At Bayswater Primary School, our goal is for every student to become a confident, fluent and capable mathematician and problem solver.
Our approach to mathematics is informed by research from the Learning Sciences and aligns with the Victorian Department of Education's Mathematics Position Statement and Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0).
We explicitly teach the mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills students need, provide purposeful practice to build fluency, and create rich opportunities for students to apply their learning to increasingly complex problems and unfamiliar situations.
Learning mathematics involves more than being able to get the right answer. We want students to develop a strong understanding of mathematical concepts, become accurate and fluent with important mathematical skills, and learn to reason, problem solve and apply their knowledge in different situations.
Across the school, students develop:
These areas are developed together as students build increasingly sophisticated mathematical knowledge and skills.
Our mathematics teaching reflects what we know about how students learn.
When students are learning something new, teachers provide clear explanations, modelling, worked examples and guided practice. New learning is broken into manageable steps and students receive frequent opportunities to respond, practise and receive feedback.
As students become more accurate, they are provided with purposeful practice to build fluency and automaticity with important mathematical knowledge and skills.
Students then have opportunities to generalise and apply what they have learned across different examples, representations and contexts before tackling increasingly complex and unfamiliar problems.
Our aim is to gradually move students from highly supported learning towards increasingly independent, flexible and adaptive mathematical thinking.
Fluency is an important part of becoming a successful mathematician.
Students need some mathematical knowledge and skills to become sufficiently fluent that they can use them efficiently when completing more complex mathematics. This includes skills such as number facts, counting, place value, calculation and other foundational skills appropriate to each stage of learning.
We provide regular opportunities for students to practise important mathematical skills so they become increasingly accurate, efficient and automatic.
Fluency is not simply about being fast. It means developing mathematical knowledge and skills that students can use accurately, efficiently and flexibly when they need them.
Students regularly use mathematics to reason, investigate, make connections and solve problems.
Once students have developed the knowledge and skills needed for a task, they are given opportunities to apply their learning across different contexts and increasingly complex problems.
Teachers explicitly teach students how to approach problems, represent their thinking, select appropriate strategies and explain and justify their reasoning.
As students develop expertise, they are increasingly challenged to determine what mathematics might be useful, which strategies to use and how to adapt what they know when a solution is not immediately obvious.
Mathematics extends beyond the daily mathematics lesson.
Students have opportunities to use mathematical knowledge and skills across the curriculum and in meaningful real-world contexts, including measurement, data, science, technology and everyday problem solving.
These opportunities help students recognise mathematics as a powerful way of understanding, describing and solving problems in the world around them.
We regularly assess students' mathematical development to understand what they have learned, identify what they are ready to learn next and recognise early when additional support may be needed.
When students require additional support in mathematics, targeted and increasingly intensive teaching is provided through our Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
Student progress is closely monitored so that teaching and intervention can be adjusted in response to each learner.
Our aim is to ensure that every student develops the knowledge, skills, fluency and confidence to use mathematics successfully – at school and beyond.
