Question 4
BOS Materials

The board of studies provides the following materials for the Visual Arts
– Past HSC examination papers and notes from the marking centre 1995-2005
– HSC Assessment policies and documents for teachers and students
– HSC Syllabus documents
– School Certificate information
– NSW Revised Visual arts Syllabuses For k–12
– Stage 5 Visual Arts Performance Descriptors
– Guides to the Years 7–1O Visual Arts Syllabuses
– Advice on programming and Assessment
– Life Skills Outcomes worksheet
– HSC Exam Timetables
– Examples for assessing for learning
– Visual Arts Support Documents
– Search engine for visual arts articles, topics, texts and points of interest.
– Links to other Visual Arts resources
All of the above material can be located and downloaded from the board of studies web site @ http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/
Once in the site there are several avenues to find the Above Visual Arts material.
On the site tool bar;
– The Website Index which allows you to click a letter in the alphabet to find related areas, V for Visual Arts, T for Textbooks! Etc.
– A “links” link to find other related sites
– A Search link that allows you to type in words associated with Visual Arts

On the left hand side of the web page there are links to HSC exam Papers, HSC syllabuses, School certificate Information, NSW syllabuses and Manuals and guides.

On the right hand side of the page there is a link to shop online where you can search for and buy audio cd, audio tape, CD–ROM, mixed media, print and video relating to Visual Arts.

All of the above material can be used for inspiration, learning and understanding the particulars of the Visual Arts Curriculum.

The Visual Arts Syllabus presents an in-depth and thorough understanding of the curriculum in that it is designed to provide educational opportunities that engage and empower students and to have a continuity and coherence of learning between primary and secondary schooling.
The syllabus helps programming lessons in the following ways:

– It organizes Visual Arts content into three main areas that are helpful in designing a lesson in that each lesson must contain these elements.
1. Practice –art making
2. The Conceptual Frame –identifies the relationships the intentions of the artist and the relationship the artwork has to the world and audiences.
3. The Frames–Give meaning and are the instrument for generating different understandings of the function of and relationships between the artist–artwork– world– audience.

– The syllabus outlines the scope or work units of visual arts for a particular stage providing me a guideline or scaffold to use in creating a sequence of learning or lessons that relate to the schools life and the life of the students.

– It is used to develop my teaching program in outlining what I cover, what is required to be covered in the stage and how I cover it.

– The syllabus can be used to divide outcomes into an hourly schedule for four terms to allow the right amount of time to achieve the outcomes for stage.

– It allows my teaching program to be flexible and changeable enough to modify it in response to student feedback.

– The syllabus allows me to see the learning sequence and development of a students learning from K-12 from which i can create a taxonomy for each stage. For instance a stage 5 or electives visual arts student would be expected to show a higher level of creative or critically reflective thinking than a stage 4 student therefore I would scale the taxonomy to meet the age and stage of the students.

– The syllabus can be used to create an assessment rubric for learning that reflects the outcomes needed to cover in a given stage.

– It can be used to create a critically reflective teachers assessment rubric that reflects on how I have managed the scope and sequence of a stage in achieving the outcomes.