National Centre for Excellence in

the Teaching of Mathematics Regional Project Report Form

Hilary Southwell Cotgrave Candleby Lane School Candleby Lane Cotgrave Nottingham NG12 3JG hilary.southwell@ccls.notts.sch.uk 07932990004/ 01159892284

1. A brief outline of your project. Our project is designed to develop the teaching of counting in our large primary school. We hope that by promoting daily counting in all classrooms, it will foster strong mathematical skills, faster mental calculation, stronger appreciation of pattern and easier manipulation of numbers.

2. Why did you choose this project? Please outline briefly why you chose this theme for study, your rationale for developing your learning through this project and what you hoped to achieve. Whilst counting is embedded in some classrooms, particularly KS 1 and EYFS, it features less prominently in the KS2 teaching. Although our children make good progress in mathematics during their time with us, there are always areas where improvements can be made. This project is an opportunity to revisit the reasons for counting daily, to reinvigorate the type of counting activities being used, to develop the use of visualisation and to improve children’s mental manipulation of numbers. We hope to measure this by seeing a significant improvement in the mental maths scores children achieve in their summer assessments as well as a more tangible confidence.

3. Describe what happened as you carried out the project. We will be starting our work with a whole school staff meeting which will enable staff to explore some activities suitable for use in their classroom, to look at the key skills children need to count effectively and ways of developing counting with whole classes and small groups of children. The staff has already administered a mental maths test as part of assessment week. These scores will be used as baseline data for comparison with the score they achieve at the end of the summer term after the counting input in class has been increased.

National Centre for Excellence in

the Teaching of Mathematics Regional Project Report Form

4. What did you actually achieve as a result of doing this project? Please include

both qualitative and quantitative results where possible to substantiate your claims.

Our hope is that children become more confident when working mentally with numbers. We hope to measure this by the improvement they make in their mental maths scores between January and June. It is also anticipated that it will provide staff with the stimulus to use the various activities in different ways in their classroom and in particular to be more aware of common difficulties and misconceptions that children face when learning to count.

5. What impact has the project had on: • you and your teaching; • your pupils/students and their learning; • colleagues in your school/college; • parents, governors and the wider community?

We anticipate the impact to be • pupils enjoying counting and demonstrating more efficient manipulation of

numbers when calculating and problem solving • a heightened understanding of the importance of counting and reasoning about

numbers shown by teachers and TAs. • an appreciation of the impact our project has had on attainment by governors

and parents • Parents more aware of the need to count in different ways at home with their

children.

6. Who was involved? Please provide information about colleagues involved in the project. Did you find any research, enquiry or resources useful in supporting your project- if so, what?

Explain who was involved. All staff will be involved at the initial staff meeting. Year group leaders will be released to plan activities suitable for their year group. Teaching assistants working with small groups of children and individuals with additional needs will also be offered opportunities for collaborative learning via paired observations. All staff will have access to a collaborative learning journal on the NCETM site as a venue for informal feedback and observations. Parents attending our calculation evening in late spring will be provided with information on our work at school and ideas about how to support their child at home.

National Centre for Excellence in

the Teaching of Mathematics Regional Project Report Form

7. What support do you anticipate using ?did you find useful to support your project? e.g. research, previous National Centre funded projects, resources, people, etc. Support from the LA. Support from my MAST network. This project will form the basis for my final year assignment as part of the Primary Mathematics Specialist Teacher scheme. We hope to use research available on the internet and in particular on the NCETM portal.