The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, 490 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra, Dickson (2026)

04/09/2026

All week we've been looking at books and literacy in maths. Today, we’re focusing on word problems, in which the mathematics arrives wrapped in text.
Firstly, let’s name a behaviour we think every teacher will recognise. A student meets a word problem, goes straight to the numbers, and starts calculating - usually with whatever operation the class has been practising that week.

Yesterday we asked a question: when a student gives a wrong answer, does it reflect a gap in their mathematics or in their language? There is an Australian tool for telling the difference.
Newman's Error Analysis was developed by Anne Newman in Melbourne in 1977, and it is still being used and researched around the world. It breaks a word problem into five stages: reading, comprehending, transforming, processing and encoding. Working through them with a student shows you where the difficulty lies.

Three places to start:
▪ the NSW Department of Education's summary (open access with a Google account), which explains what the method is and offers slide templates for using the structure with students, including two detailed examples:
🔗 https://app.education.nsw.gov.au/digital-learning-selector/LearningActivity/Card/650

▪ ACER's concept builder, which sets out the five interview prompts and suggests targeted strategies for each type of error:
🔗https://www.acer.org/files/PAT__Concept_Builder-Newmans_error_analysis_FINAL.pdf

▪ If you'd rather watch it in action, AITSL has an illustration of practice showing a teacher working through mathematical word problems with her class and applying Newman's Error Analysis:
🔗 https://www.aitsl.edu.au/resources/working-with-mathematical-word-problems

Knowing where a problem breaks down is the beginning of doing something about it.

Let’s close the book on this week’s theme - maths books and literacy in maths. Thanks for reading along and have a great weekend.

03/09/2026

We’ve started this week looking at books in maths teaching and learning and now we’re thinking more broadly about literacy and its place in the maths classroom. We’ll begin with a specific focus on the language of mathematics.

Firstly, the mathematical register - the specialised way mathematics uses language. It includes words borrowed from everyday language like similar, odd or mean (with a related or sometimes very different meaning) or subject-specific words like parallelogram or factorise.

The NSW guide Supporting EAL/D learners with numeracy is aimed primarily at students learning in a second language, but many of these strategies and resources would be just as useful for all students. From 'false friends' to unpacking how visuals are used in numeracy there’s a lot to consider and explore in your teaching practice. There are also links to a range of resources developed for senior students that explore key terms, question words, prepositions and question syntax in numeracy - key concepts for students of any age. 🔗https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/multicultural-education/eald/urh/Supporting_EAL_D_learners_with_numeracy.pdf

A more primary-focused resource is this video from Professor Catherine Attard on Literacy for maths & maths through literacy, recorded for the Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Her framing is a useful one: students have to know English, and then they have to know English mathematics, which is a challenge for every student, not only those learning English as an additional language. 🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGA9PaOjLSw
Her advice is not to make the language easier. 'Sometimes there's a temptation to simplify the language of mathematics, but I always strongly suggest that we don't shy away from using appropriate mathematical terminology regardless of the age of the students.' If children can say tyrannosaurus rex, they should be able to manage mathematical words such as the names of quadrilaterals.

There are lots of strategies suggested throughout the session such as:
▪ students building a maths glossary in their own words and with their own diagrams, passed up from year to year
▪ a classroom maths word wall, kept separate from the general one
▪ the use of examples paired with non-examples - for example to understand what a prime number is, and what it isn't.

Here is a real example from Year 7 NAPLAN:
'Hannah flipped a fair coin 60 times. She recorded her results in a table. What is the difference between the expected number of heads and the actual number of heads?'

Fair. Table. Difference. Expected. Heads. Five everyday words in one short question but with a specific mathematical meaning in this context.

When a student gets a question like this wrong, how do you know whether it was the mathematics or the language that got in the way?

02/09/2026

Yesterday we hinted that maths can be found hidden in many books. Australian teachers and researchers Toby Russo and James Russo built a lesson planning approach around exactly that idea.

Writing in AAMT's journal Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, they describe a narrative-first approach. It may seem more intuitive to plan the other way round - identify the mathematics to be taught, then look for a book to match it. Narrative-first inverts that: start with a rich story, build a problem-solving task from it, thenmake the curriculum links. The article is free to download:
🔗https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1231246.pdf

None of the examples in the article might appear on first read to be ‘a maths book’:
▪ Fish Out of Water - Otto the goldfish is overfed and doubles in size every ten minutes. How long until he fills an Olympic pool?
▪ Where the Wild Things Are - 750 days pass in the land of the wild things while five minutes pass at home. What does that tell us about time?
▪ The Cat in the Hat Comes Back - each cat is smaller than the last, which provides a lead in to talking about fractions and decimals.
▪ A Squash and a Squeeze - how much space does everyone really need? A prompt to explore additive reasoning in Year 2 and proportional reasoning in Year 5/6.

