Learning

Mathematics

In the same way that students describe themselves as "authors" or "artists", a school's mathematics programme should also provide students with the opportunity to see themselves as "mathematicians", where they enjoy and are enthusiastic when exploring and learning about mathematics.

PYP Mathematics Scope and Sequence, IBO 2007

The mathematics curriculum is organised into a standards framework. Standards describe the common expectations across all years in the Junior School. For example, there are two standards for geometry in our curriculum, one describes an expectation that students will learn about and solve problems involving shapes and another describing learning expectations for spatial understandings. Students will study shape and space from the primary years through the intermediate years.

Specific learning outcomes for each grade level are described by benchmarks. The benchmarks build upon one another from year to year. Students in the early grades learn fundamental properties of shape, while later grades construct and build shapes to discover more sophisticated understandings of those properties.

The standards and benchmarks framework emphasizes problem solving. The framework describes the specific mathematical skills and knowledge students should gain through the years. These are taught so that students will have the mathematical tools necessary to solve ever more challenging problems.

Mathematics Strands

In the Junior School, the larger part of our mathematics study focuses on number concepts.

This is especially true in the primary years where children learn to count and learn the basic operations in arithmetic. In our programme, students build their sense of number alongside their ability to calculate.

In the later years, number becomes a tool to understand other mathematical ideas across the standards. The key topics in our number standard are: counting, comparing and ordering numbers, place value, computation and rational numbers.

We study shape and space in our work in geometry.

In the early years students describe common two- dimensional and three-dimensional shapes according to their geometric attributes.

In later grades, students build and construct shapes to study other properties that define shapes.

Students learn about orientation and mapping in the early years. In the later years students describe location and function on the Cartesian plane.

In measurement we focus on the unit of measurement and how different types of units of measurement describe the world in different ways.

From third grade on, students work with standard metric measures to describe length, mass and volume.

Time is a focus in second and third grades with students learning to read clocks. This is followed by work elapsed time and timelines.

In the primary classrooms, students begin by measuring things in their everyday world.

Mathematics has been described as the science of patterns.

Older students extend their understanding of patterns to look for relationships in numbers and to solve problems.

Students in the lower grades learn to find pattern in the routines of the day and to build patterns with objects.

Statistics allow us to describe and to make sense of the world around us.

Students collect, organize and describe data in order to make inferences, see trends and make comparisons.

Students consider data in terms of probability as well, describing possibilities in terms of likelihoods.

The problem solving standard cuts across all the mathematics learning in the Junior School.

There are three aspects to problem solving which we emphasize: strategies, connections and representations.

We want students to be strategic in their use of mathematical ideas when solving problems; some mathematical ideas are bettered suited for some kinds of problems.

We want students to connect mathematical ideas; a problem in geometry may require some skill in measurement or a description of pattern.

We want our students to describe their problem solving using numbers, symbols, graphs and models.