Numeracy

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. It develops the numeracy capabilities that all students need in their personal, work and civic life, and provides the fundamentals on which mathematical specialties and professional applications of mathematics are built.

The Australian Curriculum places a very heavy focus on deep-level understanding and mathematical reasoning. This means that students can no longer simply answer routine mathematical questions that look exactly the same as those they have seen before. These type of questions do not require deep-level understanding, logical reasoning, problem-solving or analytical thinking.

We focus on developing increasingly sophisticated and refined mathematical understanding, fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These proficiencies enable students to respond to familiar and unfamiliar situations by employing mathematical strategies to make informed decisions and solve problems efficiently.

The Hannans Way – Our shared vision regarding mathematics:

Hannans Primary School implements and uses the Back to Front Maths teaching approach. In this approach, students:

Start by experimenting with unfamiliar concepts to develop new ideas. This process also guides the teacher to uncover and confront misconceptions.
Students explore their new ideas and connect them with more familiar mathematical concepts.
Students formalise their findings into mathematical principles, including algorithms and formulae.
Students extend and generalise the new mathematical principles that they have learned to other areas of the curriculum.
If we want students to succeed we must figure out what their misconceptions are and target them directly.