Improving attainment and confidence in numeracy and mathematics for all.
Welcome to the East Ayrshire Numeracy and Mathematics site.
The East Ayrshire numeracy and mathematics strategy aims to:
This site has been created to support all practitioners in meeting these aims within the East Ayrshire numeracy and mathematics strategy.
This toolkit has been developed to support planning, self-evaluation and improvement in numeracy and mathematics.
East Ayrshire Raising Attainment in Numeracy and Mathematics Toolkit
In addition to the range of universal professional development opportunities available throughout session 2022-23, there is range of professional learning that has been recorded which can be accessed any time, any place.
These include:
National Numeracy Day 2022- Are you a numbers champion?
National Numeracy Day will take place on 18th May 2022. Education Scotland and the Scottish Government will again participate as lead supporters of the campaign in the hope of encouraging all adults in Scotland to brush up on their numbers skills.
This year will celebrate numbers by hosting a virtual festival, packed full of practical advice from celebrities and experts, inspirational stories from real-life learners and a host of free online events and resources. The festival will focus on three key themes; supporting children’s numeracy, managing your money and numeracy for work.
Get involved!
Since 2018, Scotland has had record numbers of community organisations, adult learning providers, schools and businesses signing up to be numeracy champions. When you sign up to be a National Numeracy Day Champion you will receive free, fun materials and resources to use and share, and join over 1,300 other Champions helping the nation to feel good about numbers. All participants will have access to an online number skills checker called ‘The Challenge’ that will help signpost to resources to improve number skills.
To find out more please visit https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/numeracyday
A Number Talk is a brief, ongoing, daily routine that helps students develop computational fluency through the opportunity to share their thinking processes aloud. The Number Talk is a useful assessment tool to use to see if the concept being developed has been grasped by learners.
The East Ayrshire SAC Numeracy Team have delivered live and webinar CLPL sessions on the implementation of Number Talks within classroom practice. The following link will take you to the Teacher Guide, Implementation Plan, training PowerPoint, resources and associated tasks that have been collated, created and shared to support the development and implementation of the Number Talks approach.
Splats are a great tool to engage learners in mathematical talk and link to the development of subitising and developing number sense in counting, addition subtraction and fractions. Check out the free PowerPoint lesson resources on Steve’s blog. Click on the boxes below to access Steve’s blog. Alternatively, click on this link to access the downloaded Splat resources.
https://stevewyborney.com/2017/02/splat/
Education Scotland have featured a number of guest blogs (including this one) in the sharing practice area of the PLC site. The blogs provide a picture of emerging practice across local authorities and establishments across Scotland.
Education Scotland Sharing Practice Area
The Guest Blogs section contains blogs developed by maths practitioners across Scotland and is worth a look to see how teachers are developing their practice and sharing key resources through these blogs.
The East Ayrshire Numeracy Leaders team at First Level have been developing target setting in their establishments and worked with SAC team members of the team to provide the following resource to support the development of target setting. A useful resource to help with creating individual plans.
The following resource contains an PowerPoint overview of target setting and a booklet containing a list of suggested First Level Numeracy Targets. The targets are based on the Experiences and Outcomes in Curriculum for Excellence. The targets should be used alongside East Ayrshire’s Numeracy and Mathematics Planners and are broken down in the same way: Beginning of the Level, During the Level and During and Towards the End of the Level.
Target Setting Guide PowerPoint
Numeracy Targets First Level Booklet
Below are a few examples of how the targets have been used with children at New Cumnock Primary School for self assessment purposes:
Self Assessment of Targets:
e-portfolios to track progress using MS Forms:
The following page in the blog has pulled together links to resources and sources of inspiration to support secondary teachers planning learning, teaching and assessment in numeracy and mathematics across the BGE and Senior Phase.
The East Ayrshire SAC Numeracy Team and LOST have collaborated to create outdoor learning planning tools to support the planning of numeracy and maths learning in the outdoors for Early, First and Second Level.
The planners are based around different themes, including Daily Walks, Trees, Sport and Weather. The link below take you to a selection of the planning frames developed to date:
Here is an example of one of the planning frames for outdoor learning:
Outdoor Learning Early Level At the Park Planner Teacher
The following document was created to support the development of maths in the outdoors providing ideas for outdoor learning zones and equipment ideas:
Outdoor Learning Zone and Equipment Ideas
The following link provides ideas for parents when in the outdoors:
Outdoor Maths Activities – Parent planner
Useful Websites
The following websites and blogs will provide you with sources of inspiration when planning Numeracy and Mathematics activities through Outdoor Learning.
