Research School Network: Improving Mathematics in the Early Years: blog 3 The third in a series of blogs on the EEF’s ​‘Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1’ Guidance report

This is the third and final 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.

​‘They will only get a little piece of pie’ comes a voice from along the sofa, with a certain amount of concern in her voice.

​‘What do you mean?’ I ask. We are in the reading corner of the nursery class and, together with a group of five or six children, have just got to the end of ​‘Each, Peach, Pear Plum’ for the umpteenth time: ​‘Plum pie in the sun, I spy everyone’.

The conversation continues as Sophia (the owner of the concerned voice) explains that the pie in the picture would need to be shared between the characters that have featured through the book who are now gathered expectantly around the aforementioned pie. ​‘Like when we shared Freddie’s cake’ she insists, remembering a recent experience of sharing a child’s birthday cake amongst all the children in the class.

​‘Oh, I see, so they need to cut it into 30 pieces like we did with the cake?’ I probe.

​‘No,’ says she, a slight tone of exasperation in her voice at her teacher’s stupidity ​‘they need to cut it into…’ she pauses, clambers over a friend to examine the book more closely and starts to count, touching each character in turn and saying a number name to match… ​‘sifteen’ she announces proudly.

​‘That’s right, you counted 16 people so they would need to cut the pie into 16 pieces to share it equally’ I recast. At this point the conversation takes a slight tangent as Bertie turns us to a debate about whether lambs and cats qualify for pieces while I decide that introducing the idea of the weening process (Baby Bunting) may be a step too far for now.

The EEF’s Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage One guidance report recommends that we should ​‘Dedicate time for children to learn mathematics and integrate mathematics throughout the day’ and one suggested way of doing this is through the use of story books which is an approach supported by a small but growing body of evidence (EEF,

If considering the use of story books to support the teaching of mathematics, there are two headlines to which we should attend:

- Careful and deliberate selection of books to teach specific mathematical concepts
- Guidance to support mathematical discussion and teacher questioning

First and foremost, the studies identified by the EEF’s evidence review suggest that talk is a central component to effective use of story books for mathematical learning. When we examine the features of high quality interactions (see for example, p9 of ​‘Preparing for Literacy, EEF 2018) which are well supported by evidence as key to children’s development (e.g. Dooley et al, 2014), we find many common aspects with the behaviours exhibited during child-adult shared reading. The ways in which adults (practitioners and carers) share books with children naturally lend themselves to features of high quality interactions.

An important element of the evidence review suggests that, in order to maximise mathematical learning from story books, practitioners should plan how they will use story book resources to discuss mathematical concepts. That’s not to say that we should spoil a good story by labouring the maths, especially until the children are familiar with the story, or that we shouldn’t follow opportunities for teaching maths that arise naturally but the evaluation of six interventions (Hodgen et al, not yet published) that have demonstrated significant positive impacts (d=1.17, 95% CI: 0.50, 1.85) found common elements of practice to be the careful selection of books and the support of specific guidance and/​or planning to structure mathematical discussion and support teacher questioning.

The work done by van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia (2012) on the learning support characteristics of books to support mathematical development highlight some key aspects that we might consider when choosing books to use to teach maths. Connections with the child’s life and world is singled out as the most important feature followed closely by opportunities for child participation, valuable and correct mathematical content and connection to children’s interests.

Uscianowski et al (n.d.) point out that books that will support the teaching of mathematics may come from any one of three groups: those in which maths is explicit e.g. ten hungry caterpillars; those in which maths is implicit e.g. Goldilocks and the three bears; and everything else. Whichever group of books we select from, they encourage us to consider 5 questions when selecting books for the teaching of mathematical concepts:

- Is the maths content developmentally appropriate for my pupils?
- What type of maths is in the book?
- How is the maths presented?
- How can I use this book to help my children learn maths?
- Do the illustrations and content convey maths content accurately?

Further details on these questions can be found here.

Once a book is selected, the evidence suggests that planning questions, discussion points, prompts and cue cards are all likely to contribute to positive mathematical experiences through the use of books. Development and Research in Early Maths Education (DREME) based at Stanford University have developed many resources to support both practitioners and parents/​carers in these aspects. Amongst these are ​‘Storybook guides’ found here. Every storybook guide includes a description of the plot, vocabulary words found in the book, a description of the maths in the story, suggested questions and comments to encourage children’s math thinking, and an activity to do after reading the book.

In the interests of transparency, the example I started this blog with was not planned, it occurred naturally (‘child led’ you might say) during a daily routine of reading with the children but exemplifies how story books can be used to give context to mathematical learning; Sophia covered some number sense (quite a lot of people), counting skills (one to one correspondence, cardinality, stable order) and some basic pre cursors to the understanding of fractions (the larger the denominator, the smaller the size of your piece of the pie!) as well as the application of this knowledge to solve a problem which was connected to the children’s world (remember Freddie’s cake?). This was appropriate to Sophia’s stage of development and helped to consolidate much of her previous learning that she has been taught, seen modelled and played with previously.

The use of story books for teaching mathematics is a useful, evidence based tool to include in practitioners’ toolboxes that, if used carefully, can support children’s early mathematical development. As highlighted in the guidance report, early years settings and schools should invest in developing practitioners’ own understanding of mathematics, their understanding of how children typically learn and how this relates to effective pedagogy in order to realise the potential of this or any other recommendation. 

Rob Newton is an experienced primary teacher, local authority advisor and most recently Acting Headteacher of an infant and nursery school. He is currently working in a split role as Primary school and mathematics research lead at Huntington Research School and Social Mobility Project Manager at City of York Council.

Follow on Twitter @RobHTNewt

Dooley, T., Dunphy, E., Shiel, G., Butler, D., Corcoran, D., Farrell, T., NicMhuirí, S., O’Connor, M., &Travers, J. (2014). Mathematics in Early Childhood and Primary Education (3−8 years): Teaching and Learning (Research Report No.18). Dublin: National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).
EEF (2019) Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 Guidance Report
EEF (2018) Preparing for Literacy: Improving Communication, language and literacy in the early years Guidance Report
Hodgen, J; Barclay, N; Foster, C; Gilmore, C; Marks, R and Sims, V (not yet published) EEF Early Years and Key Stage 1 Mathematics Review
Uscianowski, C; Oppenzato, C; Almeda, V and Ginsburg, H P (no date) Analyzing Picture Books: An Overview | DREME TE via http://prek-math-te-stage.gse.stanford.edu/overview/analyzing-picture-books-overview
accessed May 2020
Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Iliada Elia (2012) Developing a framework for the evaluation of picturebooks that support kindergartners’ learning of mathematics, Research in Mathematics Education, 14:1, 17 – 47