Research School Network: Improving Mathematics in the Early Years: blog 1 Each blog comes with an accompanying ​‘parent handout’ that you may find useful to use with families.

This is the first in a series of blogs focusing on the content of the Education Endowment Foundation’s recently published ​‘Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1’ Guidance report. Each blog comes with an accompanying ​‘parent handout’ that you may find useful to use with your families to help them support early mathematical development at home.

The recent EEF guidance report on early maths has highlighted some important shifts we can begin to make in how we approach our teaching]. The guidance report is very clear that maths just doesn’t happen but that it needs to be modelled and scaffolded for children. So our question is clear, how best can we model maths in order for children to develop sound number sense well beyond KS1?

Rachel Rayner (Primary Maths Advisor with Herts for ​‘Learning) talks about the ​‘gaps’ that exist for children who have rarely played with dice, cards, board games or dominos.

​‘Try asking your reception or year 1 children to show you 7 fingers – now spot the ones who don’t have 5 as a bench mark to find 7.’ So how then can we avoid these pitfalls and ensure that children gain a greater understanding of the relationships that numbers have with each other?

Back in the Autumn term I was lucky enough to attend an Early Number Sense CPD session with Katherine Milner who is an experienced Maths Consultant. Firstly, Katherine asked all attendees to work collaboratively and illustrate, using various manipulatives, what the meaning of each of the five principles of counting were. Throughout the session, those early subitising skills which can be honed so readily through the use of dice or other concrete manipulatives were at the forefront of her message. For me, what was most striking was Katherine’s particular use of questioning.

​‘What did you see?… How did you see it?

A real move away from asking the typical question of How many?

A good example of this can be illustrated using the picture below. You could tell the children that your picture was going to be about 5 and count out the pieces in a very concrete way. (the pasta shapes could be rearranged in any formation with any number.)

‘What did you see? I can see an arrow … How did you see it? I saw 2 there and 3 there.’

Which underpins that notion of whole and part number. You could ask the children to make their own 5 picture. The pictures will be different, but the number will remain the same.

Have I taken any away? Have I added any?

During a recent incidental mathematical experience with a child, I was mindful of Deborah Mulroney’s words that ​‘Even very young children can develop a fluency with number’

One of our 2 year old boys had gathered up some baby potatoes in a biscuit barrel in the home area. ​“What have you got in there?” I asked him.

​“Potatoes!” he jubilantly told me.

Great I thought: he knows and recognises when he has more than one. ​“Can I take some out?” I asked. I took out two potatoes without letting him see what I had taken. I placed them on the floor and asked ​“What can you see?”

​“Potatoes,” he again said.

​“How did you see them?” I asked. He looked a little blank. So I said ​“I saw 1 there and 1 there.”

He immediately responded by saying ​“Yes, 2.” Experiences like this are invaluable in helping to develop early number sense and the relationships that exist between numbers.

Getting children to be playful with maths and encouraging them to talk about what they see, how they see it and recognising how they know it, is fundamental to their confidence around maths and their ability to use and apply this knowledge. In the guidance report there is much emphasis placed on ​‘talk’ and vocabulary. Without this, reasoning around problem solving becomes very limited if not impossible. The EEF guidance report makes it abundantly clear that ‘…there should be opportunities throughout the day to learn about mathematics through the environment and through routines, as well as dedicated teaching time. This should be developed in the foundation stage and continued throughout KS1. For example children can be set the challenge of collating fruit at snack time: how many of each fruit; how many have we eaten; how many more are needed if they are short. Incidental maths is so important in affirming the children’s application of maths skills.

Surely then, if we give sufficient concrete experiences in the very beginning of their mathematical development, children will be less reliant on procedure and have a much greater understanding of the relationships that numbers have with each other. In her blog Rachel Rayner reflects:

​‘Well firstly get your pupils playing with dice and cards etc. the pupils that recognise dice pattern 5 has the advantage of seeing 4 dots and 1, 3 dots and 2 dots, 2 dots and 2 dots and 1 dot. That helps when later they want to add 5 to 7 for example.’ She also goes on to say that ​‘using a tens frame can be a great way of exploring numbers to 10, decomposing and recombining, exploring one more one less, looking for patterns and considering how close to ten.’

The guidance report states ​‘Games can be an engaging way to practice and extend skills.’ A good example of this would be playing a game where the children have to work out where they are on the board, how many they have to count on and be able to recognise if the dice indicates a number which exceeds what they need: ​“I only need four to win but I’ve thrown a six… that’s two more than what I need.”

Getting children familiar with mathematical language initially in an informal way is vital too. When playing golf on the Wii children can subtract the length of their shot from the length of the fairway. While in PE they may plot their level of challenge and attainment using a bar chart (see recommendation 2 of the guidance report).

Both these examples embody the guidance report’s message that we should ​‘Dedicate time for children to learn mathematics and integrate mathematics throughout the day.’ Maths should be interwoven throughout the children’s wider learning if it is to be most effective, meaningful and purposeful in everyday learning and experience.

Emma Flockton has been a primary teacher for more than 20 years. For the last 10 years she has exclusively taught in Early Years. She is EarlyYears CPD lead and a designated SLE with Scarborough Teaching Alliance.

Emma is currently Working as a Co-Headteacher of a state-maintained Nursery School in Scarborough.

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