rote memorisation to high-impact, visual, and tactile strategies. Dyscalculia often

co-occurs with dyslexia; when these overlap, students face a "double hurdle" -

struggling with both numerical logic and the literacy required to decode word

problems.

1. Core Instructional Strategies

To move mathematical concepts into long-term memory, prioritise these four pillars:

● Concrete Manipulatives: Use physical objects (counters, Base 10 blocks,

Cuisenaire rods) to anchor abstract concepts. These shouldn't be reserved

for "remedial" time; they should be available during modules and lessons

alike.

● The "Aha!" Journal: When a student has a breakthrough, have them record

the concept in their own words. Highlight these entries and review them

regularly to reinforce the "click" moment.

● Self-Talk and "Think Alouds": Encourage students to verbalise their thought

process. Modelling "self-talk" during instruction helps students with

dyscalculia organise their internal logic and identify where a process breaks

down.

● Visual Modelling: Use diverse visual representations (number lines, area

models, and bar models) to explain the "why" behind an answer.

2. Flexible and Personalised Assessments

Traditional testing can be a nightmare for students with dyscalculia, especially

when they are not at the right level - take a typical frustration and multiply it.

Ensuring tests are personalised to a student's point of need and adjusting the way

we assess allows students to show what they know without the anxiety of the

format.

● Human-Assisted Assessment: For students with high needs, an educator or

support person can act as a scribe or reader. If a student can explain a

concept orally or demonstrate it with manipulatives, the support person can

validate the understanding and input the result.

● Layout Adjustments: Provide additional "working out" paper, or print

assessments on A3 paper to reduce visual crowding. Use a manila folder to

"mask" or block out parts of a page so the student is only looking at one

problem at a time.

● No Time Limits: Ensure tests are personalised and not restricted to a single

lesson. This accounts for the slower processing speeds common in

dyscalculia.

3. The Classroom Environment

A "constructivist" classroom ensures students are learning at their specific point

of need, preventing the frustration of building on gaps in knowledge.

● Graphic Organisers: Use Frayer Models or flowcharts to help students

categorise mathematical terms and operations visually.

● The "Find a Friend" Culture: Build a peer-support system where students

are encouraged to "unblock" each other, reducing the stigma of needing

help.

4. Digital Supports & Accessibility

While the teacher-student relationship is paramount, digital tools can remove the

literacy barriers often associated with dyslexia.

● Text-to-Speech: Allows students to listen to instructions rather than

struggling to decode them.

● Visual Customisation: Empower students to choose fonts and spacing that

assist with readability.

● Step-by-Step Scaffolding: Our modules already break concepts into

granular skills, ensuring the student isn't overwhelmed by "what's coming

next."

Teachers can easily download, customise, and present these certificates to students to keep them engaged and motivated.

Access Your Certificates You can access the certificate templates for your specific program using the links below:

• Lingo: Click here to access the certificate template

• Maths Pathway: Click here to access the certificate template

• Instructive: Click here to access the certificate template

How to Use Them

1. Click the link above for the relevant program.

2. Download the file or make a copy to your own drive.

3. Add your students' names and their specific achievements.

4. Distribute the certificate(s) as required.

Note: If you have any trouble accessing these files or need different formats, please reach out to our support team for assistance.

Modes of Working Poster 2

Suck module handout

What do I need to know about Instructive?

Instructive is a curriculum-aligned Maths learning and teaching program, informed by research and learning science, and developed by teachers. Students receive two main modes of learning activities: whole-class explicit lessons and personalised, differentiated exercises. Rigorous diagnostic testing is used to determine what students already know and what they’re ready to learn next. This means each student is assessed is two distinct ways:

1. Against the curriculum standards for their age.

2. Against the whole curriculum for their personal learning needs.  

This empowers students to grow along their own continuum from wherever they happen to be. 

Students complete tests every 2-3 weeks to demonstrate what they’ve learnt and get teacher feedback to assist them when needed. This regular teacher feedback helps them develop the skills they need to progress. Teachers have detailed data on each student to better understand their progress and provide them with a tailored, scaffolded learning experience and a Learning Profile which parents and carers can access to track their child’s progress.

