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Approaches to planning

There are many different ways to plan programmes. Effective teachers choose the planning approach that best suits their school and their students’ needs. The 'possible approaches to planning' listed below suggest appropriate approaches rather than prescribed content. There is no prescription.

The sections on the key competencies, values and principles described on pages 9-13 of The New Zealand Curriculum are the essential broad curriculum requirements that you need to address when designing your school’s senior legal studies programme.

Planning for the time available

Consider how much time you and your students have. The senior school year is, realistically, just three and a third terms (32–33 weeks). Once the time for the impact of exams, sports days, and various other occurrences in the school year is accounted for, it is likely that most of us will have somewhere between 115 and 120 hours available for a programme. That will be supplemented by student work out of class time, but remember that the students will be managing the demands of their whole academic programme with sports, employment, and social demands on top of academic work.

The usual structure for legal studies is a three-year programme, but each of the approaches below could also be used to plan a one-year course, a two-year course, or a module within a one-semester programme as well as a three-year sequential programme.

Year planner

A year planner is important for both teacher and student. This should outline:

  • when modules of work will start and end
  • when assessments are due or the final date for gathering evidence
  • how the work plan fits around inevitable interruptions to the school year
  • the possible dates for field trips, visiting speakers, and so on.

Unit planning

When planning a unit, consideration should be given to:

  • values to be highlighted, and the ways in which students will develop them
  • key competencies to be highlighted, and the ways in which students will develop them
  • the learning objectives
  • the indicators that will contribute towards the learning objectives
  • the contexts to be used to elaborate the indicators
  • the key vocabulary that students will need to understand
  • resources to be used
  • formative and summative assessment
  • enrichment and extension activities.

Last updated August 28, 2012



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