Teacher guide QuickSmart: a numeracy and literacy program

TLF ID S7079

This teacher resource describes the literacy and numeracy interventions that comprised the QuickSmart program for students at or below the National Minimum Standard in literacy and numeracy in years 4-8. The resource is organised in nine sections: Summary, Target student group, Method, Results, Lessons learned, Next steps, Research base, Further reading and links, and Contacts. It describes how the program worked to improve students' information-retrieval times and their understanding of basic academic skills. It also describes the program's operation (withdrawal from class for 30 minutes three times a week for 30 weeks); its research and theoretical base; and the results it achieved.





Educational details

Educational value
  • This resource is valuable for primary and secondary schools that want to make a lasting difference for their students at or below the literacy and/or numeracy national minimum standards; to improve their National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results in years 5 and 7; and to bolster their attainment of the English and mathematics achievement standards in years 4 to 8. Developed by researchers from the National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, QuickSmart was shown to achieve statistically significant end-of-program and longitudinal gains for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other Australian students.
  • The Method, Results and Lessons learned sections are particularly helpful in describing how QuickSmart lessons concentrated on fluency, timed practice, assessment tasks and the development and use of effective strategies to achieve automatic recall of basic facts and skills, thus freeing working memory to allow students to undertake higher order mental processing. The strategy was particularly relevant for problem-solving in mathematics, higher levels of reading comprehension in English and the development of the Critical and creative general capability in all learning areas.
Year level

4; 5; 6; 7; 8

Learning area
  • English
  • Mathematics

Other details

Contributors
  • Contributor
  • Name: Education Services Australia
  • Organization: Education Services Australia
  • Description: Data manager
  • Copyright Holder
  • Name: Commonwealth of Australia
  • Organization: Commonwealth of Australia
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • URL: http://www.australia.gov.au
  • Publisher
  • Name: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Organization: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Description: Publisher
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • URL: http://www.esa.edu.au
  • Resource metadata contributed by
  • Name: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Organisation: Education Services Australia Ltd
  • Address: AUSTRALIA
  • URL: www.esa.edu.au
Access profile
  • Generic
Learning Resource Type
  • Online
  • Text
Rights
  • © 2014 Commonwealth of Australia, unless otherwise indicated. This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence (CC BY-SA 3.0 AU) unless otherwise indicated. You may distribute, remix and build upon this material, provided that you include the acknowledgement '© Commonwealth of Australia 2014' and license under the same terms any new creations you have based on the material.