Can I see what my child is working on?

As a parent, or carer, you can access your child's Instructive account and monitor their progress using the student login details. This will be given to your child at the beginning of the year, and it changes every year. It should look similar to the one depicted below: 

Once you've logged in, you can navigate the students’ home page.

What sort of information can I see in my child’s account?

1. What they’re currently working on 

   

When logged into your child’s home page, you’ll see a summary of their current work. The topic they’re working through, the date of their next test and the learning exercises they’re expected to complete before that test.

2. Results from the current year

You can track your child’s test results unit-by-unit on the Test Results page, you’ll see their Growth Score (%), the number of modules they attempted/mastered and the total % score (questions) for that topic test. You can hover over the (i) icon next to each score for more information about how the score is calculated.

3. Monitor their overall growth and attainment

By looking at the Future Attainment Trajectory information, you can :

• View if your child is on track to meet their goals

• view if they’re on track to finish all the primary level content 

• view which senior maths subjects they’ll be ready to do in Year 11/12. 

You can adjust the forecast numbers to view what difference an increase/decrease in modules being mastered will make for future subject choices.

4. Personalise their account to suit their preferences and learning needs.

There are several features you can customise in your child’s account to give them a better learning experience, including customisable font, spacing and text-to-speech to support students’ learning needs. As well as some features to personalise their account like avatars.

Term 1 Guide - For Students Familiar with Maths Pathway

Example Meeting Protocol for Trained Maths Pathway Teachers

Concern from parents is understandable, and shows they care about their child’s education. Prior to Maths Pathway parents may have believed their student was able to access all the maths at the level of the year their child is in. For most students this isn’t the case – and we can see that now. It’s important for your school to have a good strategy to explain and communicate to parents. 

Depending on the strategy employed by your school, parents may be more or less concerned about changes to the mastery points in Semester reports. Generally, parents are concerned for the obvious and correct reason: they want the best for their child and don’t understand the apparent “falling” of the mastery point on their report. What we’ve found is taking the time to carefully explain the change in mastery point calculation to a parent or parents makes all the difference. 

With the new approach to teaching maths, our main focus is how your child works on maths, to make sure they’re learning effectively. Because of the way we’re now teaching and reporting on maths, there is a lot of data that’s available to see your child’s achievements. One of those pieces of information is your child’s mastery point. This is generally used for reporting and is determined by considering what they do and don’t know across the entirety of the curriculum. 

Of course, any given student has gaps in their knowledge and areas they do well in, so when we look at the curriculum it’s very different for each student. One student may struggle with Fractions and thrive in Chance, while another student is the other way around. 

All of that information can be condensed into a single number for reporting (a “mastery point”). While a lot of the depth of the data isn’t shown, we do get an idea of where a student lands in the overall curriculum. 

Think of the learning profile for a student as a piece of swiss cheese. If the cheese was solid, that would mean the student understood everything in the curriculum.

Instead it has holes in it, representing the maths concepts not yet understood by that student. Every student knows different maths, so every student’s “swiss cheese” looks different. 

We can get a “mastery point” out of this swiss cheese if we squish it down until all the holes collapse and we’re left with a solid piece of cheese of a certain size. 

We lose information when we do this, as a student with a low mastery point may have had a piece of cheese with many holes in Measurement but had above-average abilities in Probability. 

It’s important to know that the mastery point gives one flat piece of information. It doesn’t include the fact that your child may have abilities beyond their age, which are balanced out against current gaps that we’re working on filling. Nothing has “happened” to them, it’s just that we have greater visibility over their learning profiles now. And that’s an exciting opportunity, imagine if we never saw those gaps and put the time in to work on them.

So, the mastery point is a great starting point for indicating where they land in the overall curriculum, but there is so much more to consider outside of that number. Gaps in their knowledge will naturally be addressed as your child completes more work. What we will be focussing on is how your child goes about filling those gaps, and the work they complete beyond those gaps. 

It can be helpful to include preliminary information about mastery points and growth with reports or even before reports go out. Find here a link to a Maths Pathway Parent Communication Pack which includes a letter that can be used as a slip-in with reports.

