Improving Primary Mathematics

Linking Home and School

Jan Winter, Jane Andrews, Pamela Greenhough, Martin Hughes, Leida Salway, Wan Ching Yee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134226139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Improving Primary Mathematics provides primary teachers with practical ideas about how to bring these two worlds closer to improve children's mathematics learning.

Using a number of fascinating case studies focusing on children's experiences of mathematics both inside and outside the classroom, the book asks:

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• How do children use mathematics in their everyday lives?

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• How can teachers use this knowledge to improve children's learning in school?

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• What activities can teachers use with parents to help share the ways that schools teach mathematics?

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• What can parents do to support their children's learning of mathematics?

Tried-and-tested practical suggestions for activities to support and encourage children's learning of mathematics include: making videos to share teaching methods; children taking photos to show how they use mathematics at home; inviting parents into school to share in mathematics learning; and numeracy-based activities for children and their parents to do together at home.

All those involved in planning, teaching and supporting primary mathematics will benefit from new insights into how learning at home and at school can be brought together to strengthen and improve children's learning of mathematics.

Chapter 1
Why link home and school learning?

This book is about the different ways in which children learn and use mathematics at home and at school. It is also about how these different ways of mathematics learning can be brought more closely together, for the benefit of teachers, parents and children. The early chapters provide detailed accounts of school and home mathematics learning as experienced by a small group of children, and also recount the school mathematics experiences of these children’s parents. The later chapters provide practical examples of activities designed to bring home and school mathematics learning more closely together, through a process of home–school knowledge exchange. We hope that readers of the book will gain new insights into the nature of mathematics learning, and come to understand why home–school knowledge exchange is so important. We also hope that readers will try out some of the knowledge exchange activities for themselves, and invent new ones which are tailored to their own particular circumstances.

Two key ideas about children’s learning

This book, and its companion volume Improving Primary Literacy: Linking home and school (2007), are based on two fundamental ideas about children’s learning and how it can be enhanced.

The first key idea is that children live and learn in two different worlds – home and school. Clearly, this is an idea that no one would seriously take issue with. Yet it is also one whose importance has never been fully accepted. When educators and politicians talk, as they frequently do, about the need to improve levels of children’s mathematical attainment, they are usually advocating changes to the way children are taught mathematics in school. This kind of mathematics learning is of course very important: there is no doubt that much of what children learn about mathematics takes place through their lessons in school. But school is not the only place where mathematics learning goes on. As we shall see in Chapter 3, children are also learning about mathematics through their ongoing daily activities at home and in the wider community, as they interact with parents, grandparents, siblings and friends, and as they play games or help with everyday household activities such as cooking and shopping. This kind of learning is often hidden from public view, but it is of vital importance in understanding how children learn mathematics.

One consequence of children living and learning in two different worlds is that the two kinds of learning may become separated. Children may be unable or unwilling to draw on what they have learned in one world when they are in the other. The knowledge, skills and understanding they have acquired at school may not be accessible to them at home, and vice versa. Moreover, key adults who might be able to help children make the necessary connections between the two kinds of learning may not have sufficient knowledge to do so. Teachers may not know enough about what their children are learning at home, while parents may not know enough about what their children are learning at school.

In the area of mathematics, this kind of separation seems to be particularly acute at the moment. In England, the teaching of school mathematics has been transformed in recent years by the National Numeracy Strategy (now the Primary Framework for Mathematics. See www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primaryframeworks/). While Wales has its own curriculum, broadly similar changes have happened there too, as local authorities have been responsible for introducing strategies to improve achievement in numeracy (Jones, 2002). The mathematics curriculum, the shape, content and pace of mathematics lessons, and the way that mathematics is assessed are all very different from how many of today’s parents were taught. As a result, parents may not feel sufficiently confident to help their children at home, or worry that they might be confusing their children if they try to do so. Similarly, the nature of many children’s out-of-school lives, and the kinds of mathematical procedures used at home, may be relatively opaque to their teachers, particularly when the children come from a different ethnic or religious community from that of their teacher.

