How to be Inventive When Teaching Primary Mathematics: Developing outstanding learners

Have you ever taken your children on a maths walk?

Are your pupils shape detectives?

How to be Inventive When Teaching Primary Mathematics is a pocket guide to inspire primary teachers to become confident, effective, imaginative teachers who enjoy teaching, and whose pupils enjoy learning. It is packed with exciting, creative, unexpected ideas, to help teachers and pupils open their eyes to the mathematical world around them. It gives teachers the tools to develop their own classroom activities and experiences, supporting learners as they move fluently between mathematical ideas and develop their ownership of mathematics: Take your pupils on a maths walk, meet dinosaurs, visit art galleries, learn your destiny number, create your first human graph in the playground and learn how to be an algebra magician.

Written by Steve Humble, expert teacher, teacher trainer and, as Dr Maths, advocate for the power and potential of mathematics, this friendly, stimulating guide offers a fresh, practical approach to teaching mathematics, based on the best research and practice, and years of experience in the field. Focussing on five key mathematical topics - number, geometry, measurement, statistics and algebra – it is structured in the form of a journey, introducing historical facts, ideas for innovative and inventive classroom activities and explorations of the key misconceptions for each topic.

How to be Inventive When Teaching Primary Mathematics will challenge you to think about your own beliefs and how they influence your practice, and help you understand how best to transform your teaching to stimulate children’s emotions to improve knowledge, learning and enjoyment of the beauty of maths.

Steve Humble MBE is Teaching Fellow for Secondary and Primary PGCE Mathematics at Newcastle University, UK. In his role as a maths publicist- Dr Maths - Steve writes books, blogs and a fortnightly newspaper column to help create greater public interest and understanding of mathematics.