Standardised Assessments and Lock-Step Teaching

Lock-step teaching is a model in which every student is taught the same material at the same time, usually based on their age. For example, year 7 students could be taught only level 7 material from the Australian Curriculum (equivalent to level 7 in the Victorian Curriculum, or half of Key Stage 4 in the NSW Syllabus).

Depending on a range of factors – including each student’s readiness for that material – different students will master the material to different degrees. Some students may not grasp any of the material at all. Others may become familiar enough with the material to do basic problems, even if their understanding is limited to following a recipe by rote. Still other students may gain a deep understanding and appreciation of the material. Standardised assessments are generally designed to capture that range of attainment, but only focused around the lock-step target.

The way that standardised assessments attempt this is important. One approach is to have a mixture of easy, medium and hard questions from that part of the curriculum.

Another approach is to include questions above and/or below the lock-step target.

In practice, many standardised assessments attempt a mixture of both approaches.

Standardised assessments are usually fairly short in length, containing around 30 or 40 question items. In a lock-step model, this is okay: almost all of what is tested lines up with what has been covered in class. So when a teacher runs the same standardised assessment at the beginning and end of the year, they can usually see the growth students have made in that targeted area.

All of these standardised assessments are designed to pick up students’ lock-step learning, and are road-tested and calibrated using students in lock-step schools.

Standardised Assessments and Continuum Teaching

Continuum teaching is a model in which every student is taught different material at the same time, based on their point of need. We know from research that there is a five to six year gap between the most advanced and least advanced students in a class in most subjects. In mathematics classes, the spread can be up to eight years.

As a result, for example, a year 7 student could be taught material from levels 3, 4 and 5 in the Australian Curriculum (equivalent to levels 3, 4 and 5 in the Victorian Curriculum, or Key Stages 2 and 3 in the NSW Syllabus).

However, another year 7 student in the same class could be taught material from levels 8, 9 and 10 in the Australian Curriculum (equivalent to levels 8, 9 and 10 in the Victorian Curriculum, or Key Stages 4, 5.1 and 5.2 in the NSW Syllabus).

Over the course of a year, students will learn new mathematics from these different areas. But this may or may not be evident on a standardised assessment designed for lock-step teaching. The part of the continuum being assessed by the standardised assessment may not be the part of the continuum where actual student learning took place. This means that pre- and post- standardised assessment results could look very similar, even for a student who has in reality made three or four years’ growth.

This is an extreme case, and would not apply equally to all students or all standardised assessments. However, it is logical to expect there to be some effect of this type. Across a cohort, we would expect the effect to be particularly visible if one or more of the below were true:

• Scenario 1: A large proportion of students are learning parts of the continuum which are well below their age level

• Scenario 2: A large proportion of students are learning parts of the continuum which are well above their age level

• Scenario 3: The standardised assessment spans less than the full level 0 to level 10 range

• Scenario 4: The standardised assessment relies upon a very small number of assessment items which would be sensitive to growth at high levels or low levels

Recommendations to Schools with Continuum Teaching

The results from standardised assessments built for lock-step teaching cannot be taken at face value. Careful interpretation is needed. In particular, schools should always check to see whether Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4 apply in their situation. If they do, then this can invalidate the use of a standardised assessment for measuring growth. The data from such assessments can still be of some use, but only if examined item-by-item for a very specific purpose.

As continuum teaching becomes increasingly popular in Australian schools, it is likely that new standardised assessments will be produced which work in this model. In the interim, Maths Pathway’s diagnostic assessments are playing this role for many schools.

This adaptive assessment is not built around any assumptions about a student’s age, and is benchmarked firmly against curriculum standards. The full assessment also takes several hours to complete, which is why it is broken up into four sections which can each take a full lesson. A very high level of granularity is required to scan the full continuum and locate specific gaps and competencies, with many hundreds of assessment items used rather than 30 or 40.

This makes the Maths Pathway diagnostic assessment a much more sensitive, and sensible, approach to measuring and tracking student growth in a continuum teaching model than classic standardised assessments.

