This month’s issue focuses on communication, in assorted guises. This is a massive area, so we can only scratch the surface here. We aim to be thought provoking, giving you a few avenues to explore for yourself.

Contents

From the editor Could you do a bit of action research on mark making in your own setting? Find out how you could get some funding for this. There’s also some information on a new DCSF resource Children thinking mathematically: PSRN essential knowledge for Early Years practitioners, and a look ahead to BCME.

Coming soon: Ideas Box Look out for the Ideas Box in the next issue. This will start life as a thread in the Early Years Forum. There will be a template for you to complete, though you will also be able to post directly. Once the entries build, we will sort into categories for easier access.

Focus on…Communication I CAN is a children’s communication charity whose mission is to ensure that everyone in contact with children knows how important communication is, what communication difficulties look like and what they can do to help. Find out more in Focus on...Communication.

R4U - Research for You Ian Thompson is back with a report on Martin Hughes’ much earlier research with children aged 3 years 4 months to 7 years 9 months. Twenty-four children were asked, ‘Can you put something on the paper to show how many bricks are on the table?’ Take a look at the article to find out how the researchers analysed the results.

Case Study This month’s case study is of Holly Primary School. They received a grant to focus on CPD and its impact on the six core areas of learning, using Mathematical Development as the vehicle to permeate other areas of the curriculum.

Maths to share – CPD for you and your colleagues This issue’s Maths to share suggests using the five short video sequences attached to the National Strategies Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy section to help practitioners reflect upon their own verbal interactions with children.

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

From the editor

Although this issue does not go online until the end of January, preparation happens at the beginning of the month, so we have not had much time to work on all those great new ideas – but we’ve made a start. The first new section is the Ideas Box replacing Resources in action. You download the template and complete it, then return it to us to include in the Ideas Box for others to download. It could be on a particular resource, songs, rhymes or ideas for (say) the sand, or you could surprise us! The downloaded sheet can be folded in half and laminated to keep with the resource or nearby. Do contribute your own ideas and help make this resource great!

We welcome back Ian Thompson this month, with an article reporting on Martin Hughes’ much earlier research on mark making with children aged 3 years 4 months to 7 years 9 months. This time Ian finishes with an invitation to you to take a closer look at mark making in your own setting – As teachers working in ‘everyday conditions in real classrooms’ you are all invited to conduct your own small-scale research study! By teachers we actually mean anyone working with children. Why not set up a corner of the room in a way that will stimulate mathematical mark making? Notepads, pens, calculators, phones, rulers, weighing scales, small counting items and pots to put them in, a till, money... I am sure you can think of much more. Spend a bit of time with the children playing there. Ask them what they are doing and what they have written. If you find the experience interesting and revealing, why not go on to carry out your own small-scale research study? As we advised in Issue 2, funding is available to give release time, thinking time or whatever you think would be useful for your project. Take a look at the NCETM Funded Projects scheme. You can participate at a level that is right for you, with a Mathematics Knowledge Network (MKN), a Teacher Enquiry Funded Project (TEFP), or through the Regional Projects Programme (RPP). We will advise you when the next round of funding is due. Your regional teams are always happy to help, and can also arrange support for you as your project develops.

Mark making is only one of many useful forms of communication, but clearly a focus area at the moment. We all try to explain our thinking in words, pictures, diagrams and assorted sounds. I love the idea of adopting a word – see Focus on...Communication for more information. Children thinking mathematically: PSRN essential knowledge for Early Years practitioners is a new publication from the DCSF. The booklet builds on Mark Making Matters, extending and developing the concepts explored there with particular reference to the three strands of PSRN: Numbers as labels and for counting, Calculating and Shape space and measures. Chapter 3: Children’s mathematical graphics lays the foundation for the remainder of the booklet, which concludes with consideration of transition between EYFS and Year 1.

