In Leading Improvement in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Emeritus Professor Peter Sullivan curates high-impact teaching strategies and practices to help school leaders achieve improvement goals. This extract for Teacher’s bookshelf is on choosing classroom tasks.

Mathematics education has been a clear focus of our editorial content this month, and in this episode of Teacher Staffroom, we’re going to share some of the highlights. At the same time, we’ll be sharing some pieces on curriculum reform and requirements, as well as some contributions written by teachers, school leaders and researchers.

The International Mathematical Modeling Challenge asks students to work collaboratively on a mathematical task related to the real world. Here, Ross Turner, who leads Australia’s involvement in the challenge, describes this year’s task.

An international mathematical modelling competition, open to secondary students in Australia, has seen senior secondary students work collaboratively on a complex, real-world mathematics problem. Here, we speak to two teachers who guided students through the competition.

How do students feel about the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it has had on their education? During the school lockdowns experienced across the country, Butler College in Western Australia captured student voice via an online survey, gathering a snapshot of how students were feeling about the pandemic.

Mathematics teacher Holly Millican shares three activities she uses in her classroom to support her lessons on ratio, and help students relate the concepts they’re learning to everyday scenarios.

In today’s reader submission Lanella Sweet, Extension and Enrichment Teacher at Wesley College in Melbourne, shares examples of classroom investigations designed to help students understand and develop their use of mathematical language, and its links with other areas of the curriculum.

As students return to classrooms after COVID-19 lockdowns, teachers should focus on rebuilding relationships, avoid rushing through missed content, and preference a deep understanding of a few topics over a superficial understanding of many, according to a new article published in the Mathematics Education Research Journal.

Southbank International School in London introduced a structured writing program in the primary years to improve students’ narrative writing. In today’s article, teacher Stefanie Waterman explains what they learned throughout the process.

Students can play an important part in co-decision making within a school that can impact not only their learning, but that of other learners also. In the Northern Territory, students have been leading change projects in their schools for the past four years.