In response to increasing teacher interest in how to design and implement effective challenging tasks, James presents the Launch/Explore/Discuss model that builds on the work of leading Australian educators and researchers Peter Sullivan, Doug Clarke, and Charles Lovitt.

All students should have access to learning experiences that help them make sense of important mathematical concepts. This study highlights teacher actions for consolidating student learning during teacher-lead discussion in the early years. We report on a case study of a Year 1 teacher involving a lesson observation. Highlights of the lesson…

Using children's literature to support mathematics instruction has been connected to positive academic outcomes and learning dispositions; however, less is known about the use of audiovisual based narrative mediums to support student mathematical learning experiences. The current exploratory, qualitative study involved teaching three lessons based…

This paper reports on early years teachers and how often they should devote planning time to anticipating student responses in advance of the lesson. Sixty-five Foundation to Year 2 teachers (students 5-8 years of age) completed questionnaires at the beginning and end of a year-long research-based professional development program. Participants…

The authors describe a mathematics lesson designed to allow students to use their own thinking to solve elapsed time problems. Their approach emphasises student-centered structured inquiry, and follows a 'Launch, Explore and Summarise' format.

In this article, the authors emphasise the importance of purposeful mathematical discussion and using sequences of connected, cumulative, and challenging tasks in advancing students' spatial reasoning in the early years of schooling.

Differentiating instruction can be difficult, however, when higher performing students yearn to be stretched and lower performing students benefit from scaffolded support. One way to meet these students' learning needs and everyone in-between is to embrace the notion of novel exploration in support of critical school mathematics concepts. Novelty…

James Russo begins a discussion of the difficulty and time-consuming activity of Googling to find lesson plans and resources to keep his lessons more interesting and engaging, since such resources seem particularly scarce for math teachers. Russo writes that joining professional associations has given him ready access to higher quality resources…

Engaging students in a challenging (cognitively demanding) task and launching a mathematics lesson with a task before instruction are two characteristics of a reform-oriented approach to mathematics instruction often considered together. The authors systematically contrasted teaching with challenging tasks using a task-first lesson structure with…

This paper outlines a seven-step process for developing problem-solving tasks informed by cognitive load theory. Through an example of a task developed for Year 2 students, we show how this approach can be used to produce challenging mathematical tasks that aim to optimise cognitive load for each student.