Mrs Rowntree

Teach. Grow. Inspire.

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Welcome, My name is Lisa Rowntree, the Aussie teacher behind Mrs Rowntree. Teach. Grow. Inspire. I have been working n education in excess of 10 years and I am a wife, a mother of 3 and a passionate teacher of primary mathematics. Before I decided to be a teacher, I worked in a credit union. My passion for maths originated from my love of working with numbers and I began to study teaching, while I raised my family. Now, I am designing mathematics lessons and units, alongside teaching. My intention is to continue to do what I love, while sharing my skills and hopefully helping teachers to save time.
  • No Time!

    No Time!

    You’ve gone through the lesson content and the kids just don’t get it! You’re thinking ‘I need to keep going on this topic, but I can’t because there is just no time, and too much to cram in!’ I’ve had this many times when teaching kids, but I often come back to the thinking that if they don’t get it, and I move on, what good does that do for their learning growth? At least, when we have a purposeful, differentiated & cyclic plan for teaching maths we can ensure children get the best shot forward.

    Time is one of the big reasons why I decided to create 5 lesson maths units to help teachers. I wanted to create purposeful, sequenced curriculum content that provides depth, but I was challenged with the time element. I know you struggle with time, so to address this, each of my units consist of 5 intentionally sequenced lessons. The first is always free, the last is always an assessment. That way you have a ready-to-go differentiated unit that can be taught in a week. 

    If you need to spend another week on your content because your kids require more practice, my units are an option for you. If you require a differentiated lesson that is aimed at 3 levels, working below, working at & working beyond then my lessons may be of interest to you.  If you require some intervention ideas to support some of your learners then you will enjoy the Tier 2 Intervention Tool that is included with the first four lessons of each unit.

    Because I prefer quality over quantity, each unit takes time to create, but is truly worth your time. I pour a huge amount of nuanced thinking into each one to ensure broad conceptual development occurs at a rate that supports success and is achievable for students. 

    I value explicit strategy teaching and learning, reflection and movement from concrete to relational, to abstract thinking, whilst linking in to real world concepts. I totally value problem solving and I like to build children’s toolbox of strategies, so that they have success with the task. All this takes time!

    When do you get the time to truly pour into developing your maths curriculum content? If your children don’t gain the understanding, isn’t a week of polished, purposeful & cyclic learning more powerful than rushing through the curriculum. 

     What do you do to ensure your students ‘get it’?


    If you’ve taught fractions this term and you need some extra time on it, jump on over to https://teachbuysell.com.au/store/Mrs-Rowntree to download a unit or lesson. Alternatively, sign up for email notifications at www.mrsrowntree.com.au and be the first to hear of newly released units.

    I hope this helps you a fraction! Halves your work and brings you a quarter of joy!

    Have a great day!

  • Thinking About Thinking!

    Thinking About Thinking!

    The harder I can encourage children to think about their thinking, the less I feel I have to work! When I encourage children to reflect upon their learning, I find they begin to set themselves more appropriate goals and learn more. When students are setting themselves appropriate and achievable goals, then they are drivers of their own learning and growth. I believe this encouragement leads most kids to want to engage with the math content more.

    At the end of every lesson, I host a reflection discussion. Some kids are great at reflecting, and others can be way off the mark when it comes to self-assessment. Taking just a few minutes to talk about why they score their success at this or that is really key to helping with gauging their self-improvement. I try to ask how they will improve or maintain their score and discuss those learning strategies to strive for success & what that looks like.

    When kids can self-assess well, they can make really good choices about where to go for help and what to do next and even know where to start with ‘Let’s Go!, ‘Strive For Success!’ & ‘Mathematician!’ The more children reflect on their own learning, set their own mini goals, and strive to improve, the more their learning will enter their home discussions and drive exploration.

    In Mrs. Rowntree’s resources you’ll find a reflection page in every lesson presentation, like the one displayed here. Not only will children be encouraged to reflect upon their learning in accordance with the lesson’s success criteria, but also other students are encouraged to share their ideas and exemplary work to learn from each other. Head over to TeachBuySell at https://teachbuysell.com.au/store/Mrs-Rowntree to download a free lesson to try it out with your class and read about the teacher tips.

    Stay tuned for my next unit! Year 4 Fractions as Numbers on a Number Line. It will be the first of four units on fractions for Year 4 students.

  • Let’s Go!

    Let’s Go!

    It’s so difficult to cater to the huge difference in learning abilities that exist in each classroom. To plan for and develop all the differentiation and the tools required takes up so much teacher time, but it’s so important. This is so much of the reason why I set upon this little project to develop mathematics curriculum content for primary teachers; to help my fellow colleagues. ‘Let’s Go!’, ‘Strive For Success!’ & ‘Mathematician!’ are the names I’ve assigned to a 3 level differentiated learning task, provided in each maths lesson, to support diverse learners. Head to www.mrsrowntree.com.au to find the direct link to the resource on Teach Buy Sell. ‘Let’s Go!’

    ‘Let’s Go!’ is the entry point for kids who are not confident with the topic. This level is generally working below the level. ‘Let’s Go!’ allows students to get started on the transferable skill after the explicit teaching introduction. When I talk about the levels with children who begin at ‘Let’s Go!’, they so often strive to get to the next level to complete it. Mind you, they require the time from teachers to work through the levels. ‘Strive for Success!’

    ‘Strive for Success!’ means working at the level standard and if students don’t start at ‘Let’s Go!’ the rest of the students start at ‘Strive for Success!’, generally. The only time I let students begin at ‘Mathematician!’ is if I am confident they will find the ‘Strive for Success!’ level really simplistic and I know they are very capable. This is rare! 

    ‘Mathematician!’ is the Holy Grail! It is the celebrated level that when achieved successfully, one can’t feel anything but complete triumph! I have many students who come to me at that level and say, ‘Mrs Rowntree, I need your help’ and often I am working on the floor with the ‘Let’s Go’ group so I just have to respond sometimes with ‘What an achievement that you got there, it’s designed to be tricky, so now you are going to need to work through it with your peers’. You should see the achievement, once they start to experience success with figuring it out. Or, the joy it brings me when they come back the next day and they have drawn mum or dad into the learning process to divide and completely conquer the task!

    For all levels, I always encourage kids to work together to collaborate and explore their ideas when working on maths tasks. This can make for a noisy classroom at times, particularly with the loose parts on each table, or on the floor, and the discussions going on, however there is often much rich learning taking place in this environment. It is no longer an option to work collaboratively, but a necessity, to support developing social skills, social awareness & maths. The collaboration, experimentation, reasoning & justification all adds up to an active but rich learning space, where mistakes are ok, kids learn from each other and we end up with many opportunities to learn from, broaden our thinking and grow.  

    These are not the only ways you can work with these levels, but please try it and enjoy the process. I’ll talk about the other ways another day

    Good luck and enjoy the differentiation!

    ***To access the first lesson as a free download to try, please head to www.mrsrowntree.com.au and you’ll find the link to download it via Teach Buy Sell, under the Resources tab.