East Ayrshire LOST – Learning Outdoors Support Team Blog
https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/ea/learningoutdoorssupportteam/
Sign up to receive the LOST weekly newsletter containing Literacy, Numeracy and HWB Outdoor Learning ideas.
CPD
Recorded Education Scotland Webinar – Learning and Teaching Numeracy and Maths Outdoors (around 50 min long and full of useful information)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyzhJn_M6DU
Juliette Robertson website for support in developing your space and resources
https://creativestarlearning.co.uk/
Learning Through Landscapes
https://www.ltl.org.uk/free-resources/ will take you to the search tool by stage and curricular area.
Sustainable Learning
https://www.sustainablelearning.com/resource/outdoor-maths
RHS Gardening Campaign
https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/resources/activity/estimating-environments
Signposts for Global Citizenship
http://www.signpostsglobalcitizenship.org/curriculum-area/numeracy
Woodland Trust
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/support-us/act/your-school/resources/
Woodland Trust Investigating Leaves
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/media/48345/leaf-id-sheet.pdf
Play of the Wild
https://playofthewild.com/2020/08/19/outdoor-maths-activities-ks1-maths-outdoor-learning/
Citizen Science
The WOW data base from the Met Office was mentioned in the Weather planner
TCV keeps an updated record of current Citizen Science projects (lots of information handling, measure etc.)
https://www.tcv.org.uk/scotland/discover/citizen-science/
There is also a bank of surveys from the OPAL project. OPAL is a project that is no longer live so you can’t upload to a national data base but the materials are excellent and very user friendly. Good for school and local area surveys.
Tree measuring
https://www.owlscotland.org/images/uploads/resources/files/TreeMeasuring2018.web3.pdf Great resource especially for 2nd level and up.
Other useful blogs
Learning Outside the Classroom
https://learningoutsidetheclassroomblog.org/2019/04/17/9-ways-to-take-your-maths-lessons-outside/
The LOST Team have developed Maths Trails. Maths Trails are a fun and engaging way to use and learn maths skills outdoors. They can be used to apply and enhance learning in different contexts and to make numeracy and maths learning relevant by linking it to real life and demonstrating maths in the world around us. For teachers, this means that the activities can be amended to meet different learner needs and can be used to focus on a variety of Experiences and Outcomes within the the MNU Curriculum. Maths Trails are therefore suitable for learners working at Early Level and beyond and can be completed in school grounds or further afield. You can find out more on their Maths Trails page, where they have example trails for each level and even some ready made for East Ayrshire schools.
The LOST team have developed a range of outdoor learning maths activities across Second Level . They can be found here:
Second Level (Primary 5, 6 and 7) Numeracy and Maths Learning Activities
The SWEIC Maths Group was formed in February 2019 with the aims of improving the quality of learning, teaching and assessment in numeracy and mathematics through sharing practice and collaborating across the South-West to design and deliver high quality CLPL inputs for practitioners across the SWEIC.
Since lockdown in March the SWEIC Maths Group have been planning ways to maintain the momentum gained within the Numeracy Leaders network during last session. This team site is a result of this planning with each of the four local authorities committing to sharing approaches to delivering CLPL in the current climate. Within the staff notebook in the Team you will find links to a wide range of numeracy and maths focused CLPL inputs, resources and sources of inspiration currently being provided across our local authorities, including the recording of the ‘Mathematical Reasoning using Bar Models’ CLPL input delivered by the SWEIC Numeracy Leaders last session.
This series of videos have been created to share some of the approaches to teaching and learning in numeracy, calculation strategies and terminology currently being developed across schools in East Ayrshire.
Session 1 – Introduction
Session 2 – Early Number Concepts
Session 3 – Addition and Subtraction Strategies
Session 4 – Multiplication and Division Strategies
A range of Family Learning activities to apply these strategies can be found here:
White Rose Maths have created the Maths with Michael series for parents and carers. This series provides short high quality videos showing how parents can support numeracy at home using concrete and pictorial representations.
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