This paper reports a cross-sectional pilot study of 30 students from Grades 1, 3 and 5, that
investigated students' visualisations and representations of three-dimensional shapes. The
study describes how students focused on critical and non-critical aspects of three-dimensional
shapes and whether any differences exist between students' visual images, verbal descriptions
and drawn representations. An interview-based assessment showed that although the quality of
some students' visualisations may improve with grade level, non-mathematical qualities
feature strongly in most students' visualisations.