Literacy & Mathematics
CBCA 2025 Book Week
We had a wonderful week of celebrating the 2025 Book Week. The theme was Book an Adventure and everyone certainly embraced the magical quality that comes with dressing up as a favourite character. Thanks to all our families who have supported this enjoyable whole school event.
The winners of this year’s CBCA (Children’s Book Council of Australia) awards:
Book of the Year: Older Readers
Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Picture Book of the Year
Eve Pownall Award
CBCA Award for New Illustrator
Mathematics
Place Value is one of the most important concepts in Mathematics. It is the foundation for understanding how our number system works. It helps children move beyond simply recognising digits to understanding what those digits represent in different positions.
Here are the big ideas that support learning in Place Value:
Quantity
Children learn that numbers represent an amount, or the “manyness” of a group. Understanding quantity helps children connect numbers to real-world amounts.
Subitising
Being able to instantly recognise small quantities without counting, like knowing there are 5 dots on a dice face, helps children see numbers as whole amounts and as parts.
Number Triad Relationships
Students connect the number name, the written numeral, and its visual representation (such as bundles of tens and single units). This linking ensures they understand that “thirty-four,” “34,” and a group of 3 tens and 4 ones all mean the same thing.
Partitioning
Children learn that numbers can be broken apart in different ways while keeping the value the same. For example, 154 can be thought of as 1 hundred, 5 tens, and 4 ones or 15 tens and 4 ones or even 14 tens and 14 ones. This flexibility underpins mental strategies for calculation.
Base 10 System
Our number system is built on groups of ten. Each place in a number has a value ten times greater than the place to its right and one tenth of the value to its left. Understanding this helps children see patterns and relationships between numbers of different sizes.
Digit Position
The position of a digit determines its value. For example, the ‘5’ in 54 represents 50, not just 5. Zero plays a special role as a placeholder. It shows that a particular place has no value, like the ‘0’ in 204.
Benchmarks
Children use familiar reference points to compare numbers. Knowing where a number sits in relation to benchmarks like 0, 5, 10, 50, 100, 1,000, or 10,000 helps them estimate, judge size, and make sense of large numbers.
By supporting these ideas, we help students move from just reading numbers to truly understanding them, building the foundation for all future work with our number system.