Learning and Teaching

Launch, Explore, Connect

At Holy Family, the teachers have been learning about and implementing a new maths teaching pedagogy called Launch, Explore, Connect.

The staff had a maths day where they looked at this investigation strategy and learned about ways to implement it in the classroom to make maths more engaging and hands-on for students.

Instead of the traditional way of teaching a maths concept to students and having them complete a task based on what they have learned, this pedagogy starts with an investigation that the students undertake. The teaching then takes place as students explore their answers and make connections by discussing the problem solving skills that they have used.

Investigation Examples 

Prep - Ten New Preps

The preps were posed with an investigation called Ten New Preps, where they had to use different combinations of boys and girls to make a class with 10 preps. This task focused on tens facts and the different combinations that make 10.

1/2 - Fair Feast

Year 1/2 students enjoyed trying to work out how much food could be shared equally between 3 children going on a picnic with a whole pizza, 3 cans of drink, 6 chicken drumsticks and a cake.

Seniors - Fruit Bowl 

Senior students enjoyed working out the answer to this fraction problem:

Half of the pieces of fruit in a bowl are apples. There are also  3 oranges, 2  pears and a banana. How many apples are there in the bowl?

If, instead, one quarter were apples and one quarter were oranges and there were also  4  bananas, 3  pears and  3  plums how many apples would there be?

Pauline Moran

Learning and Teaching Leader