How can we engage all primary school students in rich mathematical learning, support them to make connections, and develop their mathematical language and reasoning? In this article, we draw on one school's experience in considering an approach to mathematics instruction that could support teachers in addressing this question, specifically…

In this article, the author describes how to help develop students' conceptual understanding of fractions through the tactical card-based game Nearest to One. Nearest to One promotes number-sense based strategies for comparing fractions, such as benchmarking (e.g., Is the fraction greater or less than one-half?) and building to the next whole,…

Despite a focus on teaching mathematics through challenging, problem solving tasks, there has been limited research into student attitudes towards these learning experiences. To address this gap in the literature, we asked 52 Australian primary students who had recently experienced mathematics taught in this manner to convey their feelings about…

Mathematical games are widely used in the primary classroom; however, not all games are equally valuable. How might teachers decide which specific games to introduce? The authors present five principles of educationally-rich games to help teachers address this issue. In so doing, they provide teachers with a usable framework to stimulate…

This article describes activities in which students deepen their relational understanding of the equals sign through exploring inequalities in a competitive dice game, built around the familiar fairy-tale "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Big Bad Wolf." The activity can be adapted to different abilities by choosing more or less…