We hope that more full continuum assessments will emerge in the near future. In the interim, it is important for us to treat lock-step standardised assessment data with caution.

1. Choosing the task

2. Deciding on what you're assessing

3. Structuring the week of work

Step 1 - Choose the rich learning task / activity

When planning any project, you will first need to decide on the main "body" of the project. This decision is often made with Step 2 in mind already, because the focus of the assessment may influence your choice of activity.

For example, if you want to focus on the organisation of data, look for an activity that has a great need of this skill.

Once the rich learning task (or activity) is chosen, you will still need to do any normal preparation for this activity outside of the steps outlined in this article.

For example, prepare any materials and/or prompting questions.

Step 2 - Decide on the assessment criteria

See also: How to assess projects

Once you have chosen the activity, you should consolidate the expectations for the project and the assessment criteria.

• What criteria are you going to focus on assessing?

• How will you be assessing each criteria?

• Will students need to produce a journal?

• Will students need to give a presentation?

• Will students be creating a physical artefact to assess (e.g. cardboard model)?

Depending on the result of these decisions, you will also need to produce the appropriate materials.

For example: teacher facing rubric, student facing rubric, student reflection tool, journal writing framework for students, etc.

Examples of rubrics made for the following rich learning tasks:

• Star Polygons and the Example rubric

• Square Counting and the Example rubric

• Finding Slopes and the Example rubric

Step 3 - Structure/schedule the week

Projects are designed to run over a week. The number of periods allocated will vary from school to school, but in general you can distribute the following elements across your timetabled classes for the week:

1. Introduce the project expectations and assessment criteria

2. Run the rich learning task / activity

3. Students write their journal - optional

4. Students provide peer feedback on journals - optional

5. Students improve their journal - optional

6. Reflect on project

Examples of project week timetables for Maths Pathway Classic

 In addition to the overarching week-long structure, each project lesson should be structured with a mini reflection at the start and end of the lesson:

• Start each lesson having students recap the last lesson (if applicable), where they got to in the project, and what they’re going to do in during the current lesson.

• Finish each lesson having students share where they got to in the project, and what their plans are for the next lesson.

A range of different skills and strategies can be emphasised and developed during rich lessons and projects. When assessing these skills in a project, it is recommended to choose a small subset of these skills to focus on.

Many skills will still be present during most rich lessons and projects, but it can be quite overwhelming for students (and teachers) to need to demonstrate (and recognise) proficiency across so many areas. For this reason we recommend focusing on a tightened set of assessment criteria that are most important for the given project.

This document includes 12 examples of criteria appropriate for assessment through a project:

Examples of rubric criteria

Linked below is a template you may wish to use for your rubric: It is recommended that you choose only three criteria to focus on that best suit the aims of your project.

Project rubric template

 What isn't assessed:

Projects are a great way to assess a variety of different skills, but mathematical content shouldn't be one of them. The reason for this is that we already know that students' learning profiles and mastery of content look completely different. Throughout the term they will be working on many different mathematical ideas across many different levels through their modules and mini lessons.

Although some students may touch on similar mathematical content during rich learning tasks, it is not expected for them to demonstrate equivalent understanding of this content to their peers, so it wouldn't be fair to all of a sudden require them to demonstrate that during a project.

We want projects to assess how students approach and solve a problem using whatever mathematical tools are available to them.

How to assess:

For each criterion you choose to assess, you should consider how you can best assess success in that criterion. You may wish to choose a combination of assessment methods for the same criteria

e.g. teacher assessment of a student's written journal as well as the student's own reflection. 

In some cases, your own observation may be the best/only way to assess demonstration of a certain skill. In other cases, you may require the student to produce an artefact (e.g. journal) or give a presentation.

The table below is an example of how you might categorise the different ways of assessing criteria in projects that include a written journal:

If you choose to assess students’ projects through a written journal, it is strongly recommended that you provide them with a structure or framework for the journal.

The document below is an example of a framework you can provide students to help them write their journal. You might choose to vary or add to the questions depending on what criteria you’ve chosen to focus on in the rubric.

Journal writing framework for students