Focus: Number and Algebra
Target Group: NSW Common Grade Cohorts
School: Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School, Wyoming (NSW)
Rationale (Why)
Semester 1 2025 data from Essential Assessment (EA) reveals mixed progress across year levels in the Number and Algebra strand:
- No year level achieved the expected growth benchmark of 0.5 curriculum levels when looking at the data collected from the NSW common grade assessment.
- Number and Algebra pre/mid. There was growth evident when all assessments for this strand were considered (see below).
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- Years 3 and 4 made the most progress (+0.25), while Years 1 and 6 showed no growth.
- Years 2 and 5 recorded negative growth (-0.25), indicating possible regression or conceptual gaps.
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This highlights the possibility that students may appear to retain information when assessed immediately after teaching, but struggle to retrieve it after a longer interval—such as the mid-assessment five months later—indicating that learning may not yet be secure. By embedding My Numeracy into daily instruction, educators can use real-time data to address misconceptions, reinforce key concepts, and strengthen understanding to improve performance over time and support long-term retention.
Hypothesis
Implementing daily review and check-for-understanding strategies can strengthen retention and improve learning over time. When supported by My Numeracy, these approaches are more easily embedded in practice and are expected to lead to increased growth from Semester One results across each cohort.
Intervention Strategy
Using EA’s NSW Common Grade cohort data, teachers can:
- Identify content organisers where fewer than 80% of students have demonstrated understanding at grade level.
- Select targeted My Numeracy activities for those concepts.
- Implement daily review tasks that are responsive to student learning needs.
- After explicit instruction, allocate My Numeracy tasks to check for understanding, and use the associated printable worksheets for further consolidation and practice.
This targeted approach ensures classroom time is used effectively to reinforce essential skills that data indicates were not retained in the mid-assessment. It provides students with regular opportunities to revise and retrieve prior learning, embedding understanding through repeated exposure. It also allows students to articulate their thinking and problem-solving strategies, fostering metacognition. Teachers can offer timely oral feedback and respond adaptively to both individual and whole-class understanding in the moment.
Implementation Plan
- Learning Intentions: Use “I Can” statements aligned to targeted concepts.
- Student Motivation: Use “I Can” STAR posters as a whole-class to celebrate achievement and track progress visibly.
- Spaced Practice: Assign My Numeracy activities from previously taught concepts to support spaced revision and concept retrieval.
- Check for Understanding: Monitor weekly progress using EA data and adjust instruction accordingly.
Support Structures: Use printable worksheets for individual and small-group reinforcement.
- Being responsive: Use live data to track ‘check for understanding’, and use this achievement as motivation for further learning.
During Term 3 and 4, educators will utilise cohort data to introduce weekly review routines that:
- Consolidate previously taught concepts.
- Provide opportunities for retrieval practice.
- Support spaced and spiralled learning through targeted activity selection.
Assessment Capability
To ensure accurate and meaningful post-assessment data:
- Teachers will reinforce the purpose of assessment with students.
- Apply appropriate best-fit levels to match each student’s ZPD.
- Front-load critical vocabulary.
- Orientate students to the assessment format and expectations to reduce cognitive load and increase confidence.
Post-Assessment Analysis
In Term 4, after assessments are completed:
- Compare mid- and post-assessment data for each year level.
- Measure growth across cohorts and evaluate against Semester 1 (pre- to mid-assessment) data.
- Determine the effectiveness of the daily review model and identify which year levels benefitted most.
Timeline: Term 3 – Term 4, 2025
T3, Week 1 | Focus: Analyse Semester 1 data. Identify key gaps. Set Action Research goals with the teaching teams.
T3, Weeks 2–10 | Focus: Implement My Numeracy daily review. Introduce data reviews to guide spaced practice, consolidation, and retrieval. Track student progress using STAR posters. Use worksheets for added support.
T4, Weeks 1–6 | Focus: Continue review cycles.
T4, Weeks 7–8 | Focus: Adjust task selection based on data. Prepare students for assessments (best-fit, vocabulary, orientation). Administer post-assessments. Analyse data to measure growth between mid- and post-assessment.
T4, Weeks 9–10 | Focus: Reflect on outcomes. Share results. Document successes and areas for future focus in 2026.
Glossary
Check for Understanding
A formative assessment approach where teachers gather real-time feedback to gauge student comprehension and adjust instruction accordingly.
On EA: Setting My Numeracy tasks as a whole class, small group, or individually to complete independently and digitally.
Spaced Practice
The technique of revisiting content across multiple sessions over time to enhance long-term memory and deepen understanding.
On EA: Utilising the Commongrade assessments three times a year to track retention of knowledge and to inform next steps
Retrieval Practice / Daily Review
Retrieval practice is the act of recalling previously learned information without prompts, which strengthens memory and supports long-term retention. Daily review involves short, focused activities—often using mini whiteboards—to prompt students to retrieve key concepts from prior lessons. This low-stakes, high-impact strategy reinforces learning, surfaces misconceptions, and builds fluency over time.
