Curriculum and teaching approach

Every lesson Lesson Plan It offers is built inside a fixed grid of subjects, year-level bands and topics. This page shows that grid, the AC v9 strand each topic sits in, and the content description each offline lesson targets, so you can check our anchoring against the curriculum yourself. We'd encourage you to: the official curriculum lives at australiancurriculum.edu.au.

Bands group year levels the way relief and out-of-field teaching actually works: Foundation to Year 2, Years 3 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, and 9 to 10. Curriculum content is pitched at the class year you select. The offline bank covers Maths, English and Science for Years 3 to 10. Every topic listed also works through the “use your own AI” flow. Foundation to Year 2 lessons are being written and reviewed before they open up.

Our teaching approach

Every lesson teaches the new idea directly first, then gives students a chance to use it. That's the approach Australian school systems now share: the NSW Department of Education, Victoria's Teaching and Learning Model 2.0 and the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) all put explicit teaching at the core, with inquiry and problem-solving built on that foundation.

Our pedagogy in one line:

Explain and model it, practise it together, check, then apply it.

A typical lesson:

1. Retrieve. A short starter that also tells you where the class is up to.
2. Focus. The learning intention and success criteria in student-friendly words.
3. Teach. Explain, model and work at least one example.
4. Practise together. Guided practice with a quick check for understanding.
5. Apply. Independent practice, or a bounded problem, investigation or argument.
6. Check. An exit task that shows whether the intention was met.

We lean explicit-first because our lessons are often taught by someone new to the class, or teaching without a team around them. Explicit teaching holds up best when you can't rely on knowing what students already know.

Sources. Our approach is consistent with AERO's explicit instruction guidance, the NSW Department of Education's Best practice in STEM education and Victoria's Teaching and Learning Model 2.0. We don't claim compliance with any of them.

How levelling works

Same goal, different support. When you set your class's literacy or numeracy level, the learning intention stays at the year level you chose. What changes is the route: more worked examples, sentence starters, shorter steps and less reading for classes that need support; harder thinking, not more work, for classes ready for stretch.

If the class isn't ready. The starter doubles as a quick readiness check. If most students can't do it, the lesson gives you a short on-ramp to the skill they need, and shows you where to rejoin the main task.

The levels borrow the plain language of the national proficiency standards (Strong, Developing, Needs additional support). They describe how a lesson is pitched. They are not NAPLAN results or predictions.

Access needs and inclusion

Why it's there

Every lesson is built to work for most students as written: explicit teaching, worked examples, chunked instructions and regular checks help everyone. But a relief teacher often walks in knowing a class has needs without knowing the detail, and a few small changes to how a lesson runs can make a real difference. The access needs options add those changes to the whole lesson.

What the options are

The options are grouped the way Australian schools group needs for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD). They describe the class, not any one student, and nothing you choose is saved.

A student can have needs in more than one group, and schools decide each student's needs individually, so treat the groups as a guide.

How to use it

1. Check for documented adjustments first. If a student has adjustments from their school, such as a scribe, a hearing system, a communication device or a regulation plan, follow those. Schools often keep them in the staffroom or class notes.
2. Tap the needs that apply to the class. Choose by what students need, not by a diagnosis you may have been told about. Use as many as you need; the lesson weaves the changes through every block.
3. Check with the school if you have no information and a student seems to need more than general measures.

What it isn't

These are general access measures for a class. They are not a student's individual reasonable adjustments, which their school sets with the student and their family or carer, where appropriate, under the Disability Standards for Education 2005. They don't diagnose, label or record anything about a student, and they never lower the year-level content.

Students learning English (EAL/D)

Learning English isn't a disability, so it has its own setting beside the literacy level, not in the access panel. If students in your class are learning English as an additional language or dialect, turn on “Students learning English” next to the literacy level. Lessons then build in talk before writing, key words taught with pictures or objects, sentence frames, and room for students' home languages, while the thinking stays at year level.

We borrow practical ideas from Universal Design for Learning, such as several ways in and several ways to show learning, without claiming outcomes the research hasn't shown.

What we don't do or claim

• We don't sort students by “learning styles”. Written, digital and verbal describe the room you're teaching in, not how students learn.
• We don't use fixed ability groups.
• We don't claim compliance with any state teaching model or curriculum.
• We don't write students' individual adjustment plans, and we don't treat learning English as a disability.
• We don't generate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural content (see below).

Maths

AC v9 Mathematics strands: Number, Algebra, Measurement, Space, Statistics, Probability. Tap a code to see the content description. Codes are in beta while teachers test the lessons in class; if one looks wrong, tell us from the lesson.

English

AC v9 English strands: Language, Literature, Literacy.

Science

Topics sit in the AC v9 Science Understanding sub-strands; every lesson also works Science Inquiry skills through prediction, observation and explanation tasks. Hands-on tasks use everyday materials and always include a safety line.

Foundation to Year 2 topics work through “use your own AI” today; offline lessons for them are on the way.

State and territory coverage

Everything above is anchored to the national Australian Curriculum v9 as published by ACARA. Most states and territories teach directly from it. Three don't: Victoria, NSW and WA each run their own curriculum body with its own codes and achievement standards, only loosely based on AC v9. If you're relieving or out-of-field in one of those three, use Lesson Plan It as a general structure and content guide, and check it against your state's syllabus before you teach it.

Which state we map next will follow where teachers use Lesson Plan It most. Tell us where you teach when you join the founding teachers or send feedback.

This is a general guide to curriculum governance, not legal advice about any specific school's requirements - always check your own state's current syllabus.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures is a cross-curriculum priority. We don't generate cultural content, because that knowledge belongs to communities, and invented or generic material can be wrong or harmful. Lessons leave room for you to draw on local knowledge through your school and community. We plan to add properly sourced material, developed with Indigenous educators, in future.

Attribution

Content descriptions and codes are © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), licensed under CC BY 4.0. The National Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions are also © ACARA under the same licence. Lesson Plan It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by ACARA or any education department. We show content description codes as a guide to what each lesson targets; they are marked beta and are not a statement that a lesson is verified.

Our differentiation levels borrow the plain language of the national proficiency standards (Strong, Developing, Needs additional support) to describe how a lesson is pitched; they are not NAPLAN results, classifications or predictions, and NAPLAN is not affiliated with or endorsing this tool.