Mathematics

Year level: 2 

Throughout this term, Year 2 Maths Innovation students will explore mathematics as a tool for understanding the world, solving problems and thinking strategically. Through hands-on investigations and real-world applications, they will strengthen their ability to recognise patterns, visualise concepts and reason logically. Engaging in problem solving tasks, students will apply mathematical strategies creatively and efficiently while making connections to their everyday experiences.

By participating in meaningful and challenging experiences, students will build confidence in their reasoning, communicate their thinking clearly, and appreciate mathematical structure. Mathematics is everywhere—in nature, art, technology, and daily life— our aim is that students will start to see its relevance and power in shaping how we understand and interact with the world. 

Year level: 3 

In Year 3 Maths Innovation, learners will investigate the Innovator’s Mindset characteristics:  Courageous, Determined, Reflective, Collaborative and Visionary. Learners will identify areas of strength and create a goal to track throughout the term along with a personalised learning pit. Through hands-on investigations and real-world applications learners will explore how to solve worded problems using new strategies that extend their thinking. They will look at clues within a problem, how to connect this with their schema and lean into observations skills to thoroughly respond with confidence. Learners will then transfer these strategies into complex problem solving.  

This learning will develop a strong ability to translate real-world situations into mathematical expressions and equations. It will involve careful reading to understand the key information and identify what is being asked in worded problems. Learners will engage in step-by-step thinking as they break down the problem into manageable parts, often by highlighting or underlining relevant details. Critical thinking plays a significant role, as learners will choose the appropriate mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) to solve problems. These problems will require logical reasoning to determine the correct approach and solution. Once the calculations are made, there will be an emphasis on interpreting the answer in the context of the problem to ensure it makes sense. Learners will build effective problem-solving strategies as they review and verify each step, ensuring accuracy and completeness in reaching the solution.   

Year level: 4 

In Year 4 Maths Innovation, students will investigate the Innovator’s Mindset characteristics:  Courageous, Determined, Reflective, Collaborative and Visionary. Students will identify areas of strength and create an improvement goal to track throughout the term. They will solve number puzzles, investigating their patterns to find efficient strategies. Students will estimate the number of steps they would take to get to Maths Innovation from their classroom and analyse the whole class data to determine the Mean, Median and Mode before comparing this to their own data. As they solve multi-step worded problems, they will explore a variety of problem-solving strategies and collaborate with their peers to identify different approaches. 

Year level: 5 

As students embark on learning in Year 5 Maths Innovation, they will investigate how they can use the Innovator’s Mindset and identify how actions demonstrate the use of characteristics of being Courageous, Determined, Reflective, Collaborative and Visionary. They will identify personal areas of strength and the traits they would like to focus on improving. Through exploring sums of consecutive numbers, students will identify number patterns. They will then investigate how these solutions relate to divisibility rules and find efficient strategies for solving problems. As they learn about the Binary Number System, they will explore the connections to real-world applications and its use by digital technology and compare with historical methods of communication such as Morse Code. 

Year level: 6 

In Year 6 Maths Innovation, students will deepen their understanding of the importance of developing the Innovative Characteristics of Courageous, Determined, Reflective, Collaborative and Visionary. They will evaluate their strengths and identify an area for growth during the term. They will be exploring the properties of circles and the origins and history of pi. Using this information, students will solve problems using Pi, including finding the area of circles and the volume of cylinders as they relate to the school water tank. As part of this learning, they will be paying particular attention the units that can be used to measure volume (cm3, m3 and L) and visualising how big one of each unit is.