ACARA CRASH 14: Backward Thinking

This one we really don’t get. It concerns Foundation and Year 1 Number, and was pointed out to us by Mr. Big.

We began the Crash series by critiquing the draft curriculum’s approach to counting in Foundation. Our main concern was the painful verbosity and the real-world awfulness, but we also provided a cryptic hint of one specifically puzzling aspect. The draft curriculum’s content descriptor on counting is as follows:

“establish understanding of the language and processes of counting to quantify, compare, order and make correspondences between collections, initially to 20, and explain reasoning” (draft curriculum)

“explain reasoning”. Foundation kids.

OK, let’s not get distracted; we’ve already bashed this nonsense. Here, we’re interested in the accompanying elaborations. There are ten of them, which one would imagine incorporates any conceivable manner in which one might wish to elaborate on counting. One would be wrong.

The corresponding content descriptor in the current Mathematics Curriculum is as follows:

“Establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from any starting point” (current curriculum)

Notice how much more “cluttered” is the current descriptor… OK, OK stay focussed.

The current descriptor on counting has just (?) four elaborations, including the following two:

“identifying the number words in sequence, backwards and forwards, and reasoning with the number sequences, establishing the language on which subsequent counting experiences can be built” (current curriculum, emphasis added)

“developing fluency with forwards and backwards counting in meaningful contexts, including stories and rhymes” (current curriculum, emphasis added)

The point is, these elaborations also emphasise counting backwards, which seems an obvious idea to introduce and an obvious skill to master. And which is not even hinted at in any of the ten elaborations of the draft counting descriptor.

Why would the writers of the draft curriculum do that? Why would they consciously eliminate backward counting from Foundation? We’re genuinely perplexed. It is undoubtedly a stupid idea, but we cannot imagine the thought process that would lead to this stupid idea.

OK, we know what you’re thinking: it’s part of their dumbing down – maybe “dumbing forward” is a more apt expression – and they’ve thrown backward counting into Year 1. Well, no. In Year 1, students are introduce to the idea of skip-counting. And, yep, you know where this is going. So we’ll, um, skip to the end.

The current Curriculum has two elaborations of the skip-counting descriptor, one of which emphasises the straight, pure ability to count numbers backwards. And the draft curriculum? There are four elaborations on skip-counting, suggesting in turn the counting of counters in a jar, pencils, images of birds, and coins. Counting unadorned numbers? Forget it. And counting backwards? What, are you nuts?

OK, so eventually the draft curriculum seems, somehow, to get around to kids counting backwards, to look at “additive pattern sequences” and possibly to solve “subtraction problems”. The content descriptors are so unstructured and boneless, and the elaborations so vague and cluttered, it is difficult to tell. But how are the kids supposed to get there? Where is the necessary content description or elaboration:

Teach the little monsters to count backwards.

If it is there, somewhere in the draft curriculum, we honestly can’t see it. And if it is not there, that it is simply insane.