Numeracy

How is Mathematics taught at school?

 

The teaching of Mathematics at Clendon Park School is based on the Numeracy Project. This project is a New Zealand-wide professional development initiative which introduces teachers to a new approach to the teaching of mathematics.

The Numeracy Project is focused on developing children's understanding of numbers, and their ability to use numbers to solve problems. Children may solve number problems by counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, or combinations of these.

As part of the Numeracy Project your child should be learning to:

• enjoy working with numbers
• make sense of numbers - how big they are, how they relate to other numbers, and how they behave
• solve mathematical problems - whether real life or imaginary
• calculate in their heads whenever possible, rather than using a calculator or pen and paper
• show that they understand maths, using equipment, diagrams and pictures
• explain and record the methods they use to work out problems
• accept challenges and work at levels that stretch them
• work with others and by themselves
• discuss how they tackle mathematical problems - with other students, their teacher and you!

The biggest difference in schools involved in the Numeracy Project is that children are encouraged to learn a range of different ways to solve problems and to choose the most appropriate one for each problem. You may be familiar with certain 'rules' for doing maths. While these will still work, your child may learn different ways to solve problems. Often these methods involve mental strategies, or working things out in your head, rather than written methods.

Alongside of developing Numeracy knowledge we continue to develop our student's mathematical knowledge and understanding of Geometry, Measurement, and Statistics.

 

 

Why Learning Basic Facts Is So Important.

 

At Clendon Park School, once your child is achieving at Stage 2 for Numeracy and have their Numeral Identification to 10 firmly known, their Basic Facts knowledge is tested using Bank levels that have been created from the Numeracy Project Key Stage knowledge requirements. It is very important for your child to have strong Basic Facts knowledge.

Memorised facts are stored in a different part of the brain than those that are used for performing strategies (Sousa, 2008). Separate activities are needed to explore and practice strategies than those which are used to build up and to reinforce memorisation of the basic facts.

Basic facts should be automatic and random

While strategies are important, students need to progress to the point where they automatically recall the basic facts while they focus their full attention to other aspects of the mathematics.

Students need to randomly access their basic facts rather than recover them sequentially. This is especially so for multiplication, where students need instant access to 7 × 4 without having to recite the 4-times table starting from 1 × 4 = 4, 2 × 4 = 8, etc.

When we think of basic facts, possibly the first thing that springs to mind are our "times tables". But there is far more to them than this. We should memorise simpler facts, like our addition and subtraction facts. Often these have been ignored. Just maybe 7 × 8 may pop into mind just a tad more automatically than 7 + 8.