Karena Loomes is looking to make a big impact on the lives of her students in her new role as Head of Curriculum for Port Douglas State School.

Ms Loomes, who is acting principal in the absence of Julia Brant, has travelled widely throughout her career, having taught in almost all state and territories through Australia, including some very remote areas in Western Australia and NSW.

She has also worked closely with teachers in professional development, and as a literacy coach.

"The literacy coach position I loved and that involved lots of planning with teachers, doing demonstration lessons for teachers, observing teachers implementing lessons, and then giving them feedback," she said.

Ms Loomes said she will draw from her experience, and will maintain a level of flexibility with the introduction of the new national curriculum.

"I appreciate the national curriculum because moving state to state, the education system in each state can be quite varied.

"I've seen many ways that teachers teach, and being a literacy coach observing teachers all the time you pick up so many fabulous teaching ideas that I like to share with other teachers so they can be more effective in the class room.

"My main focus will be on the national curriculum, so this is new to our teachers.

"A big focus on the national curriculum is differentiation, catering for all different abilities within each lesson and within the whole unit. The Australian curriculum is a guide and we adapt and adopt that guide to suite our context here at Port Douglas."

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Ms Loomes said the school will be using "explicit teaching" techniques in their lessons.

"(Teachers will be) Sharing the purpose of the lesson with the kids. It's 'I do' so the teacher demonstrates, then 'we do' which is guided practice that the kids and the teacher do together, and the it's 'you do' which is the independent practice.

"We'll be giving feedback, letting the kids know how they've gone. That will be our main teaching strategy focus at this school."

Ms Loomes has been impressed with the facilities of the school, saying they are streets ahead of other schools she has worked at.

"The new resource centre is fabulous, that's all wireless networked. There are smart boards and data projectors in each room. In my two previous schools we didn't have that in each room.

"And because of the new curriculum, each teacher works from their laptop on the smart boards and that's the way it's going now.

"Even the environment, we've got the beautiful butterfly garden here, it's just so peaceful."