For an overview of how classes are structured at Upwey South Primary School, please refer to the preamble of the Specialist Subjects page.
Making Math fun, engaging, relevant, and attainable is the aim of Upwey South Primary School.
If you speak with students, families, and staff about our school they will most likely comment that the school's approach to teaching Math is achieving great results. In fact, based upon 2024 NAPLAN results over 80% of students in both Year Three and Year Five achieved in the 'strong' or 'exceeding' category which is over 10 percentage points above similar schools; with our school leading the Dandenong Ranges Network when looking at the percentage of students who achieved 'exceeding.'
Before we take a closer look at Mathematics, it is important to note the below extract from an open letter authored by our School Council:
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“.....whilst the above Mathematics achievements are exceptional, we understand that they are merely indicators of how individual students perform at a given point in time. In fact, we acknowledge that these metrics are no-way indicative of the holistic and complex nature of curricular and extra-curricular initiatives that make Upwey South Primary School such an inviting and positive educational experience for our students. It is important to be mindful that Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Physical Education, Auslan, Sciences, or student leadership and wellbeing are not measured through standardised testing environments such as NAPLAN. Collective results across our curriculum (whilst not always publicly accessible) highlight the incredible contribution that USPS teaching staff make to grow, nurture, and support our students in their learning. It is the combined strong academics across ALL curriculum areas, and the caring focus provided by our staff which ultimately makes Upwey South Primary School the positive learning environment that it has become...” |
But let us get back to one of our favourite subject areas...Mathematics.
Firstly, it is not uncommon for adults to feel ‘uncomfortable’ when recalling their experiences of math throughout school. The anxiety that memories of school math may raise in some adults is a learnt concept, and comes directly as a negative result of their schooling experiences. No student enters primary school ‘disliking’ or ‘feeling bad’ at mathematics.
In fact, our Mathematics classes are some of the most exciting and hands-on things we do at school!
Developing positive attitudes and a growth mindset towards learning are the first place we begin with all curriculum areas at our school; we call this ‘getting ready to learn.’
From an educational point of view, how we feel about mathematics is called ‘math disposition’. Disposition can have a huge impact upon our willingness and confidence to take safe learning risks, and engage with productive struggle. The illustration below shows what happens to us when our disposition reflects anxiety:
To overcome this feeling of anxiety (which generally does not exist in most primary aged students) we need to focus upon carefully providing students with the building blocks required for what is known as ‘number acquisition’. The educational term for mastering these concepts is known as ‘The Big Ideas’ and are pictured below:
Effective teaching of mathematics involves understanding that ‘numeracy’ is the ability to connect daily life and mathematics.
For students to be taught at developmentally appropriate stages, we engage in the concrete-pictorial-abstract methodology of teaching mathematical concepts. These concepts are unpacked through classroom discussions and learning tasks which we call ‘number talks.’
For the real-life stories of what happens within our Mathematics curriculum please refer to our school newsletters.
For further information, we encourage you to speak with one of our many highly skilled teachers.