Explicit Teaching of Numeracy
The explicit teaching of numeracy remained a focus in 2024 with Year 7 and 8 classes having an explicit Numeracy lessons embedded into each topic as a part of their Mathematics classes programming. In these lessons, teachers focused on using the CUBES strategy to explicitly teach problem solving enabling students to improve their confidence, skills and mathematical resilience to solve multi-step, word-based numeracy problems. To support improved numeracy development, students engaged with higher order numeracy problems targeted to those involving multi-layer information, often using graphs and tables.
Whole school implementation of numeracy problem solving indicated that teachers were identifying numeracy opportunities within subjects across the school and explicitly teaching numeracy across the curriculum through the CUBES problem solving strategy. Teachers implemented a range of strategies and used the WBHS Numeracy Toolkit to support the whole school numeracy focus. His was supported through check-ins with teachers and student work samples. Some of the strategies that form part of our WBHS Numeracy Toolkit are shown below.
Numeracy Assessments
Students in Year 7 and 9 completed NAPLAN Numeracy assessments in 2024. In Year 9, 72.8% of students met or exceeded expectations, while in Year 7, 74.6% of students met or exceeded expectations. The Year 9 NAPLAN results have shown significant improvement, outperforming both state and similar school trend data. This upward trajectory reflects the effectiveness of targeted teaching strategies, intervention programs, and student engagement initiatives. Compared to previous years, our students have demonstrated stronger growth across key numeracy domains, narrowing achievement gaps and exceeding expected progress benchmarks. This improvement not only highlights the dedication of our staff and students but also reinforces our commitment to continuous academic excellence.
Foundations testing
At the beginning of 2024, 189 Year 7 students completed the foundations check in test. This data was used to ascertain what level of skills students are coming to us with from primary school. The Maths faculty implemented the Ninja Maths Program to target foundation skills. Teachers of all stage 4 classes spent the first 10 minutes of each lesson on core foundation skills and results were recorded each lesson. During week 6 of term three, students were again tested. The data below shows the impact of this program in conjunction with high quality teaching and learning.
