Supporting staff to show maths in real life
Brendan, the school’s numeracy coordinator, was very enthusiastic about the resources and training that National Numeracy had supplied throughout the year, and explained that the staff felt very supported throughout the programme by the Schools & Families team. He said “The Maths Anxiety webinar and Dyscalculia Network webinar were able to feed really well into our school's CPD training and had been very supportive for staff.”
I also spoke with John, the Key Stage 1 lead who had been involved in the programme, about the Family Maths Toolkit activities. He said that “It’s nice to have a variety of real-life examples to work from in the Family Maths Toolkit resources – homework can be monotonous. There are lots of questions coming from students around why we are learning certain topics – so it’s great to have examples of where we use maths in the real world.”
Less fear of maths in the classroom
It was really encouraging to hear that the staff felt very supported in running the programme and that they had already seem some different parents attend the ‘Help Your Child Love Maths’ workshops, who wouldn’t normally turn up to school events. They’ve also seen a change in behaviour from students around maths anxiety – John mentioned that “There’s not a lot of maths anxiety in the room now. There’s less fear of maths now – showing that mistakes are good, and you can learn from them.”
I also got to learn about how the school engaged with Number Confidence Week – their theme was around maths anxiety and the effort to help alleviate that in the families in their community. They ran all sorts of games and activities, held baking sessions (making chocolate apples) to help make maths fun and engaging, whilst also connecting with each other.
