Half term break, maths areas and provision area books.

Its half term!  We are very lucky as a school to have 2 weeks off for half term but unfortunately we have to write reports.  Having started on a few I've realised once again how little I really understand about the mathematics strand of the Development Matters document.

I'm commenting on how children are using numbers in their play - yet for many of our children, numbers are beyond their current level of thinking.
Instead I should be thinking back to what we were told earlier in the year about the basic elements of early maths such as space and shape in a basic sense.  I remember looking through the DCSF Numbers and Patterns document and talking about how children need to understand about space on a jigsaw board, or very basic sorting before they are able to move onto sorting by category and counting.
I've found that I've had to go back to the document and re-think a lot of the observations I've written this year.

Our maths area has hit a bit of a plateau.  Our resources have been very successful to develop the children's thinking but we've found it hard to find new and exciting things to add to the area.  During our growing topic we added different sizes of bulbs to compare.  But sadly its winding down a little bit.   What has been successful are the books which were suggested to us to add to the maths area.  I've listed a few below and the opportunities we have had with each:

• The big blue balloon is a wonderful story which I remember from when I was a little boy.  The best part of this story is the final page which you can unfold to 4x the page size.  A lot of our children have enjoyed this because they can talk about the size of the balloon and the different shapes that it makes.  We've enjoyed using the vocabulary relating to size such as "long" "big" "small" "stretched" etc.  

• Washing line is a short story which talks about differences in items which can be hung on the washing line.  We sadly didn't have the items we needed to add to the line but we talking about them from the story.  For the children, talking about the difference was difficult.  First they had to understand the concept of "same" and "different" and then try to understand the concept of 'why.' They really enjoyed the story and like to compare the colours of the items with colours they see around the setting.

• The very hungry caterpillar - this one is kind of obvious.  For us it was less about the time (though some children understood it) and more about the concept of change.  For children, change is something they expect to either happen RIGHT NOW or in the future.  They don't really get how it can happen gradually.  We sadly didn't receive our caterpillars to use during our topic/when we read this story as our core - but when we do we can use the knowledge we have learned to explore them.  The children had a good idea about how the caterpillar changed from a tiny insect to a BIG FAT one.  

There are quite a few other books we have been using but, for me, these are the three I really enjoyed sharing.  

Enjoy half term! 

OFSTED

We had the call about a month ago.

Our previous inspection (before I was appointed) was disappointing for all involved.  Various factors led to the school receiving a Satisfactory rating.  Obviously thanks to the new framework this rating is not insufficient.  Within the nursery the biggest let down was our outside area.  Now, we have combated this issues through investing lots of time, effort and money into beautiful signage and resources - all of which are vandalised and rendered useless within a few days.

So we get the call and its my outdoors week!  Never mind.

We were told by the inspectors that we were just short of outstanding in our setting which we were thrilled about.  The area they mentioned that we needed to improve was our communication/language.  Whilst we offer plenty of EAL support, our use of BLANK level questioning isn't always where it should be.  We knew this already as BLANK was something brand new to all of us this year.

One of our biggest praises was how the children helped to tidy up and understood where everything belonged.  The entire team tries its hardest to ensure all children to have this ownership.  We (like many other good centres) use contact on shelves to highlight where an object belongs.  The shape and size are a good indication of what belongs there and you sometimes (not often I admit) hear a child mutter, "No it doesn't go there, its round/too big/longer than that.."

One comment which was made to us a few months ago was to label resources in varying mathematical ways.  For example rather than just label things but colour or object, try describing them as "Curved" or "Straight" (the example was pieces of a railway track in the small world area).  I think it might be something to try very soon.

New Book!!

I bought something, its not a resource for my class but a NEW BOOK!

'Foundations of Mathematics' by Skinner & Stevens came up somewhere on a blog I read about basic maths within the foundation stage.  As a nursery teacher it is frustrating that I can't find a good about early mathematics without it including (and usually predominantly about) reception.  

It doesn't blow you away with your first read.  In fact a lot of the things included are basic and might be teaching you to suck eggs.  I don't know if it was intended for new practitioners or maybe even students.

What really gets me going about these types of books is the COLOUR!  I don't respond well to text books, I’m a very visual learner.

There are 8 different sections which covers most of the bases on early maths.  They go through number, calculations, measurement, shapes, problem solving, sorting and a great section on stories and rhymes.  Sadly, and this is perhaps just a personal issue but they have a separate section on the outdoors.  I understand outdoor mathematics needs to be different than that inside but I believe that all of these areas (number, calculation etc.) should encompass outdoors and that there should be half of each section devoted to outdoors.  But I'm not the author. 

There are many great examples of strategies that you can use that you might not have thought about before. I also particularly like how they devote pages to 'mathematical mark making' which seems to be a bit of a buzz term for OFSTED.

Within certain sections they explain the ‘steps’ to learning.  For example within number they explain the different stages of counting, (1:1, stable order, abstraction, order irrelevance and cardinality).  It’s nice to have this included and then have strategies tailored towards each step within the counting process. 

