Mistakes – are they essential to learning? Click here for the full article.  

Babies of just a few months old can subitize. The term is derived from the Latin adjective subitus (meaning sudden) and describes the skill of immediately knowing how many objects there are. ...

Given that female students now seem broadly to be performing as well as their male counter-parts at GCSE, why do we still need to concern ourselves with issues of gender and mathematics at school l...

Its not what you do but how you do it that is important Selecting activities that will promote learning and give opportunities to develop life skills such as working collaboratively or indepen...

What are the features of teaching Mathematics at KS2 Teaching mathematics at KS2 involves, planning,selecting teaching strategies, selecting suitable learning activities, selecting and usi...

The means of variables behave very intuitively, but not so the variances, and many pupils find this very difficult to really come to terms with. Even if they can say the right words when asked it expl...

A fraction has many different images. What are your (and your students') images for ¾? The Primary and Secondary Strategy “Framework for teaching mathematics” states that o...

Where can teachers get support for planning effectively? The Renewed Primary framework for Mathemtics covers the National Curriculum for Key-stages 1 and 2. The Primary framework contains a range...

Is assessing pupils more than giving them a mark out of 30 in a test ? At KS2 children are assessed at school internally with end of unit tests and externally with KS2 SATs tests. Regular asse...

Pythagoras' Theorem is an interesting topic to teach. It can involve pupils looking at history of mathematics and also a number of different proofs.   For the full article click ...

Until learners are aware of the effects of an action, they are not in a position to make sense of that action, nor internalise it. Learners have actions they can carry out when prompted, and o...

Where can teachers get support for planning effectively? The Renewed Primary framework for Mathemtics covers the National Curriculum for Key-stages 1 and 2. The Primary framework contains a ra...

How prepared do you need to be to teach mathematics at KS2 ? To be confident teaching Mathematics in KS2 the teacher needs to be familiar with a range of equipment and practical resources for ...

Is a square a rectangle? Yes, but it's a special rectangle. So shouldn't we be more careful about what we call a non-special rectangle?   For the full article click here.

The equal sign has several meanings, not just 'find the answer'. How do we make it clear to learners what the equals sign really means?   For the full article click here...

With limited experience, a plausible generalisation may turn out later to be misleading and false. It is quite natural for young children to associate ‘making bigger’ with adding. ...

Though young children have a more limited repertoire of mathematical skills than their older peers, they will respond to the challenge of solving problems and - in doing so - often develop new know...

Mathematics is fundamentally about becoming aware of and expressing generality.   For the full article click here.

Since the operations on equations which preserve the solution consist of the same operation (adding subtracting, multiplying or dividing by a constant or a power of the unknown) applied to both sides ...

This entry gives some detail about the aspects and issues you may need to think about to help pupils understand what a fraction is, how to operate with fractions and the links between fractions and...