Practical Resources in Primary Maths Classrooms

This weekend, I was tagged in a tweet from @KCost, asking what practical maths equipment people would recommend for primary schools, given a budget of just £100 per class. Straight away the budget restriction means that some hard choices would have to be made, and this was the gist of my immediate tweeted response. But […]

Should Maths be Compulsory in the United Kingdom until the age of 18?

Yes. That’s the short answer. But as my regular contacts and readers will be aware, I am not exactly famous for brevity, so here’s the real (slightly longer) answer. It depends. Also true, but not a lot better. ‘Depends on what?‘ is of course the real question. In this post I have set out four […]

“I’m Stuck!”

Could seeing Word Problems as transactions actually help? Every teacher will have come face-to-face with this from their students, and most likely on a very regular basis during maths lessons. I am working with a few children at the moment for whom this seems to be the default setting – almost as though they look […]

The Power of Reflective Practice in Maths

I realise now that if I’m a better teacher than I used to be, it’s not because of the things I got right; it’s because of what I learnt from all the things I didn’t.

What Makes a Magic Square twice as magic?!

Adam McBride’s Thoughts on my newsletter Magic Square Puzzle In my monthly newsletter for October 2021, I published the following Magic Square. It has the unusual property that if you square each number – it is STILL a magic square! I was very pleased that Adam McBride, legendary mathematician and lecturer sent me some very […]

Smart Motorways

Why should we be concerned about Year 3, and what on earth do Smart Motorways have to do with it? It all started in July 2021, during a call with Liz Thomas and Deb Ferris, maths consultants for South Gloucestershire LA. During the conversation, Deb mentioned that she was putting on some training specifically for […]