Articles & Videos

Making iMaths your maths program

Paper airplane

Subscribe to our newsletters

Receive teaching resources and tips, exclusive special offers, useful product information and more!

Subscribe

Back to articles & videos

Making iMaths your maths program

iMaths 21/5/13

“teacher-smiling“

Note: iMaths is in its final year and will be discontinued at the end of 2024. If you’re looking for a primary maths resource written for the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0, explore Maths Trek.

Starting a new program can seem daunting, but using iMaths doesn’t mean tossing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s easy to make iMaths your maths program by tailoring it to complement your teaching, your students and your own favourite activities you’ve spent so long developing and love doing with your students.

Be flexible with your timing

Design your yearly program to suit your students and your school. If your students are really enjoying a Topic and you want to spend more time on it, or you need to repeat Topics where students require further practice, you can easily adjust your program at any time. Just use the iPlanner to track what you have taught and what you have left to teach.

A Year 2 teacher had her students tackle the Show Time Investigation while their local show was on. Students were struggling with some of the money concepts so she encouraged them to think beyond the Investigation. To further develop their skills, students created a side-show alley with scoring and paying customers – just like the real show! 

Be flexible with your delivery

Be inspired and use iMaths to apply your preferred teaching approach. Supporting all types of teaching strategies, iMaths allows you to be as structured or as flexible as you wish. Need to focus on group work? Schedule in an Investigation! Organise your students into groups, set your expectations and then watch them practise real-life skills.

You have the freedom to vary the resources you use in your lessons – don’t feel that every page of your students’ workbooks have to be filled in. Use the online tools instead to mix it up. Annotate the Student Book pages projected on your electronic whiteboard, or use with iPads! Use these formats for group and individual tasks to encourage independent learning.   

Or link to your literacy focus! A Year 5 teacher linked the Race around Australia Investigation to the Australian Curriculum by drawing on the children’s story Possum Magic, by Mem Fox. The story describes the two main characters’ adventures as they tour Australia. The iMaths Investigation has students research whether it is possible to fly all the way around Australia in less than 24 hours. Perfect cross-over!

Be flexible with your students

As your class has students of differing abilities, you’ll need to vary your teaching and activities to accommodate for this. Try using the support and consolidation Differentiation tasks for struggling students, or the extension Differentiation tasks, Challenges or Problem Solving tasks on the Topic pages to keep those fast finishers engaged.

Be flexible with your assessment

Choose from a variety of assessment strategies to form a clear idea of where your students are, where they’re going and how best to get them there. For a formal assessment at the beginning of the year, use the Readiness Test. Or to assess your class quickly, take an activity from a Topic page in the Student Book and do it as a group. 

Want to assess students at the end of a unit of work? Try combining Topic pages, Differentiation tasks and Tracker Book activities. Look at work samples and encourage students to explain their own work to asses their learning. Use the Investigation Rubrics to give students an A-E ranking, assessing their performance in the Proficiency strands.  

Be flexible with your resources

If your school isn’t yet using iMaths as a program, that shouldn’t stop you from introducing Investigations to your classroom. Dip your toe in and use iMaths Online to complement your existing teaching. Or get the full program and you’re ready to try out iMaths as your comprehensive maths program.

iMaths provides everything you need to tailor your maths program. If you’re not yet confident enough to customise it or you prefer a more prescribed approach, use our structure and suggested sequence to make sure you’ve got the Australian Curriculum covered.

More iMaths articles & videos