As a primary teacher in NSW your selection of content should stem from the stage outcomes in the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standard’s  (BOSTES) syllabus documents.
Regular stage planning days for teachers held at GEPS assist in ensuring common expectations across classes for the core content to be covered.  In selecting the day-to-day content and tasks for your students, you need to consider the following principles:

1. Tasks should reflect high expectations and increasing levels of challenge

Both teachers and students have a specific role to play in the development of meaningful tasks, and in ensuring their success in enhancing learning (City et al.; Halbert & Kaser; Hattie). Teachers must ensure tasks reflect high expectations and that these are made explicit to students (Halbert & Kaser; Siraj & Taggart). They should also provide students with increasing levels of challenge as well as opportunities to grapple with difficult concepts.

Tasks also need to be flexible and adaptive so that teachers can engineer them to meet individual student need (Luke & Freebody; Goss et al.; Siraj & Taggart). Task design that includes appropriate scaffolding and differentiation is used to ensure the success of all students.

2. Tasks should motivate and interest students and be connected to their prior learning

Students must be able to access tasks at their point of need. This requires that teachers take into consideration, and build on, students' prior knowledge, skill and understanding.

Vygotsky (cited in Gredler) highlights this point saying that if learning is to occur the task must be in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), that is, set at just the right level of challenge. Effective tasks also enable students to make meaningful connections and improve the quality of their work through feedback (Luke & Freebody; Hattie; William).

Research by Munns and Woodward using the REAL framework focuses on engagement through authentic learning. They draw a distinction between procedural and substantive forms of engagement. For authentic engagement to occur classroom learning tasks and experiences need to be high cognitive, high affective and high operative. They also need to include opportunities for deep reflection and self-assessment.

3. Tasks should develop deep understanding
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Learning tasks must require students to think deeply, logically and evaluate evidence in order to make progress. Meaningful tasks also allow for creativity, innovation and problem solving and draw upon a range of learning areas (Edwards-Groves et al).

Research indicates that learning tasks developed purely for 'mile-wide but inch deep' curriculum coverage are not effective (Vygotsky cited in Gredler; Ritchhart et al.). Rather the task should relate to the learning focus (Hattie; Wiliam), and should be designed to promote student thinking about 'big-picture' concepts (Halbert & Kaser). Research variously describes this type of multi-layered thinking as 'surface, deep and conceptual' (Hattie); and 'understanding-focused' (Ritchhart et al.).
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