QAMT Queensland Association of Mathematics Teachers Inc.

14/09/2026

SAVE the DATE! The QAMT are super-excited to announce an amazing conf-experience (that's conference and experience combined!). The amazing town of Winton in Queensland is the host of the 2027 QAMT State conference - supported by STAQ (Science Teachers Association of Queensland) and MTANT (Mathematics Teachers Association of the Northern Territory). Winton is a Dark-Sky community and is a small but mighty town with so much to see and do all around the area. We have three Keynote presenters confirmed and are super-proud to support our regional and remote teachers with the provision of this conference in their backyard. Early bird registration coming soon - open for Sponsorship interest, contact [email protected].

14/09/2026

Are you in a staff meeting about reading and literacy, again?

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BMaEkqLmZ/

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.

14/09/2026

MathsTech26 - Sat 31st October 8:30am - 2pm, UQ St Lucia

Hear new ideas and brush up on your use of digital tools for Years 10-12.

Register here: https://qamt.qld.edu.au/events-calendar/ =310&cid=1242&wid=1301

13/09/2026

QAMT Senior Maths Day Mon 23 Nov, QUT Kelvin Grove Campus - Sponsors wanted.

Looking for a great opportunity to reach Senior Maths teachers with products that will support them and their students?
Spots are limited - Learn more here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_f1LV0RCBUK3EBaPWwxYDZAoSYl1GGdMvDwWfwYjz4lUMk43STlPSzRKQU82REhHN0paSVc3TEpTNC4u

10/09/2026

Are you or is your school Maths Active?
Be rewarded for your active involvement in mathematics competitions, professional development and professional association membership.

If you have presented or participated in one of our events you may be eligible.
Find out more here:
www.qamt.qld.edu.au/maths-active-schools

Nominations due 30 September 2026 to be considered for 2027 status

09/09/2026

It is not too late to register!

One of the best PL you will do all year.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D9GQRfha2/

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].

09/09/2026

QAMT Senior Maths Day - 23 Nov QUT kelvin Grove

PRESENTERS WANTED

Express interest here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=_f1LV0RCBUK3EBaPWwxYDZAoSYl1GGdMvDwWfwYjz4lUNkg4VE1BTUZUMDJINDJDNEJaQkJPT1pYNS4u&origin=QRCode

08/09/2026

Hear from this DESMOS guru - 3 Act - register now!

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HprDuPqbt/

Why do so many students leave school convinced that mathematics isn't for them? And what role does creativity - or its absence - play in that?

Dan Meyer has spent his career asking questions like these. A former secondary maths teacher turned researcher, he holds a doctorate in mathematics education from Stanford University and is Vice President of Teacher Growth at Amplify. His work has reached audiences through TED.com and CNN and he has worked with teachers across the globe.

His session at The Keynotes Conference: Perspectives on Pedagogy on Saturday 17 October, Creating Creative Maths Classes, makes the case that creativity isn't an extra in mathematics teaching - it's the answer to three of our most important classroom challenges: student disengagement, a sense that maths lacks purpose, and the rise of AI.

This national virtual conference is supported by the Australian Council for Educational Research.
Join the Facebook event:
🔗 https://www.facebook.com/share/1NdzB45N5v/ or learn more and register:
🔗 aamt.edu.au/keynotesconference2026/

A reminder - the conference kicks off on Friday evening 16 October with the free Hanna Neumann Lecture from Professor Catherine Attard on Trusting Teachers: Professional Judgement in an Age of Pedagogical Debate and Artificial Intelligence. Open to everyone, just register via the link above.

07/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DCPvmogM3/

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?