This study reports on the capabilities of 53 Year 4 students as they completed the final stages of their first complete statistical investigation. In the context of becoming acquainted with students in a sister school in another city, students in both schools wrote and refined questions, which were answered by all students in an on-line survey.…

The importance of ratio and proportional reasoning is regularly emphasised, however, the teaching and learning of these concepts continues to present challenges. In this article the authors explore a hands-on task, designed to encourage student visualisation of the concept of ratio. Teacher perceptions of this task were positive, indicating the…

Working within the context of a contest to find the most beautiful tourist attraction in the world, Year 5 students investigate the most symmetric building from a short-list of three iconic buildings. This involves investigating both line and rotational symmetry in order to make an informed decision about the symmetrical nature of each building.

This article looks at a simple geometry problem that also involves some reasoning about number combinations, and show how it was used in a Year 7 classroom. The problem is accessible to students with a wide range of abilities, and provides scope for stimulating extensive discussion and reasoning in the classroom, as well as an opportunity for…

This study explored the potential of a rich assessment task to reveal students' multiplicative thinking in respect to a hypothetical learning trajectory. Thirty pairs of students in grades 5 and 6 attempted the task. Twenty-two pairs applied multiplicative structure to find the number of items in arrays. However counting and computational errors…

Students explored variation and expectation in a probability activity at the end of the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study across grades 4-6. The activity involved experiments in tossing coins both manually and with simulation using the graphing software, "TinkerPlots." Initial responses indicated that the students were aware of…

This article describes the Australian Informatics Competition (AIC), a non-programming competition aimed at identifying students with potential in programming and algorithmic design. It is the first step in identifying students to represent Australia at the International Olympiad in Informatics. The main aim of the AIC is to increase awareness of…