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The Mathematics program at Red Hill School provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. We aim to develop the numeracy capabilities that all students need in their personal, work and civic life, and provide the fundamentals on which mathematical specialties and professional applications of mathematics are built. Teachers use the content descriptions from The Australian Curriculum to guide the selection of 'what to teach when'. These year level statements describe the knowledge, skills, concepts and processes that teachers are expected to teach and students are expected to learn. The content descriptions are intended to ensure that learning is appropriately ordered and that unnecessary repetition is avoided. However, a concept or skill introduced at one year level may be revisited, strengthened and extended in later years as needed.
Based on our knowledge of how students best learn mathematics, we use a Balanced Numeracy approach. This framework includes 5-10 minute warm up activities, whole class explicit teaching, differentiated group work and whole class reflection. Within all Maths lessons are opportunities for students to construct meaning from direct experiences by using manipulatives and conversation. In the early years, The Count Me in Too Program forms the basis of these learning experiences in number. Students then transfer meaning into signs and symbols. This is where teachers connect the notation system with the concrete objects and associated mathematical processes. Teachers then plan authentic activities in which students independently select and use appropriate symbolic notation to processes to record their thinking.