South Lanarkshire Council

The South Lanarkshire Council numeracy project involved developing interactive teaching strategies for differing aspects of numeracy with a focus on teaching from P4 to P7. 

One aim was to increase confidence in classroom teachers, to establish a secure base from which they could be encouraged to use interactive approaches. A further aim was to identify successful early intervention strategies that would be applicable to the later stages of a primary school. 

Carrying out an audit of staff confidence in aspects of numeracy gave us an indication of areas causing particular concern. A series of twilight courses are being designed to address these areas and will run in the CPD Programme for 2006-2007. 

Other strategies identified to increase teacher confidence include: 

• establishing links within the learning community
• establishing links with a member of the maths department
• offering support by email to primary colleagues
• building a bank of interactive teaching resources.   

In researching early intervention strategies, we found that play activities were a vital part of children’s learning, and provided them with the opportunity to experiment and practise skills and concepts out-with direct teaching.  This is a strategy used well within the infant department but not frequently within P4-P7.

From this we produced themed numeracy week packs that could be presented in a ‘structured play’ approach. They proved very successful during their pilot phase and provided an ideal springboard for teachers to introduce more interactive activities. To increase the sustainability and reality of this approach, packs with a single mathematical focus were developed.

Staff audit document