By former DfE Assistant Director, Vanessa Pittard A major distinction between primary maths teaching in England and Singapore (and other high performing jurisdictions in the Far East) relates to whole-class (interactive) teaching. In the Far East everyone is taught the same maths together at the same pace, regardless of prior performance or how quickly different […]
Read more By former DfE Assistant Director, Vanessa Pittard I recently led a session with Derbyshire schools on mastery teaching. Derbyshire is a rural county, like many in England. This group of primary headteachers and maths leads included several people from schools with mixed-age classes: a fact of life for many rural schools. No surprise therefore that […]
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Head Teacher of Yarborough Academy, Hannah Albery, shares the journey of changing the maths culture in her school. “…this was mastery, but it also transcended everything. It was just good maths teaching. And, for me, that’s what mastery is. Teaching for understanding. And, that’s what Numicon gives us.” When the new curriculum came into place, […]
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Happy June, everyone! We hope you’re all having a magical summer so far. This month’s reading list is all about – you guessed it – marvellously magical tales to keep the little ones reading over the summer months. So, let’s take a (magic) wand-er through this spell-binding book list that will capture any child’s heart! […]
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Tackling a declining trend in maths In 2014, we achieved an Outstanding Ofsted, which was fantastic – a reflection of the dedication of our staff and their hard work. However, hidden behind that was a declining trend in maths. The gap between maths and English was widening and this was a concern. We became aware […]
Read moreHeadteacher Emma Cornhill at Fairburn Primary School talks about her school’s experience of using and implementing Numicon and the impact on the school… I have been head teacher at Fairburn Primary School for 11 years and I love it there. We have 15 members of staff, all part time and only 67 children in our school, […]
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Welcome to the first of our monthly recommended reading lists! Between exams, end-of-year preparations and more sunshine than we know what to do with, we hope your month hasn’t been filled with too much ‘may-hem’. The May reading list is kicking off with our top ten superhero tales – guaranteed to help children’s imaginations soar. […]
Read more When we implemented a whole-school textbook programme, we were delighted with the results. Before the programme, our KS2 maths results were below the national standards, with KS1 not far behind. We were very aware that maths was a concern from an Ofsted perspective and had been for some time. However, after one year of Inspire Maths … […]
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Francois Walker, Headteacher from Model School Whiteknights Primary shares his experience of the impact of the resources from Read Write Inc. After a term of implementing Read Write Inc. Phonics we saw an impact! Children were starting to read out of Oxford Reading Tree books and they’d never done that before. They were also able to […]
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By Jean Gross CBE, formerly the government’s Communication Champion for children and young people. Oxford University Press recently published the Oxford Language Report – a study into the effects of the word gap on children’s learning and what we can do to combat this. Here, Jean Gross CBE, offers some practical suggestions about how we […]
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