Take one resource: the humble tens frame

Louise Racher is a primary mathematics adviser for HfL

The humble tens frame paired with double sided counters. Cheap, effective and perhaps a resource underused by schools in the UK. However, once you start using it you will soon realise the multitude of opportunities there are. The ten squares support pupils’ ability to benchmark from 5 and 10 and is a highly effective route to developing the idea of ‘ten-ness’ and the pattern of numbers leading to effective calculation and number sense. High performing jurisdictions such as Singapore use this model with pupils from a very early age; it is hugely popular in Singapore, America and now increasingly in Hertfordshire.

Making Every Question Count

Charlie Harber is the Deputy Lead Adviser for the HfL Primary Mathematics Team.

Do pages and pages of repetitive questions deepen our children’s understanding?

Teaching to mastery requires a mind shift on many different levels and presents many challenges (differentiation, whole class teaching, culture and ethos to name but a few). It is underpinned by a range of theories… You can’t explore mastery for long without encountering ‘Variation’ theories. There are two distinct variation theories (conceptual and procedural) which develop symbiotically to grow deep conceptual understanding in learners. These theories are used widely in the high performing East and South East Asian countries. They are exploited skilfully by teachers to expose the underlying structures of mathematics and allow children to ‘self-discover’.