primary maths

Teaching for mastery: The pros and cons

Written by Jo Lees Jo has taught and led mathematics in primary and secondary settings. She is a former member of ACME and is on the MA committee for CPD. In her current post, apart from co-authoring The Shanghai Maths Project for Collins, Jo leads a large local authority… Read More

Questioning for Mathematical Reasoning

The 2014 National Curriculum for mathematics has three main aims- it seeks to enable pupils to develop fluency, problem solving and reasoning in mathematics. I work in a relatively large local authority, supporting teachers of mathematics to improve outcomes for pupils, amongst other things. Following the 2016 end of Key… Read More

Explaining a mastery approach to parents/carers

Every new generation of parents must scratch their heads when their children show them their maths homework, with methods of teaching and learning mathematics going through more changes than any other subject. Over the past fifty years there has been rote learning, then ‘new maths’, discovery learning, set theory and… Read More

What is Teaching for Mastery?

Mastery is not a new idea, but perhaps it seems like a new word that has been used for something we have always wanted for children – for them to understand conceptually and procedurally the mathematics they are learning. For this to happen, a number of things need to… Read More

‘@CollinsPrimary host ‘A Mastery in Maths’ special Twitter chat with Primary Rocks

On Monday 24th April 2017 at 8pm we co-hosted a Twitter edchat with Primary Rocks and @grahamandre. The discussion topic was teaching for mastery in Primary maths and these were the questions: We had a fantastic response rate and loved hearing directly from teachers about their experiences and opinions on… Read More

Cultivating Curiosity

At the end of last year I was asked to speak at The Educational Collaborative for International Schools (ECIS) Educators Conference in Copenhagen. The theme of the conference was Cultivating Curiosity, not just from the viewpoint of inquiry as a catalyst for learning, but also in trying to… Read More

Presenting Data – How your students can display detail

As sad as it may seem, these days no one seems to have enough time to look at things in detail, from text language to finding information, we want to know what we need to know as quickly as possible. Maths has been doing this for some time now with… Read More

Maths – Probability

Even if we don’t recognise it, many of the decisions we make each day are based on probability. Subconsciously, we often question the decisions we make on probability in order to ‘improve’ our chances, sometimes beneficially, at other times not. Activity One – Daily Decisions (suitable for Years… Read More

Investigations

Investigations are more common to our work in science but they can prove invaluable in maths in helping pupils to understand mathematical reasoning. In these activities the pupils are presented with puzzles to solve and in doing so they will gain greater understanding of some key concepts. Activity One –… Read More

Maths Countdowns

Countdowns are fun, nerve-wracking and prepare us for something exciting that will happen when we get to zero. In this series of activities we look at countdowns, which, at this time of year includes the countdown to Christmas, most often denoted in the chocolate advent calendar. Read More