Mathematical Concepts using Story

After securing grant funding from the Education Endowment Foundation, Sue Meeke-Smith from Education and Abigail Schwarz (former Education team member) designed and delivered a programme aiming to support children (especially those with low oracy skills/confidence) to develop mathematical understanding using story.

By developing spoken language within the Year 1 classroom, children linked informal language with mathematical concepts to support conceptual understanding as well as develop scaffolds for communicating mathematically.

The aim of the programme was to equip practitioners to plan for, and use, stories within mathematics sessions to support conceptual understanding. By planning for oracy development and exploring how to integrate meaningful talk into learning sequences, pupils were encouraged to develop confidence in communicating mathematical understanding, linking familiar story contexts to abstract mathematical concepts.

The team has successfully delivered the project to a group of five North-West schools and are now working on the final reports.