Part of the appeal, the authors argue, is that teachers get to build lessons from books they care about, rather than books that happen to match a content descriptor. One student, reflecting on the work, said the story 'helped me make sense of it and understand it better.'

What's on your bookshelf that might have more maths in it than you thought?

02/09/2026

We're excited to bring back our Maths300 Professional Learning for individuals - with two online sessions running this September, priced at $55 + GST per teacher:
▪ Tuesday 15 September, 6–7pm AEST - Primary focus
▪ Wednesday 16 September, 6–7pm AEST - Secondary focus

Whether you're new to Maths300 or wanting to deepen your practice, our one-hour interactive virtual professional learning sessions will investigate rich mathematical tasks and explore how to use Maths300 to enhance mathematics teaching in the classroom.

Find out more and register for the September sessions at https://aamt.edu.au/teachers/resources/maths-300/.

Are you getting ready for 2027 and planning your Term 4 or Term 1 professional development days? Whole school virtual Maths300 PL is also available, either primary or secondary, 60-90 minutes long and priced from $700 for any number of teachers. Enquire about a whole-school booking at [email protected].

01/09/2026

Having found a book, what next? Today we explore two free resources worth knowing about.

'Tips for Read-Alouds in Math' from the University of Denver's Marsico Institute, emphasises that how we share books with children matters. The pdf covers questioning, vocabulary, and how to keep the mathematical conversation going after the book closes - through dramatising the story, retelling it, or writing. Again, there is an extensive list of suggested texts linked to areas of the curriculum.
🔗https://learningtrajectories.org/documents/1582239622565.pdf

Its most interesting idea is mathematising, which it defines as treating ‘a subject or problem in mathematical terms’. The mathematics doesn't have to be in the text already - the guide's 'illustration-exploring' category covers books whose pictures invite mathematical exploration, whether or not the text mentions it. This suggests that maths can be found almost anywhere, including in books never written with mathematics in mind - which potentially opens up every picture book in the classroom or library.

Another good resource to get you started getting the most out of books, Stanford's DREME project has more than 70 free storybook guides written for specific books, each setting out the vocabulary in the book, where the mathematics sits, questions and comments to prompt children's thinking, and activities to do afterwards. Although written for families (they’d be great to send home), the guides could easily be used in the classroom to initiate robust mathematical discussions.
🔗 https://familymath.stanford.edu/activities/reading-together/

How do you get the mathematical conversation started?

31/08/2026

Book Week has just finished, so we thought this week could be a good time to consider two distinct but thematically related ideas on our socials: maths books and literacy in maths.

The ‘Improving mathematics in the early years with children aged 3-7 years’ guidance report from Evidence for Learning suggests that ‘using storybooks to teach mathematics can be particularly effective, through providing an opportunity for mathematical talk and questioning.’
🔗 https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/education-evidence/guidance-reports/early-maths

With older learners, the case is a little different. A good book - particularly a mathematical biography - can show maths as engaging and meaningful: something people do, rather than something that just exists in textbooks.

There is a wide choice of mathematical books, so we've recommended two free places to start looking.
NRICH's Bookcase Maths collates book recommendations for children aged 3 to 11 years, grouped by mathematical topic, so you should be able to find a book to match the concepts that you’re covering in class:
🔗 https://nrich.maths.org/bookcase-maths-teaching-maths-through-your-bookshelves

If you want to look for books for a wider age group, the Mathical Book Prize is awarded each year to fiction and non-fiction that helps young people see maths in the world around them, judged by teachers, librarians and mathematicians. The extensive list consists of about 300 books from early years to senior secondary: 🔗 https://www.mathicalbooks.org/books/

Happy reading!

31/08/2026

Good news for those who haven't yet registered for The Keynotes Conference: Perspectives on Pedagogy - we've extended our early bird pricing until 7 September.

That means you still have time to secure your ticket at the reduced rate and join us on Saturday 17 October for a full day of online keynote presentations from leading international mathematics educators - Professor Colin Foster (Loughborough University, UK), Dan Meyer (Amplify, USA), Dewey Gottlieb (NCTM President-Elect, USA), Dr Yeap Ban Har (Pathlight School, Singapore) and Professor Jodie Hunter (Massey University, NZ).

Supported by the Australian Council for Educational Research, the conference opens on Friday evening 16 October with the free Hanna Neumann Lecture from Professor Catherine Attard - open to everyone, registration required. With virtual attendance, both events are available to teachers across the country.

