Nov 13 2013
How Beat Dyscalculia Fits The New Numeracy Curriculum
We’re currently working our way through the Government’s proposals for a new Numeracy Curriculum in Primary Schools and are pleased to announce that Beat Dyscalculia can be used to teach everything except mass, weights, capacity and volume measurements and geometry.
In fact, our multi-sensory approach takes the more abstract elements of numeracy that aren’t naturally multi-sensory (unlike weighing or measuring something) and makes them concrete, fun and easy for children to investigate and understand. It focusses on many of the aims of the new curriculum including
- making sure that children are fluent in the fundamentals of maths,
- that they can reason and solve problems for themselves,
- and that they work at their own pace and consolidate understanding before moving on
- and in fact it also meets some of the literacy objectives by including stories, songs and poems and focussing on the language of numbers and maths
We’ve created a table (downloadable as a pdf below) showing how Beat Dyscalculia can be used to teach the Year 1 curriculum and will add tables for the other years as and when we’ve completed them.
How Beat Dyscalculia Meets The New Curriculum for Numeracy in Year 1 (pdf)
For further information on how to use Beat Dyscalculia in your particular educational setting, please contact us.
Nov 13 2013
Case Study: Using Beat Dyscalculia To Plug Gaps in Numeracy Learning
Here’s a recent case study from Helen Cusack, Head Teacher of St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Birmingham:
Rationale
In St. Mary’s, the learning of early mathematics had been characterised by the children engaging with a ‘coded system’ of digits and numbers before gaining a solid grasp of number. Despite much discussion and in spite of some very high results at both KS1 and especially at KS2 there was a growing concern about the quality of real grasp of number amongst our youngest pupils. Believing that concrete and visual learning are necessary before abstract learning can develop we decided to purchase Beat Dyscalculia from Addacus to strengthen this gap.
Training
All teachers and teaching assistants have undergone 6 hours of training, led by facilitator Celia Stone, who developed these resources.
The training offered the staff the opportunity to use all of the equipment and to be taken through Books 1, 2 and 3 very methodically with opportunities to try out some of the pupil exercises, to reflect on the inter relationships between the cards, strips and Addacus (e.g. colour coding) and to discuss what constituted a solid grasp of the number 3(i.e. the ‘threeness’ of three) or 10 or 100.
The staff have been absolutely on board with the philosophy of Beat Dyscalculia from Addacus and are in the process of reformulating their own thinking and teaching of maths. It has become a ‘hot topic’ in the staffroom and the professional support and discussions are truly wonderful. To this end, it has been a very unifying experience.
The staff has piloted the scheme in several year groups. Some of their comments highlight the gaps in numerosity and mathematical understanding of the children as well as raising questions on how best to employ the resources – how to assess which children need it most.
Year 5:
“The children enjoy using the equipment. Its logical links of colour and shape to number digits and dot cards make it easier for children to “see” the quantities they are asked to work with and compare one number with another to answer questions such as, “What is 1 more or less than this number?” The children’s vocabulary has been strengthened by the short narratives about the number 1, 2 and 3 and they enjoy using such vocabulary as “unique, solitary, pair, twin, trio” and they have told their own stories using similar terminology.
One difficulty that has emerged for these children is the use of the symbol =; the word cards help to explain this means “is” but the children also need to know that the balance between both sides of an equation should have the same value though may have a different appearance.”
To find out more about Beat Dyscalculia or to book training for your school, please contact us.
By lisa kendrick • Beat Dyscalculia News, front page • 0 • Tags: Addacus, Beat Dyscalculia, Beat Dyscalculia Case Studies, Beat Dyscalculia multi-sensory programme, Beat Dyscalculia Reviews, Beat Dyscalculia Testimonials, Beat Dyscalculia the complete maths programme in a box, Beat Dyscalculia Training, Celia Stone, changes to maths curriculum, changes to numeracy curriculum, Dyscalculia, help for dyscalculia, new national curriculum in numeracy, new national curriculum maths, numeracy problems, St Mary's Catholic Primary School Birmingham