We use the FPS Learning Model for all areas of the Victorian Curriculum. Mathematics is taught predominantly in the Italian classroom through rich core tasks, enabling and extending prompts, explicit teaching, and time for making connections through discussion and reflection. 

We have a rigorous scope and sequence that involves short, interleaving units of work that allow for repeated exposure to content across the year and frequent revisiting of the big ideas in number to ensure key concepts are deeply understood and embedded over time. 

Constructing meaning: Students construct meaning from direct experiences such as using equipment or materials and explaining or exploring.

Transferring meaning: Students begin to connect symbols with objects and mathematical processes.

Understanding and applying: Through authentic activities, students independently select and use appropriate symbols and processes to record their thinking.

In order to be able to use mathematics as a tool, students need to be able to go from the specifics of the situation to the more abstract mathematics underlying the problem. Students are scaffolded to develop their understandings from the concrete to the more abstract ‘transferring meaning into symbols’.

The numeracy lesson is supported by the use of concrete materials, visual representations, targeted teaching and the ongoing development of academic vocabulary in both English and Italian. Our aim at Footscray Primary is to foster an open mind set to mathematics, engaging our students in rigorous, developmentally appropriate learning.