Worksheets

These feature powerfully as mathematical resources in several Key Stage one and Key Stage a pair of lecture rooms. As Harries and Spooner (2000: 46) denote, worksheets and textbooks play a crucial role in influencing teachers’ thinking with reference to the teaching and learning of primary arithmetic. several business schemes exist, typically comprising of a teacher’s guide (usually the foremost helpful, but, ironically, usually the foremost underused a part of the scheme), children’s textbooks/workbooks, and extra resources like photocopy masters for worksheets/CD-ROM materials. As Liebeck notes (1984: 16), such resources focus totally on footage and symbols instead of on ‘concrete’ experiences and language. this can be problematic for Atkinson (1992: 13), World Health Organization views meaty arithmetic as ‘maths justifiably [which] is frozen in action – learning through doing’. She suggests that schemes of labor, therefore, got to commence with activity. A teaching/learning approach that depends on a predominant use of textbooks and worksheets for arithmetic will manufacture difficulties for all kids, not simply young children:
 • kids with visual and proprioception learning designs usually struggle with a ‘print-based curriculum’ (Clausen-May, 2005);
 • there square measure syntactical and linguistics levels of reading and interpretation of the illustrations concerned in textbooks which may result in confusion (Santos-Bernard, 1997, cited in Harries and Spooner, 2000);
 • a predominant use of worksheets will ‘persuade’ kids that arithmetic has nothing to try to to with the $64000 world however, perversely, encourage Associate in Nursing angle that ‘real’ arithmetic is textbook/worksheet work; • work from worksheets Associate in Nursingd textbooks doesn't forever mirror an correct read of what kids will do. These may be brought into the room and used with success as resources to support and develop children’s understanding of a number of the needs of arithmetic in real-life contexts. The samples of materials that facilitate relate ‘school’ arithmetic to everyday applications square measure endless, however might embrace packaging materials, stippled cloth or paper, timetables, receipts, catalogues, scaled plans, pictures of shape/number within the setting and any type of instrumentality or measuring instrument.

Such forms of resources have use in whole-class teaching, tiny cluster activities, displays and cross-curricular role-play things. the worth of resources in role-play and different cross-curricular activities is explored additional in Chapter half dozen. additionally to those real-world artefacts, several resources not specifically designed for mathematical learning may be exploited to help with early learning particularly. Toys, stories, environmental or malleable materials like sand, water and play-dough may be wont to support early ideas in aspects of range, form and mensuration. the benefits here square measure that they're tactile and a lot of doubtless to attach with children’s home/prior/real-world experiences. For Edwards (1998: 8), the worth here lies within the proven fact that ‘handling of acquainted “everyday” objects allows kids to be told regarding their properties and components’. Through manipulating acquainted objects and materials, kids square measure helped to rationalise their experiences. Aubrey (1997: 26) sounds a word of caution, however. Her analysis indicates that young kids don't usually relate their room interactions with the associated use of materials to their existing free problem-solving. In children’s real-world experiences objects and materials square measure utilized in problem-solving things, usually play-based, and sometimes self-initiated. this implies that the employment of everyday (and specific mathematical) resources is a lot of fortunate in supporting children’s learning through the sort of teaching approach, and room environments, that place high priority on finding issues that square measure meaty to the youngsters. Through reviewing a good vary of resources, it's doable to spot their potential to:

 • inspire children;
 • give selection to teaching and learning experiences;
 • connect ‘classroom mathematics’ with application to the $64000 world;
 • act as a visible aid to permit kids to create up a store of mental images;