Many children start school with poor language skills. Take a look at Focus on...Communication to find out about I CAN’s Early Talk programme. The DCSF published a 16-page booklet entitled Teaching effective vocabulary: What can teachers do to increase the vocabulary of children who start education with a limited vocabulary? in March 2008. The booklet tells us that parents have the biggest influence on vocabulary growth, particularly before the age of seven. It goes on to explain that vocabulary is a strong

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indicator of reading success. Children with low vocabularies need to be targeted early, since catching up is very difficult. All the advice given for developing vocabulary is just as relevant in mathematics, making this an extremely useful handbook. Remember to take a look at the new issue of the Primary Magazine. It has a wealth of information and great ideas to develop classroom practice. Focusing on water and capacity, as well as the usual ‘little bit of history’, there will be plenty that is relevant to the Early Years. And finally, a quick look ahead: have you booked your place at the BCME7 conference? It will be held in Manchester this year at University Place, University of Manchester on 6-9 April 2010. There are plenty of sessions that will be of interest to you – download the programme and takea look;

bursaries towards the cost will be available from BCME – information will be posted on the BCME7

website.

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

Focus on… Communication

Have you heard of I CAN? I CAN is a children’s communication charity whose mission is to ensure that everyone in contact with children knows how important communication is, what communication difficulties look like and what they can do to help. They want to ensure that

no child is left out or left behind because of communication problems. The charity says, “Communicatiodifficulties are life-limiting. A child who struggles to speak will find it hard to read, write and make friends.”

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In some socially deprived parts of the UK, upwards of 50% of children are starting school with poor language skills. I CAN offers expert advice to parents and families about what to look out for and what to do. They can provide assessments for children so that their families know what support will meet their needs, and they can give teachers and people working with children the skills to help those who struggle. In addition to their two special schools, I CAN offer a number of programmes. Their Early Talk programme supports the communication development of all young children and especially those with speech, language and communication needs. It does this by working in partnership with children’s services, including local authorities and Speech and Language Therapy departments, to improve the knowledge and skills of Early Years practitioners working in a range of settings including private, voluntary, independent and maintained. Early Talk is also suitable for childminders, so that they can demonstrate good practice in relation to supporting young children’s communication development. It is a unique, evidence-informed programme designed to aid the communication development of all pre-school children by improving the skills and knowledge of Early Years practitioners. Early Talk will give professionals who work with families in deprived communities – health visitors, community nurses, GPs and front-line staff in local authorities – the information and resources to help parents support their children’s communication skills.

In 2010, the charity will be piloting Early Talk in four local areas: working with The Communication Trust and the Every Child a Chance Trust, they are developing A Chance to Talk to help children aged four to seven who are struggling with their speech and language at primary school. At the heart of A Chance to Talk is a ‘catch up’ programme. Children will take part in small group activities to help them develop their listening abilities, stretch their vocabulary and learn how to build sentences. Those with more significant difficulties will receive specialist, one to one help. They plan to pilot A Chance to Talk in 24 schools, helping over 4 000 children to catch up and become more confident communicators. Download the Impact Report fmore information. It will be interesting to see how the project develops, aif there will be a national roll-out in due course

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

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. I CAN has also worked in conjunction with the BT Better World campaign

and Openreach to develop a range of free resources for parents and early years practitioners. They aimdevelop children’s speaking and listening skills through communication-rich environments. There is a DVD

to

Learning to Talk, Talking to Learn for Early Years practitioners, and another called Chatter Matters for parents. Many of the activities in the Communication Cookbook are just as relevant for mathematics as they are for speaking and listening – sequencing, memory games, patterns, sorting and much more. Aimed at four to six-year-olds, there’s even a matching online activity, Boo Cat’s Birthday Party. Ready, Steady, Talk! is a great booklet of games to help two and three-year-olds get ready for pre-school. This would be a very useful resource to give to parents on their first visit to a children’s centre, nursery or any

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

other pre-school setting. There are several other resources on offer, so browse their resources section and see what you would find useful. In most cases, the only charge is for postage. Read and reflect on Tommy’s story, and join in with the Chatterbox Challenge.

read Tommy’s story for a little inspiration take part in I CAN’s Chatterbox Challenge in February 2010, featuring singing and signing, games

and story telling. The 2010 activities have a Mini-beasts and the Garden theme. Go to the site to register for a free activity pack

download or buy a copy of their Stages of Speech and Language Development Poster; alternatively, there is a Chatter Chart for babies, toddlers, or pre-schoolers

adopt a word: you can have your word put on a mug, T-shirt, keyring or fridge magnet to remind you and inform others.

