Improving Primary Mathematics: Linking Home and School

Improving Primary Mathematics provides primary teachers with practical ideas about how to bring these two worlds closer to improve children’s mathematics learning.

Using a number of fascinating case studies focusing on children’s experiences of mathematics both inside and outside the classroom, the book asks:

• How do children use mathematics in their everyday lives?
• How can teachers use this knowledge to improve children’s learning in school?
• What activities can teachers use with parents to help share the ways that schools teach mathematics?
• What can parents do to support their children’s learning of mathematics?

Tried-and-tested practical suggestions for activities to support and encourage children’s learning of mathematics include: making videos to share teaching methods; children taking photos to show how they use mathematics at home; inviting parents into school to share in mathematics learning; and numeracy-based activities for children and their parents to do together at home.

All those involved in planning, teaching and supporting primary mathematics will benefit from new insights into how learning at home and at school can be brought together to strengthen and improve children’s learning of mathematics.

Jan Winter is Senior Lecturer in Education (Mathematics) and PGCE Course Director, University of Bristol, UK.

Jane Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of the West of England, UK.

Pamela Greenhough is Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK.

Martin Hughes is Professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK.

Leida Salway is a primary school teacher in Cardiff and worked for three years as a teacher researcher on the Home School Knowledge Exchange Project.

Wan Ching Yee is Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK.