Lifting student outcomes in numeracy and maths
Pleasant Street Primary school tell us their successful story.
A united approach to teaching maths has reaped rewards for student outcomes and engagement at Pleasant Street Primary School.
The school’s latest NAPLAN results showed its Year 5 students achieved 33% growth, a significantly higher figure than similar schools.
Leading teacher Sacha Giurietto said a whole-of-school approach to teaching maths had lifted outcomes for students at the school.
She said the school had found, using the evidence of what worked best for the largest number of students, that explicit teaching of maths was the best way to lift student achievement.
This included using the maths review model where classes spend 20 minutes before every lesson going through the concepts they had already learned.
‘Our research showed that if we don’t review learning, it doesn’t go into the long-term memory, but it does so quite effectively if we use the review model and explicit teaching of that maths content,’ Ms Giurietto said.
Teachers also used ‘cold calling’ and mini whiteboards when asking students to answer questions in class, meaning every student writes an answer and any student could expect to be called on by their teacher to answer a question at any time.
‘It’s phenomenal to see the change in the students and teachers and what they have taken on board in a pretty short amount of time,’ Assistant Principal Jen Bahr said.
‘Our teaching and learning has been taken to the next level.’
Updated 27 March 2026
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