The Education Endowment Foundation’s Dr Julian Grenier shares three principles that will help you get Early Years children off to the best possible start in their number journey…
Mathematics is part of children’s lives, from the everyday struggle to find a matching pair of socks in the morning to the sense of wonder a child might feel when looking at the hexagonal patterned arrangement of honeycomb.
Remarkably, we even know from research that babies are hard-wired with a sense of quantity and pattern in the world.
From a young age, children can approximate quantities without needing to count. This early mathematical understanding is independent from language: toddlers can recognise three things, although they may not know how to say the word.
Despite this natural ease and sense of wonder, many of us don’t find maths easy or fun as adults, but it is important for all of us to develop a positive, confident mindset about maths and make sure that children get off to the best possible start in this area of learning.
Fortunately, there is plenty of robust research evidence for us to act on, so we can support every child to reach their potential. Here are three key principles to consider.
Firstly, we must give children plenty of time, focusing on deep understanding, not superficial, fastpaced coverage of the curriculum.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF’s) guidance report, Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1, comments that “it can take a considerable amount of time for young children to learn mathematics, and this learning can be taxing”.
The report adds that “importantly, even if children appear to be engaging in mathematical activities (for example, reciting the count sequence), they may not have a full grasp of the underlying concepts (for example, understanding the meaning of the numbers in the count sequence)”.
For example, once children are counting accurately to 10, it is important not to rush them on to bigger numbers.
Our focus should be on deeper exploration. We might ask children to show us different ways of representing a number like six, for example, using coloured counters.
We could additionally ask further questions, like “How do you know that shows six?” or “Can you show me other ways?”
Discussions like these help children to build up mental images of numbers. Using apparatus like the abacus-like rekenrek also helps children to “see” numbers and, over time, enables them to develop the automaticity in number facts they need to achieve the Early Learning Goal in number by the end of Reception.
The second key principle is making sure that we put a strong emphasis on spatial reasoning. Maths is not just about numbers. Some of the important aspects of spatial reasoning are:
The third key principle is a focus on every single child. Some children get lots of support for their mathematical learning at home and will be confident and playful as they explore maths in nursery and Reception.
We need to be alert to children who maybe do not have the same earlier experiences. For example, a pretend shoe shop is a great way of teaching children about numbers and sizes.
We might help children explore which shoe size fits them, put shoes in order from smaller to larger, and to notice the price tags, for example.
This sort of play is engaging for children who have been to a shoe shop or talked about the different sizes of shoes.
To engage the children who have not had these experiences, we might need to make a special effort to encourage them to join in. Maybe they would benefit from a trip to a real shoe shop first?
When children are learning about numbers during a group time, perhaps singing “Five Currant Buns”, keep an eye out for those children who do not join in or look uncertain.
They may need a chance to learn and join in with the song again, either individually with you or in a small group.
There is plenty of high-quality support you can draw on. If you are in a nursery class or setting, you could sign up to take part in Maths Champions, a programme of online professional development with support from a mentor.
The EEF found that children taking part in this programme make an average of three months’ additional progress (and two months’ additional progress in language and communication).
For children eligible for the Early Years Pupil Premium, the average impact is as much as six months.
If you are in Reception, your school could take part in the evidence-informed Mastering Number at Reception and KS1 programme from the National College for Excellence in the Teaching of Maths (NCETM). You can access this through your local Maths Hub.
Learning to count isn’t easy, but we have strong research evidence about the everyday practices we can use to help children learn the association between number names and quantities…
Naming and labelling: the educator names and labels quantity. This means taking care to model counting with 1:1 correspondence between items and number words, then explicitly stating that the last number you say tells you the number of items in the set.
You might say “one-two-three-four” and then do a circular hand movement as you say, “That means we’ve got four.”
Estimating: the educator encourages the child to estimate the quantity of a small set of items. At snack time, you might have a group of five children and a small bowl of satsumas and ask the children, “Do you think we’ve got enough for everyone?”
Emphasis: the educator draws the child’s attention to significant mathematical learning in a range of contexts.
For example, while playing at the water tray with children, you might emphasise the concept of “more”. You could say to a child: “You’ve found two penguins now – look, one, two. I’ve only got one – so you’ve got more than me.”
Visualising: when you’re singing “Five Currant Buns” with the children, you could have props for the buns. Each time you call a child to come and take a bun away, the children can see the number of buns left and how the quantity reduces each time a child “bought a currant bun and took it away”
Dr Julian Grenier is senior content and engagement manager (Early Years) for EEF. Find out more about these practices, and many more, in the Early Mathematics theme on EEF’s Early Years Evidence Store.
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