I don’t want to give a lot away but considering it took me a LONG time to find a book that had mathematical knowledge for practitioners, strategies AND PHOTOS I would have to say go and buy this book.  There are very few which correspond to the new EYFS (2012), and whilst mathematical skills don’t need a curriculum to link to, it’s still nice for those (like me) who are relatively new to it all! 

8/10

Excellent photographic examples and great strategies that will give new and old food for thought.

Could have done with incorporating more examples of outdoor learning within each section rather than a discrete section.  

Resource scrounge

Its a lot harder than I thought to find the resources I need for the maths provision.  I went to a LOT of shops, including The Range, B&Q, Homebase and ASDA.  Once again ASDA seemed to be the best option as I managed to find some shiny juggling balls, yay!

I was looking for some kind of tokens for the children to count.  They need to be small enough to hold in their hand and for it to feel precious, but not too small for the babies in our group who might like to swallow them!

Its proving harder to find the things I need in the shops so I'm resorting to hunting through my parents' house.  If your parents' house is like mine, then you're in for a party!  I seem to find a little bit of everything in my parents' house as its a collection of just about anything that has ever happened in the UK.  Sadly usually I only find one of two of everything.  But this time I found in the garden some wonderful Oyster shells!  They've been ornamental but after a thorough clean they're lovely and shiny and ready to sort;)

I'm beginning to realise its much easier and better to scrounge resources from different sources rather than trying to buy them as usually you don't know what you're looking for and the things in shops go through trends.  Usually people hold onto things for a lot longer than shops!

So have a luck and if you know me.. bring some to my classroom;)

James

Starting to change the maths provision area

A few weeks ago we had a visit from Sharon Day (@Sharonjaneday), a Mathematics consultant who our school brought in to help maths throughout the school.  She had given me some training the year before when I was in reception.  
The training last year really blew my mind as it made me look at a lot of my areas in a much more mathematical way.  For example we talked about the play dough area being quite static and not having much of the mathematical language which you could.. It really helped me to see the importance of enhancing all areas with maths but in a way which didn't make me feel like I was being lectured at!

This year Sharon came back to the school and I asked her to come to the Nursery.  We looked specifically at the 'maths area.'  Now I don't know how you feel but I really don't like this idea of a 'maths area' in Nursery.  Maybe its a little bit of last year still in me, but I feel that the skills that can be learned in this area can be learned throughout the other areas of provision.  But we had a good chat and came up with some ideas.

We had some targets to work towards:
1) Strengthen the home-school link to help our parents understand how to develop their child's maths learning at home. 
2) Develop the mathematics provision area from lots and lots of plastic boxes FILLED TO THE BRIM with resources which aren't being used to a more productive, working area.
3) Enhance mathematical opportunities throughout the entire setting (provision areas) and the outside area as a whole. 

The longer I talked to Sharon the better I felt about developing this area.  As a team we also visited The Early Excellence Centre and had a little poke about in their areas to see what they were doing and what was deemed to be "excellence."

So I was a little bit of a convert.  I began quite slowly.  (I don't like the word "I" either, we did talk about this as a team but I led the way trying to add things to the maths area - I used it as a little bit of a project but tried to get other team members involved where possible).  I (we) managed to find some baskets in ASDA that were 3 different sizes.  We also found one that was large and had four different sections - perfect!  The best thing about these baskets was how they were very shallow.  We had talked about using baskets and boxes with pictures on but felt the best method was to have baskets that the children could see straight into rather than having to pull things out.  Think about it - as a practitioner when you're tidying do you pull the boxes off your shelves to see whats inside or can you see?

So we've started small.  We have put a washing line up on the top shelf with a little metal bucket (that is tidied onto the hook so it can't go walking).  We put two tracks onto our maths table (With contact, one track was curved, another was straight) and we have filled the baskets we have put out with:

* Laminated number cards 1-5 (Really we are only looking to do numbers up to 3 in Nursery but some of our children are slightly above this so we had to differentiate.)

* Babies socks - 4 pairs.  This was really good for matching and talking about the properties and patterns of each socks and hanging on the washing line. 

* Laminated colour squares - for hanging on the washing line to make patters. 

* 5 pebbles - regular but large enough to not go missing.

* 5 wooden balls (from cheap pot-pouri from ASDA) - very durable. 

* 10 dominoes - picture dominoes which are simply to decipher.  Its also nice to not have tonnes and tonnes of dominoes out as they tend to go missing, or worse, go in handbags for shopping trips.

* clipboard with large square graph paper.

* 1 simple jigsaw

We added 2 different baskets per week.  This way children became accustomed to the different resources within the baskets without wanting to pocket them. 

I also have the following ready to go out:

* star glass beads (from pets at home, £2.50 for a bag of about 20 that are really for fish bowls!)

* colourful autumnal clips for clipping onto the washing line to make patterns or sort. (See below). 

 (I also love the box).

The whole point of these resources is to develop the children's ability to sort, match, count etc.   

I'll add some photos of the area when I'm back at school.  It seems to be going well but we have a long way to go.  There is still a lot of space left on the shelf, a whole display to do and we haven't really addressed the home-school learning link or the outdoors problem.  We do have a lot of lovely ideas so pop back and see how we are doing.

Thanks;)