Curriculum
Timothy Bernau | Assistant Principal
Science Fair Open Afternoon- Thursday 10th August
We're excited to open our classroom doors and welcome the school community to our Science Fair next Thursday. This presents a great opportunity to celebrate the importance of developing scientific knowledge and an understanding of the contribution of Science to our culture and society and its application in our lives. Come and join us for an afternoon of fun and new learning in your child's classroom from 2:30pm!
Curriculum Day - Friday 11th August
Next Friday 11th August is a pupil-free Curriculum Day. We have a rich day of professional learning planned for our staff which will focus on continuing to improve the way we plan, teach and assess Mathematics across the school. The day will be framed around the 'Big Ideas' which are ideas, strategies, or ways of thinking about a key aspect of mathematics, without which students’ progress will be seriously impacted. The aim here is to develop a coherent approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics that seeks to build connections, values multiple strategies and reasoning, and supports further learning with understanding.
So, what are the big ideas? The table below outlines the priority big idea at different stages of primary school:
| By the end of | Big Idea |
|---|---|
| Foundation/mid Year 1 | Trusting the Count: students believe that if they count the same collection again they will get the same amount; they can draw on mental objects for each of the nubers to ten based on visual imagery that allow them to 'see' these numbers in terms of their parts and as they relate to numbers of which they are a part (e. 8 is 6 and 2, double 4, 2 than 10 |
| Year 2 | Place Value: students see 10 ones as 1 ten and able to work fluently with counts of tens and counts of ones independently; they understand and can use the relationship that 10 of these 1 of those to extend the whole number system to hundreds and beyond. |
| Year 4 | Multiplicative Thinking: students move beyond an understanding of multiplication and division as repeated addition; they have access to efficient strategies for multiplication and divisoion based on the number of groups rather than the number in each group (eg. 3 of anything is double it and more group). |
| Year 6/end of primary school | Partitioning/Fractional thinking: students extend their ideas about multiplication and division to make connections to fractions, decimals and per cent. |