the scheduled timeline, keeping students on track, closely monitoring their folio progress, and holding them accountable to each assessed component due date throughout the year (18 Jun, ~20 Aug, ~17 Sep).
The main consideration as the teacher, to implement this plan effectively is actively engaging in each students’ folio ideas and providing the right inspiration to foster creativity and spark ideas early in the process. Throughout the explicit teaching phase of each stage of the design process - it will be crucial to cater to all students and provide various levels of inspiration. This is where knowing your students and differentiating based on their needs’ and design style becomes extremely important. By emphasising their divergent thinking, this could be showing past student examples, various professional works, and displaying a range of mediums that could be considered for their solution. The main goal here is for students to develop the design needs they wish to solve.
The Folio
Throughout the completion of their folio, students will work fairly autonomously. Although by displaying a Relational pedagogical approach, the Unit Planner will be implemented with guidance once explicit teaching of each design process stage is carried out. Morgan et al. 's (2015) observation that meaningful encounters with students ‘involves building relationships of trust and safety that support the development of social and emotional foundations’ signals a useful prompt toward a relational practice. Aspelin and Eklöf (2022) also echoed that ‘positive and supportive relationships between teachers and students are crucial to students’ academic and socio-emotional development’.
I believe this is truly what will be the most effective pedagogical approach as a Unit 3 & 4 teacher guiding students while leaning on the relationship that has been formed.
Completion of their SAT (School-assessed Task) is worth 50% of the students’ overall mark (based on U3 Outcome 3 and U4 Outcomes 1 & 2), hence why the majority of the year is dedicated to this component. While being introduced in week 3 of Term 2 (26 – 30 Apr), the final folio is then required to be completed and handed in by week 10 (13 – 17 Sep). Providing students with a total of 20 weeks to complete this SAT.
Resources
Requiring a large volume of physical and digital work, students will evidently require access to their digital devices, printers and Adobe softwares to carry this out to a satisfactory standard. Therefore as the teacher it is my responsibility to ensure every student has access to the adequate resources before commencing the folio.
Exam Revision
An extremely key component of the planner in Unit 4 specifically, is ensuring exam revision isn’t abandoned. As the theory component of VCD can become neglected when the creative work is the passion, and is largely the students’ focus. Building this into the planner with the appropriate time dedicated, is a non negotiable for a Unit 3 & 4 teacher to achieve adequate results from the class. Consolidating confidence with their content knowledge and ensuring they can design based on the standards outlined in the study design, given this contributes to 30% of their final overall mark.
Using trusted resources such as Target Learning to guide lessons that focus on technical drawing conventions, orthogonal drawings, design elements and principles etc, given these processes must be taught specifically clearly. Based on VCAA’s guidelines, ensuring they can visualise what the expected standard looks like. Along with integrating effective revision strategies, in the form of worked examples, practice exam questions and explicit teaching of vocabulary in those 3 set weeks will be crucial to achieving success amongst the class. Using strategies such as reviewing the examiners report from previous years, and understanding the expected quality of answers will give students an exact idea on expectations. In following the teaching model of ‘I do, we do, you do’, activating prior knowledge at the beginning of each lesson, integrating checking for understanding strategies and completing exit tickets, this should be achieved very effectively.
While exam revision is allocated at the completion of their folio, and at the beginning of Term 4 - integrating exam questions throughout each lesson in the lead up is also how I will achieve insights regarding common misconceptions that students need clarification on. This ensures exam revision is more accessible and not as daunting when it comes to the end of the year. This focuses on including checking for understanding strategies, to inform the teacher of “evidence-based instructional decisions” (NSW Government, 2026), and which AOS will require more focus in those final weeks of exam revision.
Pedagogical approaches
Visual Communication Design does not typically require a constructivist pedagogical approach in a large portion of the lesson. However it is necessary to build lessons around a small portion of constructivism to ensure students are able to comprehend the skills and requirements to be successful in dissecting a design need and responding appropriately. It is considered that “many educators appear to have embraced minimally guided instruction and tried to implement it” (Kirschner & Sweller & Clark, 2006). I can definitely understand how in the Arts classroom setting, this can be considered an appropriate method of teaching given students can work with their own level of creativity to generate ideas. However there is also a growing body of research showing that students learn more deeply from strongly guided learning than from discovery (Moreno, 2004), given this eliminates cognitive load and any unnecessary use of time by modelling expectations.
Building trust amongst the students to create an environment for them to succeed in is my goal as a Unit 3 & 4 teacher. As opposed to cultivating a high pressure environment with stress and unclear expectations of what they must know to be successful throughout their Year 12 experience.
Unit 3 & 4 Curriculum Planner
Designed for 2027
Professional Learning Statement
As a pre-service teacher my disciplinary strengths are evolving, and there are gaps in my current abilities as an educator. However I believe my key strength right now is forming genuine relationships and connecting with students authentically to understand their goals in learning and beyond. This skill will build the foundation for how I strive to inspire students each day to explore their creative skill sets and capabilities - as I believe fostering creativity is more important than ever before as a means of students expressing and regulating themselves.
My prior knowledge of inspirational artists and designers in the field to integrate within lessons is something I would like to focus on. Especially within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. I believe being strongly informed would only add to my teacher skills and provide me with the confidence to communicate valuable stories, and insights to present learnings to students. Ensuring Arts subjects can become more relatable and accessible to a wider range of students, given these subjects can occasionally be seen as unfamiliar and therefore students also have limited sources of inspiration.
I believe this will help guide my professional practice, as it will continuously improve the quality of integrated learning materials within my Unit planners and lesson sequences, and therefore contribute to the quality of my teaching and content delivery as I strive to constantly evolve my creative skills too.
Ultimately, if I am creating a safe and inclusive classroom for students, that presents numerous opportunities to feel inspired and explore their potential, still following set routine expectations and procedures - I will be proud of my professional practice.