Our Mathematics Program
The teaching of Mathematics is another important focus at Exford. As with Literacy, there is a daily dedicated teaching time. We commit to at least an hour’s focus on Numeracy across all of our classrooms on a daily basis. A range of activities and teaching strategies are used to cater for students’ individual learning needs.
Our Leading Teacher-Educational Leader supports our teachers in refining their planning, assessment and teaching skills and their thinking about and implementation of their Maths teaching. During 2016, a team of our teachers have participated in the Bastow Institute ‘Leading Mathematics’ professional learning.
We are very keen to further the links between eLearning, Science and our school based ICT and Mathematics in our teaching and learning.
In 2009, we introduced the Mathletics online program for all of our students, after a trial in some of our classes and staff and parent information sessions. Students use the Mathletics program during the school day, as part of our total Mathematics classroom learning, and it is also included as homework at times. We have found that our students often choose to use Mathletics, even when it is not for homework!
Mathletics is a program which has two components to it:
- The live game element where students can match with a child from any other school doing Mathletics and compete in a Maths quiz (there is no capacity to communicate or exchange information with the other student).
- The activity element which is monitored and directed by the classroom teacher. The student is matched to appropriate Maths concepts and tasks and the teacher is able to monitor their progress and fine-tune the tasks which are available.
The students receive achievement certificates along the way and are very proud of these! The program is used within the classrooms and also at home for practice and homework tasks (the cost of $8.50 per school year covers home and school access over the internet) and staff and parents are observing a noticeable improvement in the students’ learning and engagement levels.