5 Maths — No Problem! resources to help teachers navigate the return to school

As teachers start to settle into their new classrooms, there will undoubtedly be some new challenges to contend with when it comes to assessment, catching learners up and where to focus your teaching time. To help you overcome any new obstacles this year, your Maths — No Problem! new-term toolkit includes carefully designed resources and guidance to help you close learning gaps and get everyone back on track.

Some questions you might have right now are, “How can I know where the gaps in learning are?” and “What effect has a prolonged period away from school had on learners?” To help answer these questions, Maths — No Problem! launched a new assessment tool so you can check in on learners and move everyone forward.

1. Make sense of assessment with Insights

Insights is our new online reporting tool that works with Assessment Papers to formally test learners and assess where they are in their learning. When teachers enter the results of their class’s Assessment Papers into Insights, they’ll get instant achievement reports for their learners, and be able to quickly pinpoint strengths as well any gaps in learning.

Insights will be instrumental in planning any remediation, reteaching or scaffolding strategies as learners come back to school, which is why it’ll be available free of charge for Hub subscribers until January 2021. Interested in trying Insights? Check your email for your invitation, or email hello@mathsnoproblem.com for more information.

Once you have a clear understanding of where learners are with Insights, what do you do next?

2. Prioritise key lessons with Content Catch Up

We recognize that both the 2014 English national curriculum and the DfE’s Teaching Mathematics in Primary Schools (July 2020) give guidance on what the government expects. However, we believe that teachers require made-to-measure tools and support to succeed in making those hard decisions about content and coverage.

To help you catch learners up and prioritise your teaching time, there’s Content Catch Up. Following DfE guidelines, we went through every Maths — No Problem! lesson, for each year group, and determined which lessons are essential, which can be adapted and which can be omitted if time runs short.

For those with a Hub subscription, you’ll find Content Catch Up information within Teacher Guides. Each lesson has a classification label to show its prioritisation level, and there’s a new Content Catch Up section in Teacher Guides that walks you through each lesson and shares essential catch-up advice.

3. Create compelling lessons with Visualiser

Visualiser is a free teaching app designed for teaching maths mastery concepts in the classroom or a remote learning environment. You can create and save lessons ahead of time, collaborate with colleagues and help your learners connect with complex concepts in a more intuitive way. Visualiser is compatible with iPads running iPadOS version 13.2, and can be used with popular remote meeting software like Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and many others.

With Visualiser, you can create unique lessons and easily demonstrate concepts with bar modelling, Base 10 blocks, number bonds, ten frames and more. No matter which maths mastery programme you follow, Visualiser empowers you to do your best work.

Download Visualiser

4. Engage learners at home with Parent Guides

Parent Guides, the parent-friendly version of our Teacher Guides, is still in full swing. Parent Guides are available to all parents and caregivers of learners who attend a school with a Maths — No Problem! Teacher Guides subscription.

Over the course of the year, we’ll continue to update and add information to Parent Guides, to ensure that where parents and caregivers can help, they have the opportunity to do so in a meaningful way.

5. Get expert support from Accredited Schools

Our 40 Accredited Schools are also available to provide expert maths mastery support. The Maths — No Problem! Accredited Schools Programme was created to recognise schools that demonstrate exemplary leadership in maths mastery. They work to support schools who are new to maths mastery, or need additional support, by sharing their knowledge and experience with the community.

We’ve been working closely with our Accredited Schools to make sure they’re there to help you with any questions you have during the new school year. To connect with an Accredited School, have a look through the roster and reach out to any one of them — each school provides their contact information and is ready to connect with you.

As always, Maths — No Problem! is committed to getting you the support you need. These five resources have been carefully considered and developed to help you overcome the current challenging circumstances and make the path forward as smooth as possible. We’re dedicated to creating products that we’d be proud to recommend to our friends and family, and as members of our Maths — No Problem! family, we think you deserve the same.

This new school year may be difficult, but together, we can succeed.

References

Department for Education. (2020). Teaching mathematics in primary schools. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-mathematics-in-primary-schools (Accessed: 9 September, 2020)