R4U – Research for You Children representing quantity - Ian Thompson, Visiting Professor at Northumbria University The Research section in the first Early Years Magazine described a small-scale research project on spontaneous mark making in a nursery class. This article reports on Martin Hughes’ much earlier research with children aged 3 years 4 months to 7 years 9 months, described in detail in his 1986 seminal book, Children and number. Twenty-four children from various socio-economic backgrounds in each of nursery, reception, Y1 and Y2 classes were interviewed individually. A quantity of bricks – either one, two, three, five or six – was put in front of each child, along with a piece of paper and a pencil. In order to avoid using the words ‘writing’ or ‘drawing’ the researchers were careful to ask each child “Can you put something on the paper to show how many bricks are on the table?” The researchers analysed the results of the interviews, categorising them as pictographic, iconic, symbolic and idiosyncratic; an example of each category, similar to those reported by Hughes, is illustrated below:

pictographic responses involved an attempt to represent the bricks in some way, as well as representing their actual numerosity

iconic responses similarly involved one-to-one correspondence. However, children used an idiosyncratic notation to tally the number of bricks

symbolic responses involved the use of conventional symbols such as numerals idiosyncratic responses were those that the researchers were unable to classify.

As might be expected, the youngest children favoured idiosyncratic or iconic methods, with tally marks resembling fingers, whereas the responses of the older children were usually pictographic or symbolic. However, not all representations of the quantities were accurate. Hughes later refined his study to give the activity a more communicative purpose, devising what became known as the ‘Tins game’ (you may have seen this on the excellent Horizon programme Twice five plus the wings of a bird). He used four small tins containing different numbers of bricks (zero, one, two and three), and the children were shown the number in each tin. These were then shuffled and the children were asked to pick the tin

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containing ‘x’ bricks. Hughes used their initial lack of success as motivation for them to write something on the paper on the tin lid, to help them identify the number of bricks in each one. He found that the representations that the children used contributed to the success of 11 of the 15 nursery children and all 10 of the reception children. The representations used fell into the same four categories as in the first study. One big difference in the second study was the reduction in the number of pictographic responses. Hughes argued that this was probably because the children realised that they only needed to discriminate between the different number of bricks rather than any other aspect. Those children whose responses were classified as idiosyncratic were unlikely to recognise them, whereas those using the other categories of representation were generally able to recognise them one week later. When Hughes suggested on a second visit that the ‘unsuccessful’ children might like to try the game again putting the same number of marks on the tins as the number of objects in the tin (i.e. use an iconic one-to-one correspondence representation), all of them were successful. So, by the end of the study all 25 children had, with or without prompting, been successful, suggesting that children as young as three are able represent quantities. Munn (1997), looking at Hughes’ data from an ‘emergent literacy’ perspective, argued that it was not clear that the children recognised that the purpose of the activity was communicative. Consequently, she modified the study – for children who had the concept of two or more – by including an extra step that involved a teddy adding a brick to the ‘two’ tin, with the children covering their eyes as she selected the tin. Munn was interested in whether the children would recognise that the number of bricks in the ‘two’ tin was different from their representation on the label, thereby enabling them to select the correct tin. She found that the most successful children were those who had used conventional numerals, however badly formed. These children appeared to realise that their ‘2’ signified something different from the three bricks in the tin. The children who had learned how to write numerals treated them as symbols that communicated quantity, whereas most of those not using conventional symbols did not. She concluded that even though pictograms and tallies might look like representations of quantity, the children in this study did not treat them in that way. The study had followed the children from the age of 4 years 3 months to 5 years and 4 months, and at the end of her 13-month study, Munn suggested that even the most primitive-looking symbols only acquired a communicative function if the children had been involved in discussion about them and had integrated them with concepts of number and counting. She argued that symbols with conventional meaning appeared to have more power than symbols with personal meaning. Carruthers and Worthington (2006) suggest that Hughes’ four categories are not sufficient; children’s written representations are more varied, and do not fall neatly into such a classification system. However, I would argue that their work mainly constitutes an attempt to interpret and classify those representations that Hughes categorised as ‘idiosyncratic’ (i.e. ‘unclassifiable’!). They also argue that in their studies – based on everyday conditions in real classrooms rather than clinical interviews – children have used a range of non-conventional marks in order to communicate their mathematics. As teachers working in ‘everyday conditions in real classrooms’ you are all invited to conduct your own small-scale research study!

