Curriculum levels

Questions for reflection and response

1. Understanding the Experiences and Outcomes

• How do the draft experiences and outcomes build upon your current practice?
• What learning and teaching activities do they suggest to you?
• How could the four capacities be developed through the experiences and outcomes?
• How could the principles of Curriculum for Excellence be developed through the experiences and outcomes?
• How can you ensure that young people understand the relevance of the experiences and outcomes to their lives?
• Which draft experiences and outcomes could be combined to provide a coherent experience for learners?
• Are there any specific experiences and outcomes that you feel would benefit from further elaboration to clarify expectations?
• How can the experiences and outcomes be used to meet the different needs of learners?

2. Progression

• Within the various draft experiences and outcomes, which words, concepts or contexts indicate the progression from one level to the next?
• What are the prior knowledge, experiences and skills can be built upon?
• How appropriate do you consider the gradient of progression across all levels to be?
• What opportunities can you see for providing rich and challenging experiences for all learners, including those who may require additional support to help them to achieve a level?
• What types of evidence could you gather to show where young people have reached on their journey through the experiences and outcomes and how could this be recorded?

3. Collaboration

• How could you collaborate with colleagues within your school or centre to develop relevant cross-curricular projects relating to language and culture?
• In what ways will a leadership role, by yourselves and others, be needed to take these experiences and outcomes forward?

4. Current practice

• How do we help learners to understand clearly what they are trying to learn, and what is expected of them?
• How do we give learners feedback about the quality of their work and how do we involve them fully in recognising how to go about making improvements?
• Where have we given learners opportunities to work together and communicate with each other in motivating and relevant ways?
• What use have we made of ICT and links with other centres, schools, colleges or the wider community?
• Which tasks have been most successful in integrating different skills relevantly and realistically for the learner?