Principle+Three+Outline

3. Students' needs, backgrounds, perspectives and interests are reflected in the learning program
A range of strategies is used to monitor and respond to students' different learning needs, social needs, and cultural perspectives. Students' lives and interests are reflected in the learning sequences. A variety of teaching strategies are used to accommodate the range of abilities and interests, and to encourage diversity and autonomy.

3.1 Teaching strategies are flexible and responsive to the values, needs and interests of individual students
This component acknowledges that the classroom should be an interesting place and suited to a wide range of dispositions. Learning may involve a negotiation between prior views and knowledge and public knowledge found in the curriculum. A range of student competencies and potential for future learning may be untapped in classrooms. This component emphasises the need to provide opportunities for these to be displayed. __This component is demonstrated by teachers:__ __The component is NOT demonstrated when:__
 * Regularly using popular media such as magazines and television, or popular fiction to introduce or challenge ideas
 * Using students' personal interests (sports, hobbies) and social/ethical concerns as the context of topics, or to link with social relevance of the learning and issues
 * Using classroom strategies that acknowledge gender, personal and religious differences
 * Encouraging students to respect the rights of others to hold differing views
 * Valuing and building on the perspectives and experiences students bring to the classroom
 * Creating an environment of encouragement for students to contribute personal stories to class discussion
 * Providing a stimulating classroom environment that generates active interest in topics.
 * The focus of a unit is purely on formal knowledge, with few connections made to daily life applications
 * Applicability of ideas are discussed, but they do not refer to the sort of situation students would normally be concerned about in their lives
 * The focus of the unit is based on a single view of the topic
 * Knowledge is presented in a sequence that represents the structured discipline view of the material, rather than the connections that might be made with student interests and prior knowledge.

3.2 The teacher utilises a range of teaching strategies that support different ways of thinking and learning
This component refers to different ways students might approach learning, their different abilities and strengths, or their different perspectives on themselves as learners. It also refers to the variety of ways ideas are represented and the need to approach and demonstrate learning using different media and representational modes. The component implies the use of diverse approaches to allow students to experience diverse ways of learning and knowing, and targeted support for individuals, based on teacher monitoring. __This component is demonstrated by teachers:__ __The component is NOT demonstrated when:__
 * Varying the structure and delivery mode across a range of teaching sessions
 * Providing for a range of learning styles or modalities within teaching sessions and from one teaching session to another in terms of both teacher input and student learning experiences
 * Helping students to understand their own specific learning needs and providing choice to cater for the range of those needs
 * Setting a variety of types of tasks during each unit and using a range of resources eg. print, visual, aural, experiential.
 * Providing variations in tasks to allow student choice on mode of presentation or type of approach (e.g. using Bloom's taxonomy, Gardner's multiple intelligences and other higher order thinking tools to ensure variety)
 * Ensuring each task has an open ended aspect that allows students to work at different levels and paces
 * Arranging for time in each teaching session to give individual support to students in need of particular attention
 * Providing opportunities to use a range of multimodal communications as they are used in the community
 * The unit is structured with the 'average' student in mind
 * All students cover the same material with few opportunities for varied work
 * There is little variation in the teaching strategies used in any unit
 * There is little variation in the resources used eg. reliance on written texts
 * Each teaching session has a similar structure
 * There is the same balance between student and teacher voice in each teaching session
 * All teaching sessions are based on activities with instructions and involve students negotiating what they do in the same way.

3.3 The teacher builds on students' prior experiences, knowledge and skills
Contemporary learning theories emphasise the importance of prior knowledge and beliefs in framing learning. This component emphasises the need to explore and monitor, and build on students' prior learning. This exploration is important for students also, to support their own understandings of their learning. __This component is demonstrated by teachers:__ __The component is NOT demonstrated when:__ No attention is paid to bridging between everyday and expert language.
 * Actively seeking to establish students knowledge, beliefs and skills as part of planning
 * Utilising students' particular strengths and experience in supporting learning
 * Building on students' prior learning, that may have taken place outside the school bounds
 * Explicitly linking new ideas with the language and perspectives students' bring to the classroom.
 * Planning assumes students' prior experience and knowledge is immaterial, and probing of prior knowledge is not explicitly planned
 * Student opinion is not canvassed

3.4 The teacher capitalises on students' experience of a technology rich world
Students come to classrooms with a variety of experiences of and expertise in contemporary technologies. This component encourages the exploration with students of their interest and expertise and the meaning they assign to technological communication, design and representation. It is about enlisting students' capabilities and interests associated with contemporary technologies. __This component is demonstrated by teachers:__ __The component is NOT demonstrated when:__
 * Incorporating contemporary technologies into learning sequences in ways that are meaningful for students
 * Planning to acknowledge a diversity of student technological expertise and to take advantage of particular student expertise to support learning
 * Talking about the purpose of texts, how they work and how meaning is organised, drawing examples from a variety of contemporary media and texts (websites, newspapers, TV commercials, films, magazines, lyrics, journals, video clips, online games and chat)
 * Teachers do not incorporate contemporary technologies in ways that take advantage of students' interests and experience
 * Teachers do not acknowledge students' capacity to engage with technologies at a high level.
 * Teachers refer to and teach only traditional print literacies.