Well in actual fact I am often teaching 3 maths topics at one time – but before you ask, no there are no carousel arrangements, no smoke and mirrors and I don’t magically appear in hologram form at various points in the classroom!
I will start by saying that I only teach maths 4 days a week. On Fridays we have various tests and have a finishing off morning which is flexible for what we may need to complete. It means that anything outstanding can be tackled and there are no “loose ends.”
Let me explain the 3rd topic that I mentioned in the opening paragraph but not in the title. I use the introduction or warmup 15 minutes of each maths lesson to have a rolling programme which teaches smaller but none the less important maths topics.
Let me give you an example:- Time….in the past pupils would arrive in Y3 knowing the basic 1/4’s of time and so I would use the maths warm up period to teach and practice the 5 minute intervals. Of course this has now been made a part of the Y2 curriculum but extending beyond this and adding and subtracting time is still great practice (as well as consolidating and reinforcing 5 min intervals) – once we get past this then Time moves to be a major class topic of course. Another example would be Money basics….getting to know all the different currency and being able to work out what to use to pay for items, also change from (initially) £1. Again when we are conversant with this Money moves to be a whole class topic.
So there you have it – that’s the 1st topic being taught every day!
Now moving on to the other 2 topics that are spinning around our class.
It’s not rocket science but its something I have done for many many years – and the reason for it is BOREDOM!.
That’s right boredom – I decided a long time ago that to take 1 maths topic and just continually teach it until we are finished is just boring and so I changed – hey that’s one of the great things about being a teacher (especially a primary teacher) if you want to change your approach to something then you can!
If you look at the Primary Maths curriculum you will notice that it can be divided into 2 parts –
- Maths number
- Maths topics
Ok it’s a broad division but its a division that can be easily seen and works.
So I decided to in my weekly Maths lessons I would teach 2 days Maths Number and 2 days Maths Topic – and to keep things even simpler Monday and Tuesdays we did Maths Number work and Wednesdays and Thursdays we did Maths Topic work (don’t forget we only did a maths 4 day week!)
In this way our week was split into 2 mathematical units of work and, for us at least, gave a mid week switch of focus which we enjoyed.
Recording work:
As a class we therefore had 2 units of work going on during each week and so there was a danger of recorded work getting mixed up together in our Maths books. In order to avoid this there are 2 things that can be done –
- Have a different maths book for Maths Topic
- Flip the Same maths book over and round (so it opens like a normal book!) this means that Maths number is in the front and Maths topic is in the back. If you put the title on both covers then it avoids pupils getting it all mixed up when they write!
I have done both ways and I prefer 2 books but in some schools resource wise it is not practical.
How does it work out?
It really is a personal preference – I started doing this approach because it suited both me and my class and it works for us. However in your own teaching it may not be for you and you may prefer to focus on 1 maths element at a time. But if you are an ECT or about to start your teaching it is an option and as such, I thought I would let you know that it is possible.
All areas of Maths have practical elements and its great to introduce these into whatever we are teaching. However I think we all would agree that there are certainly more practical / action possibilities in what I term “maths topic”…such things as measurement. shape, geometry etc.
In approaching our weekly maths in this way we incorporated, and could look forward to practical maths almost every week and even if the “number” unit was a little dull or repetitive we could almost be guaranteed that our topic days we see us charging about outside or measuring the heights of trees or sloshing water about enthusiastically!
So there you are….as I said not rocket science but something that worked for me and my class – it broke up the maths curriculum, avoided us slogging on 1 area at a time and gave us some fun and variety each week.
Its not for everyone but something that might be worth considering with a new class or even a class that’s starting to lose some maths enthusiasm.