Teaching numeracy
Many students feel uncertainty about their mathematical ability or have a fear of maths. Being aware of the most effective strategies for teaching maths will help you to counter this.
Teaching style
The structured nature of mathematical knowledge suits a structured teaching style.
Break down content into relatively small chunks and ensure that students have fully mastered each one before going on to the next step. This will build students confidence about their ability.
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Use strategies which involve both teaching for understanding (using problem solving, etc.) and an element of rote-learning (multiplication facts and times tables).
Correcting misconceptions
Children easily develop misconceptions about the meaning of mathematical concepts. Primary school pupils will often acquire a rule and then overgeneralise it to situations in which it is not applicable. For example, pupils acquire the rule that when multiplying a number by 10, one adds a zero. They then use this rule in situations in which it is not correct, e.g. when multiplying decimals they might assume that 5.6 x 10 = 5.60.
As these misconceptions tend to be shared by a relatively large number of students, addressing them from the start can improve mathematical achievement.
- Get students to explain how they came to their answers,
whether right or wrong.
- If their answer is wrong, correct it explicitly.
- Provide detailed justifications of the solutions you are using.
This procedure is especially important in mathematics, where even right answers can sometimes result from inefficient or incorrect methods.
One way of avoiding future misconceptions is to teach the exact meaning of mathematical terms right from the start. It is far more difficult to change students' understanding of a term later on than to teach them correctly in the first place.
Making connections
It is particularly important in maths teaching to link different parts of the lesson and the curriculum. Mathematical ideas should not be taught in isolation: a strong focus should be put on the relationship between ideas. These linkages must be explicitly taught to students, using strategies like these:
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Use questions that ask a student to relate a newly taught concept to a previously learnt idea.
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Link the mathematics learnt in the classroom to real-life situations, and make connections between the mathematical knowledge they already possess and what they learn at school. This helps the many students who have difficulty with the abstract nature of mathematical knowledge.
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Use real-life materials, such as shopping bills for the younger students to enhance connections and generate informal mathematical knowledge. Get students to bring the materials to class themselves, furthering their involvement in the lesson.
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Link mathematical and real-world knowledge and applications by taking a realistic example or situation as your point of departure. Turn this into a mathematical model, leading to mathematical solutions, which may then be reinterpreted as a realistic solution.
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Explain new mathematical concepts using a variety of representations, e.g. symbolic, graphic, visual-aid-based, etc. In this way the student can learn to think of the mathematical concept apart from its physical representation.
To be effective, a real-life example needs to connect to students' actual experience and be as close as possible to the real world. Using real-life examples is more than just using words from everyday life in a word problem that is, as a whole, unrealistic.
For the Government's information about the National Numeracy Strategy, see the Standards Site.
This article was commissioned by TeacherNet independently of DCSF policy teams and should not be taken as reflecting official policy.
