Numeracy

Numeracy is taught every day at Southern Cross Primary School, in both explicit sessions and integrated into all other classes. Our focus is to develop our student's critical thinking and problem solving skills, through real world and hands on problems.

As outlined in the Victorian Curriculum, Mathematics is a key concept which encompasses the three subheadings; Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability. Numeracy at Southern Cross Primary School is a core concept which is drawn upon and referenced regularly across the school day.

We aim to make mathematics meaningful and relevant to all of our students by linking our tasks to real world situations and providing a wide range of open ended tasks to cater for all students’ working levels. This allows them to work at a pace in which they feel comfortable, while challenging their own skills and perceptions. We believe maths should be fun and aim to ensure we use hands on activities and mathematical games, wherever possible, in order to clarify concepts and practise skills.

SCPS Numeracy Instructional Model

Launch - the launch involves either a review of previously taught content, a number talk to encourage curiosity and making connections, playing a game with a partner or group or responding to a carefully selected scenario.  Here teachers promote discussion between students, connection between concepts and curiosity through exploration.

Explicit Instruction - a systematic approach including direct instruction related to a mathematical skill.  During explicit instruction, teachers ensure to use real life experiences for the students and teach at point of need.  This phase of the lesson includes learning goals and success criteria, identifying key vocabulary to be learned, development of an anchor chart and connection to prior learning.

Exploration -  the students work on differentiated learning tasks with the teacher providing support using guided questions and enabling or extending prompts in order for the student to engage in the task successfully.  Throughout mathematical instruction and exploration, the students are supported to enhance their mathematical understanding through three stages of representation.  

• Concrete - students use concrete objects to model problems, such as counters or MAB blocks.  For example, 1 student has 3 apples, the other has 2, how many apples do they have altogether?  A student may get 3 counters and then 2 more to work out the answer.
• Representation - also referred to as the "seeing stage", this is where students represent the objects in various forms, such as drawing lines or dots, or circles on paper to form groups.  In the above example, a student may draw 1 person with 3 apples and another person with 2 apples to work out the answer.
• Abstract - this symbolic stage uses symbols to model problems, such as 3 + 2 = 5.  This can be done mentally or in written format.

Reflection - the teacher models and provides opportunity for self assessment linking back to the learning goal and success criteria.  The students are supported to articulate their mathematical thinking, draw on connections with prior learning and reflect on their understanding.