NaCCA explained: strands, sub-strands, content standards and indicators

The NaCCA curriculum uses four words for four levels of detail: strand, sub-strand, content standard and indicator. Every lesson note leans on them, and once you can see how they nest, the whole document reads more easily. Here they are from the widest to the narrowest, with a real example carried all the way down.

Strand

A strand is a big theme in the subject, the largest bucket the curriculum is divided into. In Science you will see strands like Diversity of Matter, Cycles, Systems, and Forces and Energy. A subject usually has a handful per class level, and they stay the same across the year.

Sub-strand

Each strand is broken into sub-strands, the topics inside the theme. Under Diversity of Matter you find Materials, and under Systems you find The Human Body System. The sub-strand is the level most teachers think of as the topic of the week.

Content standard

A content standard states what a learner should know and be able to do by the end of the sub-strand. It is the goal, written broadly enough to cover several lessons. Under Materials, the B7 standard reads "Recognise materials as important resources for providing human needs". That is a destination, not a Tuesday.

Indicator

The indicator is the specific, measurable thing you teach and assess in a lesson. Under that standard sits "Classify materials into liquids, solids and gases". Narrow enough to plan a period around and to check at the end. When a lesson note cites an indicator, this is the level it is pointing at.

Exemplars sit underneath the indicator

Each indicator comes with numbered exemplars, the curriculum's own sample activities. They are suggestions, not a script, and they are where the curriculum shows you what it means. For the indicator above, exemplar 1 is "create and complete a table to record the texture, appearance, colour and shape of a group of materials assembled from the environment".

The exemplars also carry the core competency references for the lesson, which is where a note's Core Competencies field gets its values from.

Reading a code like B7.1.1.1.1

The dotted code is those levels stacked left to right. Read B7.1.1.1.1 as: B7 is the class, Basic 7. Then 1 is the strand, 1 the sub-strand, 1 the content standard, and the last 1 the indicator within it. The code walks you from a class down to a single learning point, one segment at a time.

You will also see it written B7/JHS1.1.1.1.1 in the curriculum documents themselves, which name the class both ways. Notes normally use the short form.

The same code means different things in different subjects

This is the part that catches people, and it is why a code copied from the wrong subject looks plausible and still fails vetting. B7.1.1.1.1 is a valid code in every subject, and it points somewhere different in each one:

B7.1.1.1.1 in Science

• Strand 1: Diversity of Matter
• Sub-strand 1: Materials
• Indicator: classify materials into liquids, solids and gases

B7.1.1.1.1 in Mathematics

• Strand 1: Number
• Sub-strand 1: Number and Numeration Systems
• Indicator: model number quantities more than 1,000,000,000 using graph sheets, isometric papers and multi-base blocks

B7.1.1.1.1 in English Language

• Strand 1: Oral Language (Listening and Speaking)
• Sub-strand 1: Conversation and Everyday Discourse
• Indicator: use appropriate register in everyday communication with diverse partners

How much of it there is

Across the fourteen subject curricula from Basic 1 to Basic 9, this structure holds 406 strands, 1,276 sub-strands, 1,802 content standards, 4,166 indicators and 12,505 exemplars. That is the whole map a weekly note draws one line from.

There's no API for any of it, so we transcribed it, subject by subject, from the official documents. When you draft in teache, the codes come from that same map, so they resolve to a real strand, sub-strand and standard by default. Every weekly lesson note is built on one, and getting the codes right is where most vetting rejections happen.