Education Endowment Foundation:EEF blog: Connecting with early maths

EEF blog: Connecting with early maths

Author
Lauren Grocott
Lauren Grocott
Content and Engagement Specialist (Early Years)

Lauren Grocott, our early years specialist, introduces a new two-page summary of what the evidence tells us about approaches to early mathematics teaching from the Early Years Evidence Store.

Blog •2 minutes •

Azumi has been reflecting on practice in her home-based setting. She recognises promoting fluency with numbers and sequences as an area that she and her assistant, Jesse, would both like to develop.

To help them decide what to focus on, Azumi downloads and prints the new, two-page PDF summary of the evidence for Early Mathematics to share with Jesse.

Supporting early mathematics in the early years page 0001

Research evidence suggests that promoting fluency with numbers and sequences can support early mathematical development, when taught alongside other mathematical approaches. Opportunities for practice and repetition, matching number names to number symbols, use of educational technology and board games are all strategies practitioners can use to integrate this into their daily practice.

Azumi and Jesse recognise they provide many opportunities for practicing the count sequence through songs and their daily routines. They identify that focusing on opportunities to match number names to number symbols would be a useful addition to their practice.

Jesse would like to see examples of how this might look in practice. Azumi suggests reviewing the written and video examples on the Early Mathematics theme of the Early Years Evidence Store as a starting point.

Want more?

Read the Developmental Progressions in Early Maths Blog.

Visit the Early Years Toolkit for information about Early Numeracy Approaches.