On EA: Using My Numeracy, teachers can deliver five targeted questions per day. Each question is displayed on the classroom screen, allowing students to build schema with teacher guidance before responding on their mini whiteboards. Students are then encouraged to orally share their reasoning and working out, promoting metacognition and deeper understanding.
My Numeracy
A feature of EA that provides curriculum-aligned learning activities designed to consolidate understanding across content organisers and the four mathematical proficiencies. Tasks can be allocated at a whole-class, small-group, or individual level, and are available in both online and paper formats. Results offer instant formative feedback, are linked to student learning goals, and support both students and teachers in tracking progress over time.
What is Daily Review?
Results
Number and Algebra
Assessment and Growth Summary (K–6)
Overview
This report presents an analysis of student achievement and growth in Number and Algebra across Kindergarten to Year 6, drawing on pre-assessment, mid-year assessment, and end-of-year assessment data. The purpose of this analysis is to examine patterns of attainment and growth over time, identify strengths and emerging priorities, and inform instructional planning and growth targets moving into 2026.
Pre to Post Assessment: Attainment and Progress Across the Year
Across K–6, students demonstrate clear improvement from pre to post assessment in Number and Algebra, with all year levels showing positive movement across the year. This indicates that students, as a whole, made meaningful progress in core number concepts and that teaching programs supported learning advancement over time.
Early primary cohorts, particularly Year 1 and Year 5, show the strongest progress relative to expectations, reflecting effective consolidation of foundational number knowledge and increasing fluency. End-of-year attainment across most year levels sits close to expected benchmarks, suggesting that the majority of students are finishing the year with secure understanding of key content aligned to year-level expectations.
Graph 1: Pre–Post Assessment with Expectations by Year Level
This graph illustrates starting points, end-of-year outcomes, and expected benchmarks for each cohort, providing important context for interpreting growth patterns across the school.
End-of-Year Growth: Interpreting Progress Over Time
When growth is examined across the full year, all cohorts demonstrate positive growth, confirming that learning progressed over time. However, while progress is evident, most year levels did not yet reach the expected annual growth benchmark of 1.0, indicating that growth has been steady rather than accelerated in many cohorts.
Notably, Year 1 and Year 5 stand out as higher-growth cohorts, aligning with the stronger pre-to-post movement observed in the attainment data. In contrast, growth in the middle and upper primary years is more variable, highlighting an opportunity to strengthen instructional precision, extension, and depth to further lift growth outcomes.
Graph 2: End-of-Year Growth by Year Level (Expected Growth = 1.0)
This graph supports a clear distinction between attainment and growth, ensuring that end-of-year performance is interpreted alongside the rate of progress made across the year.
Mid-Year Growth: Diagnostic Checkpoint
Mid-year growth data provides an important diagnostic checkpoint. At this point in the year, growth across most cohorts was modest and below the expected mid-year benchmark, with variability evident between year levels. While Years K, 3, 4 and 5 showed positive progress by mid-year, Year 2 demonstrated a slight regression, signalling the need for targeted consolidation and instructional adjustment.
Crucially, this mid-year data informed professional dialogue and instructional refinement, prompting closer attention to essential content, prerequisite knowledge, and daily review routines.
Graph 3: Mid-Year Growth by Year Level (Expected Growth = 0.5)
Rather than serving as a judgement point, the mid-year data functioned as an early warning system, enabling timely and responsive changes to teaching practice.
Second-Half Improvement and Forward Momentum
Comparison of mid-year and end-of-year data indicates that learning accelerated in the second half of the year. Following mid-year analysis and instructional refinement, cohorts demonstrated stronger progress from mid to post assessment, resulting in improved overall growth outcomes by year’s end.
Although the 1.0 annual growth benchmark remains the long-term goal, the increased rate of progress observed in the second half of the year reflects improving instructional precision and growing effectiveness of teaching strategies. Importantly, cohorts that showed limited or uneven growth at mid-year demonstrated renewed improvement by the end of the year, suggesting that early challenges were successfully addressed rather than compounding over time.
This pattern indicates that the school is building learning momentum and is on track for projected growth, positioning it well to meet its growth targets in 2026.
Key Implications and Next Steps
The data highlights a school that is increasingly responsive to evidence, using assessment insights to refine practice and strengthen outcomes over time. To build on this momentum, the following priorities are recommended:
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- Continue to sharpen instructional precision, particularly in the middle and upper primary years.
- Maintain a strong focus on daily review and consolidation of essential number concepts.
- Strengthen opportunities for extension and depth to support accelerated growth
- Use mid-year data proactively as a decision-making checkpoint, rather than a retrospective measure.
By sustaining these practices, the school is well placed to convert late-year acceleration into consistent, sustained growth across all year levels in 2026.
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