Is It Necessary To Have A Curriculum Program In A Centre

A "curriculum plan" has to provide details of the experiences and events the children will be engaged in throughout the day, where the experience has come from (input keys) and links to the EYLF (learning outcomes). The way the curriculum plan is designed differs depending on how the educators want to set this particular information out based upon the formats they use. As long as the experiences are linked to the EYLF and shows clearly where the experience has originated from then it doesn't matter what format you are using.

No, not all experiences must be planned before hand to be added onto the weekly curriculum plan. There will be some experiences they may pop up during the day based upon what a child has simply asked for, something a child showed an interest in or something different you just want to do with the children. If this is the case these experiences are spontaneous and should be added to the curriculum plan as they arise. If from these spontaneous experiences further experiences can develop, then it’s a good idea to pre-plan these for the following week. The whole reason of having pre-planned experiences is to developed children children's interest and extend on their learning further. Also, there may be times where we wont be able to get all the resources we need for a particular experience so pre=planning this gives educators time to get what they require.

Hope this makes sense,

I'd be more than happy to answer any more questions you may have,

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L.A

Thank you. I know every centre documents in different ways and what works best for them but im just struggling to see if we should have a curriculum plan in every room or just work and develop from our learning experiences we are recording in the daily journal? Is the daily journal enough for documentation or do I need to show more clearer evidence of planning?
Thanking you

I get what you're saying...

Even though you are writing these experiences into the daily journal you still need a separate document to show "clearer evident of learning" (nicely put! ) on the experiences you are providing. Not everything is going to come from the daily journal and it can get really confusing... The experiences planned or unplanned needs to be added onto a separate document. This also enables families, assessors and educators to clearly understand the planning process.

If you haven"t already you can check out our EYLF templates:

Online Tools

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L.A

Thank you for your feedback, greatly appreciated! It's paperwork overload I'm worried about with staff!! don't want every1 to feel like work is one piece of paperwork after another!

I completely understand what you mean but if the paperwork is simple and easy to do then it wont feel like such an overload. Paperwork needs to be done... As long as it's done effectively and efficiently then it's part of the necessary documentation required for NQS... No matter what, paperwork is something that we all have to do.

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L.A

A plan should be available for educators and parents to look at so understand what experiences will be happening throughout the week.

I have found I leave a blank area in my plans to then write in spontaneous activities that occur throughout the week.

I tend to encourage staff to do a weekly plan rather than a monthly one given that experiences change so quickly with young ones and the learn so quickly + with a plan I find staff much better equipped to deal with the week as they are prepared for it and not "winging" it which can mean then there are dead periods while staff run around trying to arrange activities as they have not planned for and then the children start losing interest and mucking about!

Another benefit is any new/casual staff can come in and know what is happening in the room learning-wise without having too much conversation with the staff in the room as when a new person comes in unexpectly it is sometimes hard to stop what you are doing with the children to tell them what to do with the children!!!