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

Further reading Carruthers, E. and Worthington, M. (2006) Children’s mathematics: making marks, making meaning, 2nd edn. London: Sage Publications. Hughes, M. (1986) Children and number: difficulties in learning mathematics. Oxford: Blackwell. Munn, P. (1997) Writing and number, in I. Thompson, (ed.) Teaching and Learning Early Number, 1st edn. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Case Study Holly Primary School

In September 2007, Holly Primary School applied for NCETM funding to focus on CPD and its impact on the six core areas of learning, using Mathematical Development as the vehicle to permeate other areas of the curriculum. They called their project What impact does professional development of mathematics have within the Six Key Areas of Learning? and completed the project in Decem

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

ber 2008. The report of their project makes interesting reading. Make sure you

read the Mathematics Data Analysis Report. They concluded that they needed more work on calculations in the Foundation Stage. Do you agree with that? Their Addition Policy Booklet details standards that they expect the majority of children to achieve. They encourage their children to develop a mental picture of the number system in their heads to use for calculation and to develop ways of recording calculations using pictures etc. Take a look at the standards they expect children to achieve in multiplication and division too. Do you agree with the progression they suggest in their policy booklets? What are the similarities with your school, particularly in the Foundation Stage?

Maths to share - CPD for you and your colleagues Supporting children's talk for learning We talk to children all of the time, but are our interactions moving them on by supporting the children to develop their thinking and express themselves more clearly? This month’s CPD suggests using the five short video sequences attached to the National Strategies’ Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy (PSRN) section to help practitioners reflect upon their own verbal interactions with children. Go to the PSRN section of the National Strategies website. The attached videos demonstrate various aspects of problem solving, reasoning and numeracy in practice. Before the session, download the transcript of each video. Photocopy enough for one each and clip together in the order that you plan to show the video. Invite colleagues to note any comments on their transcripts to discuss at the end of each video. Watch the clips one at a time and consider what kind of interactions are going on and how each child is being supported.

Getting ready to go out In a reception class, the practitioner encourages the children to locate the correct size of wellingtons by number and location. The video shows how, by talking about space and measurement and developing appropriate vocabulary, children use their knowledge to develop ideas and to solve mathematical problems. Copy the transcript of the video.

A picture of my family In a pre-school setting, a practitioner supports two children to think about biggest, smallest, tallest and shortest, as they discuss the pictures they have drawn. The clip shows how children's mathematical development occurs as they seek patterns, make connections and recognise relationships through working with numbers, counting, shape, space and measures. Look out for one of the children responding by generating a question of her own and the practitioner asking further questions to encourage one of the children to clarify her thinking. Copy the transcript of the video.

Cocoa In the outdoor area of a pre-school on a lovely sunny day, the practitioner supports a child in his role-play about shops and money. The clip shows how children develop an awareness of the relationship between numbers and amounts. Listen for how the questioning by the practitioner leads one child to rethink pounds and pence. Copy the transcript of the video.

Talking about a monster In a reception class, the practitioner supports a child to talk about the features of his 'monster' using language such as long, tall, taller. This demonstrates how, through talking about shape, size, measurement and developing vocabulary, children use their knowledge to develop ideas and to solve mathematical problems. Copy the transcript of the video.

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

.www.ncetm.org.uk A Department for Children, Schools and Families initiative to enhance professional development across mathematics teaching

A bed for a giant

In a reception class, the practitioner supports a child to solve problems by thinking about the size of a giant's bed. She helps him to learn new skills about measuring and uses language such as long, tall, taller. This clip demonstrates how, through talking about shape, size, measurement and developing vocabulary, children use their knowledge to develop ideas and to solve mathematical problems. Copy the transcript of the video.

After watching and discussing all five clips, look at the transcripts in more detail. Discuss the kinds of interactions taking place. What strategies do the practitioners use to move the children on? The main technique used is questioning. Take a look at the Mathemapedia entry Metacognitive Questioning for support. Many of the links within the entry will be useful too. What cues do the practitioners use in the video clips to tailor their questions? Can you sort and categorise the questions? Look at your categories. Which type do you use most/least often? Focus on developing your questioning techniques and report back in a future session.