Rationale
Learning mathematics creates opportunities for and enriches the lives of all Australians. The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides students with essential mathematical skills and knowledge in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability.Aims
The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics aims to ensure that students:are confident, creative users and communicators of mathematics, able to investigate, represent and interpret situations in their personal and work lives and as active citizens.
Key ideas
In Mathematics, the key ideas are the proficiency strands of understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning. The proficiency strands describe the actions in which students can engage when learning and using the content.Structure
The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics is organised around the interaction of three content strands and four proficiency strands.The content strands are number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. They describe what is to be taught and learnt.
PDF documents
Resources and support materials for the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics are available as PDF documents.Mathematics: Sequence of content
Mathematics: Sequence of achievement
Glossary
Year 8
Year 8 Level Description
The proficiency strands understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning are an integral part of mathematics content across the three content strands: number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. The proficiencies reinforce the significance of working mathematically within the content and describe how the content is explored or developed. They provide the language to build in the developmental aspects of the learning of mathematics. The achievement standards reflect the content and encompass the proficiencies.
At this year level:
- understanding includes describing patterns involving indices and recurring decimals, identifying commonalities between operations with algebra and arithmetic, connecting rules for linear relations with their graphs, explaining the purpose of statistical measures and explaining measurements of perimeter and area
- fluency includes calculating accurately with simple decimals, indices and integers; recognising equivalence of common decimals and fractions including recurring decimals; factorising and simplifying basic algebraic expressions and evaluating perimeters and areas of common shapes and volumes of three-dimensional objects
- problem-solving includes formulating and modelling practical situations involving ratios, profit and loss, areas and perimeters of common shapes and using two-way tables and Venn diagrams to calculate probabilities
- reasoning includes justifying the result of a calculation or estimation as reasonable, deriving probability from its complement, using congruence to deduce properties of triangles, finding estimates of means and proportions of populations.
Year 8 Content Descriptions
Year 8 Achievement Standards
By the end of Year 8, students solve everyday problems involving rates, ratios and percentages. They describe index laws and apply them to whole numbers. They describe rational and irrational numbers. Students solve problems involving profit and loss. They make connections between expanding and factorising algebraic expressions. Students solve problems relating to the volume of prisms. They make sense of time duration in real applications. They identify conditions for the congruence of triangles and deduce the properties of quadrilaterals. Students model authentic situations with two-way tables and Venn diagrams. They choose appropriate language to describe events and experiments. They explain issues related to the collection of data and the effect of outliers on means and medians in that data.
Students use efficient mental and written strategies to carry out the four operations with integers. They simplify a variety of algebraic expressions. They solve linear equations and graph linear relationships on the Cartesian plane. Students convert between units of measurement for area and volume. They perform calculations to determine perimeter and area of parallelograms, rhombuses and kites. They name the features of circles and calculate the areas and circumferences of circles. Students determine the probabilities of complementary events and calculate the sum of probabilities.