Celebrating Success & Problem Solving

Australian Maths Competition 

Early in Term 3 over 100 of our students in Years 3 to 6 participated in the Australian Mathematics Competition. The competition has a focus on extending and challenging students' problems solving skills and is designed by leading Australian educators and academics. 

All students who participated received an award for their efforts according to the criteria below. 

• Participation: Awarded to a student who has participated in the competition and received no higher award.

• Proficiency: Awarded to a student who has received a pre-set score and received no higher award.

  Students who achieve proficiency have demonstrated competency at mathematical problem solving to Australian standards.

• Credit: Awarded to a student who is in the top 55% of their year and region (60% for Senior division) and has received no higher award.
• Distinction: Awarded to a student who is in the top 20% of their year and region (25% for Senior division) and has received no higher award.
• High Distinction: Awarded to a student who is in the top 3% of their year and region (top 5% for Senior division) and has received no higher award.
• Prize/Best in School: Generally awarded to no more than 1 student for every 300 students within a region and year group. Awarded to the student with the best overall result in a school, after adjustment for year level.

Congratulations to Toshi C in Year 5 who received the Prize/Best in School Award, as well as all the students who participated in the competition. We are excited to have even more FPS students compete in the future. 

Problem Solving with The Maths Project 

At the end of term 3, Year 4A had the exciting opportunity to participate in a demonstration maths lesson with The Maths Project. The session was designed to provide an opportunity for our learning specialists to observe different approaches to teaching mathematical problem solving and reasoning. It also gave The Maths Project the opportunity to trial a selection of their maths problems with our students before making these problems available to other schools.

Throughout the lesson, students explored a range of mathematical concepts and were

• encouraged to think deeply, 
• explain their reasoning, and
• represent their thinking in different ways. 

Students practised skip counting and used patterns to help solve problems. They also worked through a range of problem-solving and reasoning tasks, where they needed to consider different strategies, justify their thinking and explain how they arrived at their answers.

Students also explored fractions in a variety of ways. They represented fractions using different models, simplified fractions and made connections between fractions, decimals and percentages. These activities encouraged students to recognise relationships between different representations of numbers rather than simply applying a procedure.

At the end of the lesson, the 4A students created a video of what they learnt, practising their reasoning skills as well as reinforcing the learning focus by revisiting and reviewing the content in a different way. 

It was fantastic to see Year 4A students so engaged throughout the session. They worked hard to show their thinking, asked thoughtful questions, persevered when problems were challenging and supported their classmates when needed. The lesson provided a valuable opportunity for students to experience mathematics as something that involves curiosity, communication, reasoning and problem solving.

Thank you to Mark McKelson and The Maths Project for working with our students and teachers and providing such a valuable professional learning opportunity. 

Sophie Ratcliffe

Numeracy Learning Specialist