Learning mathematics creates opportunities and enriches student’s lives. It develops the numeracy capabilities that all students need in their personal, work and civic life, and provides the fundamentals on which mathematical specialties and professional applications of mathematics are built.

 The Learning Area of Mathematics aims to provide programs which encourage students to develop the following skills to the best of their ability:

• To be confident, creative users and communicators of mathematics, able to investigate, represent and interpret situations in their personal and work lives and as active citizens
• To develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of mathematical concepts and fluency with processes, and be able to reason and pose and solve problems in Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability
• To recognise connections between the areas of mathematics and other disciplines and appreciate mathematics as an accessible and enjoyable discipline to study.

Years 7 to 10

Students will be introduced to more abstract ideas in their mathematics learning. Through key activities such as the exploration, recognition and application of patterns, the capacity for abstract thought can be developed and the ways of thinking associated with abstract ideas can be illustrated.

Students need to be able to represent numbers in a variety of ways; to develop an understanding of the benefits of algebra, through building algebraic models and applications and the various applications of geometry; to estimate and select appropriate units of measure; to explore ways of working with data to allow a variety of representations; and to make predictions about events based on their observations.

Years 11 and 12

 Elective studies in Mathematics:

General Mathematics: provides courses of study for a broad range of students. Areas of study include statistics, graphs of linear relations, geometry and trigonometry, matrices and business-related mathematics. Appropriate use of technology is incorporated throughout the course.

Mathematical Methods: provides courses of study for students looking at studying tertiary mathematics. Students are expected to be able to apply techniques, routines and processes involving rational and real arithmetic, algebraic manipulation, solving equations, sketching graphs, differentiation and integration with and without the use of technology, as applicable. Students should be familiar with relevant mental and by hand approaches in simple cases.

Specialist Mathematics: provides a course of study for students who wish to undertake an in-depth study of mathematics, with an emphasis on concepts, skills and processes related to mathematical structure, modelling, problem solving and reasoning. This study has a focus on interest in the discipline of mathematics in its own right and investigation of a broad range of applications, as well as the development of a sound background for further studies in mathematics and related fields.

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