About
The Y Intercept is a Foundation to Year 2 mathematics curriculum built in small, overlapping steps that build on each other piece by piece.
Lessons have been broken down into small chunks, to suit the cognitive load of our youngest students. Each unit is sequenced so that new learning attaches to what came before. Teachers are handed a fully sequenced curriculum, with the materials to teach each lesson and the structure to implement it, so they can get on with what they do best.
Teach.
What to teach . When to teach it.
The Australian Curriculum sets out what students should know by the end of each year. It does not set out:
the order concepts should be introduced,
how each concept connects to the next, or
how to teach each concept in the classroom.
In March 2026, ACARA announced an iterative review of the Foundation to Year 2 Mathematics curriculum that identifies this gap directly. The review is focused on, among other things, "providing specific content sequencing, highlighting related concepts and the sequence of introducing concepts." (ACARA media release, 2 March 2026.)
This is the work The Y Intercept has already done.
SOURCE: ACARA. (2 March 2026). Efforts to raise numeracy skills through targeted review of Foundation to Year 2 Mathematics curriculum. Media release.
One in three.
ACARA's most recent NAPLAN data shows that around one in three Australian Year 3 students are not reaching challenging but achievable numeracy standards. The pattern has held across cohorts and locations for years.
By Year 3, the gaps tend to look like "weak number sense" or "doesn't pick up new concepts". They are usually neither. They are the predictable result of a foundation that wasn't built in the right order.
Foundation and Year 1 are where the architecture of mathematical thinking is built. Get the sequence right and students arrive in Year 2 with the foundations in place for everything that follows.
What teachers receive.
A complete Foundation to Year 2 numeracy curriculum, sequenced lesson by lesson, with:
A detailed curriculum built around small, focused learning intentions
Teaching materials for every lesson: activities, slides, worksheets, retrieval practice, assessments
A consistent and comprehensive lesson structure — Scope, Prepare, Instruct, Support, Practice, Extend — to suit a variety of teaching styles and cohort requirements.
Before I taught maths, I studied outdoor education and computer science.
Working on well-run school camps, I'd watch self-conscious students forget to be self-conscious. I was also reading Csikszentmihalyi at the time, and his idea of flow gave me the language for what I was seeing. Flow is the state that arrives when the challenge of a task is closely matched to the learner's current skill. Tip it either way and it dissolves.
When I started teaching maths, I saw parallels play out in the classroom. The students who were learning were the ones whose task sat in that narrow window. The ones who weren't had been tipped out of it.
In computer science, I'd learnt to build systems by breaking a problem into its smallest parts. I would have to work out what depends on what and assemble from the ground up.
So I started building a sequence that was broken into the smallest units I could name. Each new element designed to sit on top of a deliberately constructed packet of prior knowledge. The new knowledge jump was small enough that the next step was within reach. It was connected enough that what a student had just learnt led smoothly into what the next element needed them to know.
It worked and I have seen it work for 10 years now working in roles that let me test and refine this sequence. My students are in the zone and their knowledge is secured.
The research that explained why this worked came later for me. Sweller's cognitive load theory says that when working memory is overloaded, nothing is left over for learning. When new knowledge arrives in the right amount, connected to what is already secure, the brain is ready. Andrew Martin's work on motivation describes what happens next. Success at the edge of ability builds the confidence that keeps a learner moving forward.
Units and lessons in The Y Intercept are sized to match how number knowledge actually accumulates. For a Foundation to Year 2 learner, the right amount of new knowledge at any step is small. Genuinely smaller than most curricula assume.
What keeps me in this work is the moment a student realises they can do something they were sure they couldn't. I would love for every learner to have maths learning designed carefully enough that they can stay in the zone and becoming numerate is guaranteed.
Bridget Horton