Curriculum

 

Synopsis of BMS Curriculum

 

‘Capacity-building for Independence,

 

Maximum Participation& Quality of Life’

 

The BMS Functional Curriculum aims to build student capacity for participation in society with independence and quality of life. It was written in 2007 in response to the ACTDET curriculum initiative Every Chance To Learn (2005), the priorities of the BMS School Plan (2006-2008) and feedback from the school’s parent body.

 

Consistent with strong support of evidence-based practice by ACTDET’s CEO (Bruniges 2007), as well as the School Excellence Initiative and other ACTDET initiatives promoting evidence-based practice, the underpinning principles of the curriculum framework are drawn from empirical evidence related to the effective instruction and typical learning characteristics of Black Mountain School students.

 

The BMS Curriculum is the overarching framework that integrates all the school’s processes from the creation of the Personal Futures Plan to the development of each student’s personalised curriculum. These processes have been developed by the School Review and Development (SRD) teams and the Curriculum Writing Team as part of the BMS School Plan 2006-2008 e.g. the Personal Futures Plan and revised ILP Guidelines. The curriculum is therefore the outcome and vehicle of key aspects of the BMS School Plan 2006-2008.

 

The BMS curriculum seeks to enable our students by providing a framework that:

 

  • teaches functional skills
  • is consistent with evidence-based curriculum practice
  • is capacity-building
  • facilitates a personalised curriculum through the ILP process
  • provides catalogues of information relevant to the ILP process
  • is challenging and reflects high expectations
  • enhances support for teachers & parents, and
  • promotes evidence-based pedagogy

 

A key tenet of the curriculum’s philosophy is capacity-building rather than deficit finding. The curriculum aims to build capacity for independence, maximum participation and quality of life. This is a very positive way of stating what the school is striving to achieve for its students.

 

BMS Curriculum outcomes are called capacities. By its very nature this term reinforces the curriculum’s philosophy of capacity-building and further reinforces this philosophy by assisting differentiation of the function of a curriculum outcome (capacity) from the strategies used to achieve it.

 

The curriculum’s content reflects high expectations of our students through the process used to select the capacities, to facilitate the selection of high priority / high yield outcomes for all students, and is inclusive of all students ranging from those with high support needs, as well as those students who are working toward achieving Certificate I courses.