This brings us to our second key idea – that children’s learning will be enhanced if home and school learning are brought more closely together. Again, this appears to be an idea that few would take serious issue with. Teachers have long been encouraged to draw on children’s out-of-school interests in their teaching, and to keep parents involved with and informed about their children’s learning in school. Parents have long been encouraged to support their children’s school learning at home. And indeed, there have been several influential research projects – some going back to the 1970s – which have demonstrated the value of parents and teachers working together to support children’s learning, particularly in the area of mathematics. See for example, the IMPACT project which offered innovative ideas to engage both parents and children in mathematics homework (Merttens and Vass, 1990) and the Ocean maths project (www.ocean-maths.org.uk), a project in East London which works to encourage parents’ involvement in their children’s learning of mathematics.

As with our first key idea, though, the importance of this second idea has never been fully accepted. Teachers and headteachers often tell us that the pressure they are currently under to ‘raise standards’ means that developing effective home–school partnerships is, for many of them, an area of relatively low priority. We would reply that the most effective way to raise standards is to bring together children’s home and school learning. These are not two competing priorities: rather, one is the means to the other.

There are signs, however, that things are changing. The recent Review of Mathematics Teaching in Primary Schools and Early Years Settings by Sir Peter Williams (Williams, 2008) concluded that:

It is self-evident that parents are central to their child’s life, development and attainment. They cannot be ignored or sidelined but should be a critical element in any practitioners’ plans for the education of children.

(para. 265)

The Review commented positively on the work of the Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project and specifically recommended that:

teachers need to recognise the wealth of mathematical knowledge children pick up outside of the classroom, and help children to make links between ‘in-school’ and ‘out-of-school’ mathematics.

(para. 257)

This book will provide practical examples of ways in which these links can be made.

The nature of the book

Improving Primary Mathematics arises directly from the Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project, which took place between 2001 and 2006. During this time we worked closely with teachers, parents and children from different communities in the two cities of Bristol and Cardiff, developing, implementing and evaluating a range of home–school knowledge exchange activities. We also carried out in-depth interviews with many of these teachers, parents and children, and asked parents and children to make video recordings of their home learning.

One strand of the project focused on home and school mathematics learning for children in Years 4 and 5, and the book draws heavily on the work of that strand. At the same time, it is not intended to be a full account of the research and its findings (see the Appendix for more details of the project). Rather, it is an attempt to make project outcomes available in a usable form to all those interested in children’s mathematics learning – at all ages – and how it might be enhanced through home– school knowledge exchange. This includes:

• teachers
• headteachers
• numeracy coordinators and mathematics specialists
• family learning coordinators
• teaching assistants and learning support assistants
• students in initial training
• teachers on post-graduate courses
• teacher educators and other educationalists
• school governors
• parents and parents’ organisations.

In order to make the contents of the book accessible to such a wide range of audiences we have deliberately emphasised practical action and the issues arising, and kept references to academic texts to a minimum. Readers are encouraged to try out and adapt the activities described here, and are free to photocopy and use the various sheets included in the text.

Chapter 2
Mathematics at school

The teaching of mathematics in English and Welsh primary schools has changed dramatically over the last ten years. Whether these changes have led to improved levels of achievement is very much open to debate [

Reading 2.1]. What is clear, however, is that many parents may not be familiar with the way mathematics teaching has changed or the rationale behind these changes. As a result, they may lack the confidence or knowledge to help their children with mathematics at home.

In this chapter we look at some school mathematics lessons involving four children – Olivia, Ryan, Nadia and Saqib. These children attended four contrasting primary schools in Bristol and Cardiff which participated in the Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project (see Appendix for more details). We start by looking at what these children’s parents recall of their own experiences of learning mathematics at school. This will help us understand how they might see their children’s current experiences of school mathematics.

Olivia’s mother and school mathematics

Olivia’s mother did not have good memories of learning mathematics at school:

I disliked maths so much … and I was so useless at it, and told I was so useless at it. I’ve got a real dislike for it, you know, it’s a bit of a phobia really, you know, because you think ‘well I’m no good at that so I can’t do that’, whereas Olivia is so good at it and quite confident, that, you know, that’s what makes it a little bit scary to a point – she’s only eight and a half, you know, and she knows all that already.

