In the classroom
St Albans Heights Primary School — St Albans, Victoria
St Albans Heights serves a community where more than half the students are learning mathematics in a language that isn’t spoken at home. If a methodology can work here — with these children, in these conditions — it can work anywhere.
It worked here.
Students were learning operations in isolation. They could sometimes produce a correct answer without understanding why it was correct — or how addition, subtraction, and multiplication connected to each other. Word problems were particularly difficult. For students still developing English, the language of mathematics felt like a second barrier on top of a first one.
Teachers needed something that didn’t rely on verbal explanation alone. Something a child could hold, move, and see.
The school introduced the Linear Abacus methodology across all year levels — Foundation through Grade 6. Every concept was taught through physical materials first. Children built numbers with their hands before they wrote them on a page. They talked about what they noticed before they were asked to calculate.
Mathematical language was introduced consistently, paired with gesture and visual models, so that EAL students had multiple ways into every concept — not just words.
Teachers were surprised by what their students could do. Grade 5 and 6 students grasped volume and metric conversion concepts that the Australian Curriculum now places in Year 8 — not because the content was simplified, but because their foundational understanding was strong enough to carry them there.
The tasks really consolidated the concept of subtraction as a difference. Repeated exposure to phrases like ‘how many more,’ paired with the hands-on model, reinforced this understanding effectively.
— Level 3/4 Teachers, St Albans Heights Primary School
One of the teachers at St Albans Heights used the Additive Thinking Flashcards at home with her own children. Her words say something that data alone cannot.
Since integrating these additive thinking flashcards into our routine, I’ve seen significant improvement in my children’s addition and subtraction skills. They particularly enjoy the engaging illustrations and word problems. As both a teacher and mother, I have found these to be invaluable tools.
— Tram Nguyen, Teacher and parent, St Albans Heights Primary School
The Linear Abacus does not ask children to memorise more. It asks them to understand what they are doing — and why it works. At St Albans Heights, that shift produced results that held, year after year, in one of the most challenging teaching environments in Victoria.
It is the same shift available to any child. Including yours.
