Teach-Early-Years-14.1

M athematics is part of children’s lives, from the everyday struggle to find a matching pair of socks in the morning to the sense of wonder a child might feel when looking at the hexagonal patterned arrangement of honeycomb. Remarkably, we even know from research that babies are hard-wired with a sense of quantity and pattern in the world. From a young age, children can approximate quantities without needing to count. This early mathematical understanding is independent from language: toddlers can recognise three things, although they may not know how to say the word. Despite this natural ease and sense of wonder, many of us don’t find maths DR JULIAN GRENIER IS SENIOR CONTENT & ENGAGEMENT MANAGER (EARLY YEARS) FOR EEF “We need a positive maths mindset” The Education Endowment Foundation’s Dr Julian Grenier shares three principles that will help you get children off to the best possible start in their mathematical learning… easy or fun as adults (tinyurl.com/ TEYnatn), but it is important for all of us to develop a positive, confident mindset about maths and make sure that children get off to the best possible start in this area of learning. Fortunately, there is plenty of robust research evidence for us to act on, so we can support every child to reach their potential. Here are three key principles to consider. DEEP UNDERSTANDING Firstly, we must give children plenty of time, focusing on deep understanding, not superficial, fast- paced coverage of the curriculum. The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF’s) guidance report, Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 (tinyurl.com/TEYeefme ), comments that “it can take a considerable amount of time for young children to learn mathematics, and this learning can be taxing”. The report adds that “importantly, even if children appear to be engaging in mathematical activities (for example, reciting the count sequence), they may not have a full grasp of the underlying concepts (for example, understanding the meaning of the numbers in the count sequence)”. For example, once children are counting accurately to 10, it is important not to rush them on to bigger numbers. Our focus should be on deeper exploration. We might ask children to show us different ways of representing a number like six, for example, using coloured counters. We could additionally ask further questions, 38 Teachearlyyears.com