Like many parents, Olivia’s mother particularly remembered being taught multiplication. She was made to learn multiplication tables ‘parrot fashion’, and this experience was the start of her loss of confidence in mathematics:

Oh, it was horrific, it was horrible … we used to have chalk thrown at us and things for getting it wrong and be humiliated in the classroom by being asked to stand up and say your times table. And if you got it wrong, repeating it until you said it, time and time again, and then, you know, by then my blush gland had been in overdrive and I’d be a ball of sweat and a bag of nerves. So [from] there on it went downhill really, right through my secondary education.

Olivia’s mother thought that her lack of confidence and ability in mathematics had prevented her from qualifying as a nurse. When asked if she used mathematics in her current job in management, she said:

Not very often. I mean we only use them, well, for budgets, managing budgets, but I use a calculator [laughs]. And you know it’s very simple, when you’ve got a calculator it’s very easy, isn’t it? So yeah, I don’t need it, you know, I do a lot of ratios which is proportioning staff to service users but those are figures I can do in my head and do that quite confidently, because they’re small, and you start giving me things up in the thousands and I think ‘oh no, you know, I can’t do it’.

Olivia’s mother felt that the methods which Olivia was currently taught for mathematical procedures were different from those which she had been taught:

What confuses me is that they do their calculations slightly different to how we were taught to do them, and she came home this week and told me that she had learned to divide … because I try and show her my way and she says ‘oh you don’t know what you’re doing’ [laughs] … ‘you have to section it’ and I’m thinking ‘oh no, I can’t do that’, you know. I probably could if I sat down with her, but she panics me a bit when she starts saying ‘no, you’re doing it wrong’, because I know the way that I’m doing it will get the right answer, the same as hers – but it’s going through the process of showing her how to do it.

Ryan’s mother and school mathematics

Ryan’s mother was brought up in Scotland and attended school there. Like Olivia’s mother, Ryan’s mother remembered learning her multiplication tables, although in her case this was by no means a traumatic experience:

Interviewer: Can you remember at Ryan’s age, doing maths at that age?

Ryan’s mother: Yeah, I was good at my tables – I could do them backwards, frontwards – I was really good.

Interviewer: Can you remember what they did to help you learn the tables?

Ryan’s mother: You had blocks, you had to count your blocks … just say them, every time you went to maths. You would say a table, you would learn just about that table, five times table, and you would learn that – and you would learn it backwards as well. And just things like that, I would say.

However, while Ryan’s mother felt she was good at multiplication, she struggled with division:

It was just the division, I couldn’t do it … I just couldn’t grasp it. I can remember the teacher sitting down and showing me how to do it – Miss X, her name was – and I just couldn’t grasp it, it just would not sink in. I think that’s where Ryan gets it from. But my tables and that, I’m really good.

Like Olivia’s mother, Ryan’s mother was aware that the methods her child was taught for calculations were different from the ones which she herself had been taught. As a result, she found it hard to help him with school work which he brought home, and it frequently led to arguments between them:

Ryan’s mother: He’s brought some maths home before and I’m no too bad at maths, but some … I don’t know if it’s just the way they pronounce some things and he’s explaining it to me and I just haven’t a clue and I just can’t help him. With reading, yeah, I can help him, but when he’s like working at sums and things like that … I’m no that thick like, but when it comes to doing like … oh, what do they call it [pause] it’s like you’ve got to figure out the meaning of something and to get the answer … I can read it out to him, but he always says I’m wrong because I’m no doing it properly … and we end up at loggerheads.

Interviewer: So do you think that you are doing it a different way?

Ryan’s mother: Oh, definitely. I had … see that’s when I went to a meeting, the other week about the maths and everything. It’s like you’ll do your take-away sum … we used to do ten to the top, ten to the bottom. And she showed me, the teacher – you take one off the eight, it was, and it came as seven, and you put that on there, the others. It was e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why link home and school learning?
• 2 Mathematics at school
• 3 Mathematics at home
• 4 Mathematics activities that take school to home
• 5 Mathematics activities that bring home into school
• 6 Home–school knowledge exchange: benefits and challenges
• Appendix: The Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project
• References