As part of one of the undergraduate Bachelor of Education units offered as a specialisation unit in primary mathematics education at The University of Notre Dame Australia, the pre-service teachers were asked to complete an assignment. In this assignment they were given 12 typical algebra text book problems which they were asked to solve and then…

Although number sense is difficult to define, it involves having a good intuition about numbers and their relationships, including the ability to have a "feel" for the relative size of numbers and to make reasonable estimations. Students with good number sense typically recognise the relative magnitude of numbers, appreciate the effect of…

In providing a continued focus on tasks and activities that help to illustrate key ideas embedded in the new Australian Curriculum, this issue the authors focus, on Geometry in the Measurement and Geometry strand with strong links for an integrated focus on the Statistics and Probability strand. The small unit of work on the sorting and…

From 1999-2005, the Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts (MIC) project was implemented by the Board of Studies, New South Wales (NSW), in conjunction with the NSW Department of Education and Training, and academics from two universities. MIC project members worked with schools and communities at two sites: a primary school in an urban community in…

In this article, the author talks about an allegorical tale which he has written as a message for teachers of mathematics. The story is about Gordon, who led a flock of small sheep. Gordon was a mathematics genius; however, his flock criticized his teaching of numbers and his boring lectures. His furry-god-farmer advised him to share his…