Sep 20 2013
Announcing our Sumtastics Nursery Pilot
This week I’ve been training up the staff at Ashdown Lodge Nursery in Apperley Bridge in our new nursery version of Beat 
Dyscalculia, Sumtastics, ready for them to trial it for us.
Sumtastics was originally designed to work as a ‘club’ in Private Day Nurseries, like more established language, music and dancing clubs, delivered by trained Sumtastics practitioners who come into nursery on a weekly basis to deliver specific themed sessions. However, more and more when we’re going into Primary schools to train their teachers in the Beat Dyscalculia programme, we’re also training their Early Years staff. Ashdown Lodge is therefore trying out our Sumtastics programme and resources in their own setting, delivered by their own staff.
One thing we’re discovering is that the programme, which includes songs, stories and activities, and encourages children to use all their senses to explore numbers, also helps children meet many of their Early Years goals in areas such as counting, reading, colour, language, drawing, speaking, singing, games, social interaction. And the Early Years teachers are enjoying having a ready-made programme that’s fun, but also meets all these targets without them having to create something themselves.
Ashdown Lodge are taking the ideas from each of our sessions and putting them out as individual small activities for children to choose and complete in small groups. They’re then using the songs and stories, based around a set of crayons that come to life each night and add colour to the world, to bring everyone together for the start and end of each session.
We hope that ultimately, Sumtastics will give children a good grounding, understanding and interest in numeracy that continues through school, and which can continue with our Beat Dyscalculia programme as they get older.
We’ll let you know how things progress as the trial continues, however, in the meantime if you’d like to know more about Sumtastics or Beat Dyscalculia for your nursery or school, please contact us.
Celia
Co-creator of Sumtastics and Beat Dyscalculia
Sep 26 2013
Outstanding Schools Improve Results With Beat Dyscalculia!
As a result, we’re now working with the Maths Co-ordinators in these schools to implement Beat Dyscalculia, not as a separate intervention, but in the classroom as part of numeracy lessons.
Co-creator of Beat Dyscalculia, Celia Stone said that, ‘These schools have recognised that making a child sit through a numeracy lesson they’re struggling with and then taking them out of class to do even more maths, can feel more like torture rather than a strategy designed to help. What does work, however, is fundamentally changing numeracy lessons for these children: Going back to the beginning and teach them in a different way. This can be done in a small group in the classroom as part of the numeracy lesson. Using Beat Dyscalculia to do this will rebuild strong foundations and confidence and improve understanding. Children will then be able to move onto more complex mathematical concepts and tasks with ease, and slot back into the main lesson when they’re ready. Our evidence shows that children can improve by 3 or 4 sub-levels in as little as 10 sessions.
‘These schools are tending to buy 1 pack per class or year group and are undertaking training with us, so that this strategy can be implemented throughout the school where needed.
‘We’re also finding that some teachers are choosing to use the resources in their Beat Dyscalculia packs to demonstrate certain concepts such as fractions in a more visual, physical and memorable way for the whole class.’
To find out more about our Beat Dyscalculia packs and how to buy them, see out How To Buy page, or find out more about our combined packages of packs and training.
By lisa kendrick • About Beat Dyscalculia, Beat Dyscalculia News, front page, Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: Addacus, Beat Dyscalculia, Beat Dyscalculia multi-sensory programme, Beat Dyscalculia the complete maths programme in a box, Celia Stone, changes to numeracy curriculum, maths intervention, numeracy for Outstanding Schools, numeracy problems, remedial maths programme