PA's new math curriculum, Math in Focus, teaches students to use concrete, pictorial, and abstract thinking skills to build understanding with a focus on problem solving and algebraic thinking. Students learn concepts and skills through visual lessons and teacher instruction. Concepts and skills are consolidated with practice, activities, and math journal reflections for mastery and applied by extensive practice through real-life problem solving and challenges.

Math in Focus enables students to become strategic problem solvers by following the Singapore Mathematics Framework listed below:

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
• Model with mathematics
• Use appropriate tools strategically
• Attend to precision
• Look for and make use of structure
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Students learn skills by visually understanding the “why” and “how”. Consistent use of concrete, pictorial, and abstract representations leads to a full understanding of concepts.

Find out more about our Lower School curriculum below.