You know your maths. This short course is about the part of the CBAs that is hard to run: three weeks of investigation for a whole class, each student owning a problem or a question, judging the work on balance, and getting through SLAR.
There are four lessons of about thirty minutes. This first one covers how the maths CBAs run now, this year's date windows, both investigations at a glance, and planning the weeks back from the SLAR meeting.
Watch this presentation for a clear picture of how the maths CBAs run now, this year's date windows, and both investigations at a glance. The key planning move is fixing the SLAR meeting first, then working backwards.
Study this filled-in CBA class planner for an invented second-year class running the Mathematical Investigation. It uses week numbers, never calendar dates, because real dates depend on each school's calendar and holidays. The week labels reuse the Mathematical Investigation stages you just saw at a glance. Read each annotation. It explains why that choice protects the sequence.
Download the blank planner and, after you study the exemplar, pencil your own Week 1 to 6 labels for one class into it or into the draft in the next step: CBA class planner (Word).
Now make the first planning decisions for one of your own classes. Use week numbers or school-calendar dates, whichever you already know, and follow the layout of the planner you have just studied. You can refine this draft as you work through the later lessons.
Before you leave this lesson, rate your current confidence across the five areas this course develops. Be honest. Lower ratings simply show where the later lessons can help most. You will re-take the same five statements at the end of the course so you can see distance travelled.
In this lesson you met the current arrangements, drafted dates back from SLAR, and set a confidence baseline. Hold these three points as you move on:
| Framework / Principle | Why it matters for your teaching | Classroom application |
|---|---|---|
| Current arrangements for this year's third years: a minimum of one CBA per student, the school decides one or two, and no Assessment Task. The third-year completion and SLAR deadlines in April 2027 are the tight constraint. | The December 2020 guidelines still describe two CBAs and an Assessment Task; planning against that older design mis-sets workload and evidence | This year a class runs one investigation: second years run CBA 1, the Mathematical Investigation; third years can only run CBA 2, the Statistical Investigation, because their CBA 1 closed in May 2026. A third year with no CBA 1 on record must still complete one CBA, the Statistical Investigation, by Friday 9 April 2027. Confirm your class's plan with your department before you open the three-week window with students |
| Two three-week investigations: the Mathematical Investigation (define → strategy → engage → interpret and report) and the Statistical Investigation (question → collect → analyse → interpret). The evidence is a report plus research records. | Students need the shape and stage names of the three weeks before they define a problem or a statistical question of their own | Show both cycles at a glance in the first lesson of the window, and start the research record on day one |
| Plan back from SLAR: fix the SLAR meeting first (within a month of completion), allow enough judging time for provisional descriptors and samples, then set the three investigation weeks | Planning forward from a vague start often squeezes judging and the SLAR meeting; judging duration is a model inside the month, not a fixed NCCA block | Agree the SLAR week with colleagues, then fill the CBA class planner in week numbers back from that date |
Your survey answers, reflections and judged sample across the four lessons compile into a downloadable Professional Learning Portfolio when you finish, alongside a toolkit you can adapt for your own class.
Next you will walk the Mathematical Investigation stage by stage, including the questions that help a stuck student without taking the work away from them.
Enrol to take the whole course. Your work is saved as you go, and you get a certificate when you finish.