While most organisations set out to solve problems,

we focus our attention on creating them.

 

Why would we do that? Well, to put it simply, we do it because the future depends on it.

Every day we create challenges for students to practise on, so they’ll be prepared for a future full of real-world problems. Problems that’ll require ingenuity, creativity, and determination to solve.

In a rapidly changing world, we simply don’t know what the problems of the future will be yet, but we do know there are going to be lots of them. So it’s important that we develop the capacity of our students across Australia to reach their full potential when it comes to solving them. Problem solving is a life skill and by developing this skill, students can create more choices for themselves and their future.

Our vision is to develop a nation of creative problem solvers, and we believe maths is the most effective way to get students there. Maths isn’t just about times tables and formulae. It’s about the process of finding creative solutions to problems. Maths develops resilience, persistence, confidence, and creative thinking in students.

At AMT we’re passionate about empowering students to become better problem solvers in school, so they can be creative solution finders in the future.

Align to the Australian Curriculum

Because our problems are classified according to the content strands and topics of the Australian Curriculum, we make it easier for you to align your lesson content to the curriculum.

Empower students

Using Problemo helps you to empower your students, showing them they already have problem solving skills they can apply.

You can give them the freedom to solve maths problem solving using the strategies they already know or guide them to use new strategies.

Plan, teach and differentiate

You can search for maths problems that relate to your content area. Plus, it’s easy to use Problemo to teach live in the classroom or teach remotely. And you can differentiate to the range of abilities in the classroom.

AMT competitions

At the AMT, everything we do is aimed at getting children excited about maths and keeping them engaged so they become better problem solvers in school and creative solution finders in life. And we believe that enjoying the challenge of maths is the most effective way to get them there.

Our competitions and programs are the key way for you to help us achieve this mission.

Find out more about our competitions and programs here.

Questions and answers

Need extra support?

If your question is not answered here, please contact us

Subscriptions

Problemo is available to all Australian and New Zealand primary and secondary teachers from government, private, Catholic, independent schools.

Registered home schools and approved coaching clinics are also welcome to subscribe.

Parents and students can access the Student Portal without registration.

Problemo is a teaching resource and subscriptions are only available to Australian and New Zealand primary and secondary school teachers, registered home schools and approved coaching clinics. If you think teachers at your child’s school or coaching clinic may be interested in using Problemo, let us know here or direct them to this website (problemo.edu.au).

A great resource for parents and students is Problemo Student, a free problem-solving platform that allows students to test their skills in mathematics and informatics. No login needed, it’s packed with problems covering a range of topics and year levels. Parents and students can jump in anytime and try one question or work their way through a series based on a topic.

First up, try searching for your school or coaching clinic and leave the suburb dropdown field blank. If you still can’t find your school or coaching clinic, please email us at info@problemo.edu.au and we will add you to the list.

Teachers

Problemo is go-to maths problem solving resource for teachers from the Australian Maths Trust (AMT).

The platform contains a library of maths problems for years 3-10 prepared by the same mathematicians and teachers that design the highly regarded Australian Mathematics Competition.

Each problem is classified for ease of searching, aligned to the Australian Curriculum, and complete with enabling and extending prompts, and solutions. Problemo gives teachers AMT official Lesson Cards and allows them to create their own. Teachers can easily download PDFs of problems, display them digitally for classroom use, and create online quizzes for students, with results displaying in the teacher platform.

The Australian Maths Trust (AMT) creates the maths problems in Problemo. They are prepared by the same mathematicians and teachers that design the highly regarded annual Australian Mathematics Competition: these problems may have featured in past competitions.

Our vision is to develop a nation of creative problem solvers, and we believe maths is the most effective way to get students there.

Here at the Australian Maths Trust, we have been developing world-class maths problems for more than 40 years. We are best known for the internationally recognised Australian Mathematics Competition that we run each year.

We are a not-for-profit, with headquarters in Canberra, Australia. Our teams of volunteer mathematicians and teachers (from across Australia and the region) work together to create rich mathematical and algorithmic thinking problems for our competitions and programs each year.

Find out more about us.

A team of maths teachers analyses each problem selected for Problemo and classifies each by the Australian Curriculum content strands for mathematics: Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, Statistics and Probability. We also use our own classification for the Computation and Algorithms strand.

Many problems naturally sit across multiple content strands, which highlights the interconnectedness of the curriculum and the rich variety of strategies available to problem solvers.

You may notice that a problem for years 5-6 is linked to ACARA codes for years 3-4 or 7-8. This recognises that the curriculum is cumulative, students within the same year group are often working at a variety of different levels, and additional strategies for the same problem become available as students gain exposure to more sophisticated mathematical tools.

ACARA codes are not intended to be a list of prerequisite skills or an exhaustive list of related concepts—your judgement as a teacher about how and when to engage with a problem is equally important.

Problemo is suitable for both. And with detailed workings for each problem, it gives maths confidence to all teachers from years 3 through to 10.

Not all teachers feel confident teaching maths problem solving. We also know that in secondary schools, many teachers are working out-of-field and may have had limited training in maths. Our AMT official Lesson Cards give you a step-by-step guide to a scaffolded approach to problem solving, and there are fully worked solutions for all our problems. Problemo is about giving you the confidence to have fun and learn with your students.

Planning

Problemo has powerful search and filter tools that allow you to quickly find maths problems that relate to the content you’re teaching. When planning learning experiences, you can use Problemo to identify suitable maths problems for engaging your students. You can organise problems using your My Favourite Problems list or by adding them to My Sets & Quizzes, ready for teaching.

Problemo Plus users can set up student classes/groups and assign quizzes to these students to allow for tracking performance over time.

Teaching

You can also use Problemo live in your classroom. The Display Problem feature allows you to show problems to students using a SMART board or projector. This is ideal when working with a whole class or in small groups.

You can also print problems in a student-friendly format (PDF). Problemo allows you to select the information you would like to include in your printout. For example, you might want to include enabling prompts, but exclude the multiple-choice answers. Students could then work directly on the printouts in the classroom, either individually or in small groups.

If your students have access to a device, whether in class or at home, use the My Sets & Quizzes feature to turn your problem set into an interactive experience!

Our official Lesson Cards are planned around a particular problem and include scaffolded content to engage students at all levels. 

Assessing

Problemo’s online quiz feature gives you real-time feedback as your students work through the problems. Use Practice mode for formative assessment or Quiz mode for a summative assessment of students’ progress.

Students

Problemo Student is a great maths problem-solving resource for parents and students. It’s a free problem-solving platform that allows students to test their skills in mathematics and informatics. No login needed, it’s packed with problems covering a range of topics and year levels. Parents and students can jump in anytime and try one question or work their way through a series based on a topic.

Other initiatives of the Australian Math Trust

Australian Mathematics Competition

An engaging 30-problem competition that demonstrates the importance and relevance of maths in students’ everyday lives. It is open to students in years 3-12.

Australian Informatics Olympiad

An open national computer programming competition where students write short computer programs to solve six problems that vary in difficulty.

Maths Challenge

A school-based problem-solving program that’s designed to stimulate mathematically interested students in years 3-10.