To read more about our presenters or to register visit the Keynotes Conference page on our website
🔗 aamt.edu.au/keynotesconference2026/
or join the Facebook event
🔗 facebook.com/events/1073338938398022

27/08/2026

In our final post in this mini series on part-part-whole thinking, we look at two terms that sit at the heart of place value understanding and which play a critical role in addition and subtraction: renaming and regrouping.

A quick note first: these terms are used in different and/or overlapping ways across different jurisdictions’ curriculum documents. For example, in Victoria renaming encompasses any partitioning, whilst the Australian Curriculum defines renaming as expressing ‘a number according to the relationship between the place value powers of 10’, with an example of 263 which might be renamed as 2 hundreds and 63 ones or 1 hundred, 16 tens and 3 ones. If you are sourcing resources from outside your own jurisdiction, it is worth checking how regrouping and renaming are being used, but what matters most here is the concept.

When we add and subtract numbers once we reach two digits we need our students to think in both tens and ones. When we add 57 + 28, the ones digits sum to 15. We express those 15 ones as 1 ten and 5 ones, and that ten joins the tens column. This is complex manipulation - and not easy to even begin to show on a static image like in the accompanying illustration! However, understanding why this works is a mark of genuine place value understanding, not just procedural competence and it relies on part-part-whole thinking.

And it doesn't stop at whole numbers. The same ideas extend into decimals, and so underpin addition and subtraction with decimals well into secondary.

AAMT's Top Drawer includes a resource specifically on renaming in addition and subtraction, with instructional videos that illustrate these ideas. 🔗 https://topdrawer.aamt.edu.au/Mental-computation/Good-teaching/Addition-and-subtraction/Standard-place-value/Renaming-to-add-and-subtract

For a structured overview of how part-part-whole thinking, partitioning, renaming and regrouping connect from Foundation to Year 10, reSolve's 'A number is the sum of its parts' is well worth bookmarking. 🔗 https://resolve.edu.au/mathematics-content/mathematics-topics/place-value/number-sum-of-its-parts

Have a great weekend!

27/08/2026

If you haven't caught our recent Facebook posts at 🔗 https://www.facebook.com/aamtinc/, here's what we've been sharing this week.

Our current theme is part-part-whole thinking - one of the foundational ideas about how students see and work with number. In our posts, we’re exploring what part-part-whole thinking is, the language around it - including partitioning, regrouping and renaming - and considering why these concepts and skills are so important.

This overview, ‘A number is the sum of its parts’, from the Academy of Science’s reSolve program is a good starting point to understand how this thinking develops and is applied from Foundation to Year 10:
🔗 https://resolve.edu.au/mathematics-content/mathematics-topics/place-value/number-sum-of-its-parts

If you're a secondary teacher curious to know what part-part-whole thinking is all about or a primary teacher wanting to go deeper or perhaps discover some new resources, we've got those covered too. Head to 🔗 https://www.facebook.com/aamtinc/ to catch up on all three posts.

27/08/2026

Over this short series of posts we’re exploring part-part-whole thinking, a key foundation concept about how numbers can be made up of parts. To partition is the verb that means breaking a number (the whole) into parts. From Foundation, students begin by partitioning collections up to 10 in different ways and this progresses through to Year 2 when students partition two- and three-digit numbers. This is where an important distinction is highlighted in the Australian Curriculum v9.0. Standard partitioning represents the value of each digit in its place - for example, splitting 47 into 40 and 7 (four tens and seven ones). Non-standard partitioning is any other split, for example partitioning 47 into 30 and 17, or 23, 23 and 1.

Students need experience with both forms of partitioning. Standard partitioning is a key place value concept and is essential in addition and subtraction across the decade or century as we’ll touch on tomorrow. Non-standard partitioning has a place too - supporting mental computation strategies in helping students to identify flexible and efficient ways to work with number.

This Year 1 reSolve sequence Addition: Partitioning includes two activities, exploring how a bag of 10 apples might contain different numbers of green and red apples before exploring '12 Ways to Get to 11'. The activities also support early algebraic thinking and generalisation.
🔗https://resolve.edu.au/v84-sequences/addition-partitioning

At the Year 3-4 level, this video from ABC Education explores standard and non-standard partitioning and could be good to share with parents.
🔗https://www.abc.net.au/education/maths-years-3-4-with-ms-kirszman-partitioning-numbers-using-pla/13595118

For secondary teachers: while these concepts are rarely the explicit focus of teaching they don't disappear, but resurface when students work with fractions or reason about ratio as parts of a whole. And with a high spread of achievement levels in a typical secondary class, you’re likely to encounter students who struggled with securely grasping these earlier concepts.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at regrouping and renaming.

The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers

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