Activity Support Notes
The Educational Philosophy

The activities on The Numeracy Resources CD have been developed as a result of the author's commitment to providing all children, at all levels, with challenging, open-ended work. Many of the activities take as their foundation the theme of Reasoning about Mathematics. The author considers this aspect of mathematics to be both critical and under developed in many other resources.

You will find therefore that all of the activities have an open-ended element which is intended to encourage such reasoning. You will also find that open-ended work can often span a number of levels and be much more accessible to a wider range of attainment.

Open-ended work can take many forms.

• The questions in the activity may move from the specific to the general;
• The questions may leave children with a search for the number of ways to complete a task;
• Children may be asked to justify that they have found all solutions to a problem;
• The activity may have a unique answer (and technically be closed) but the methodology encouraged by the activity provides opportunities for discussion, creativity and reasoning;
• An engaging, practical approach leaves opportunities for children to develop the activity in unexpected ways;
• Many activities suggest small group work to allow for greater interaction and exchange of ideas.

Where do answers fit in?

Naturally, with resources which focus upon method as well as upon content, upon reasoning and upon working in a flexible, open-ended way, answers take a different form. Many activities are provided with help, suggestions or an answer sheet. Where such a sheet is not present, teachers will find that engaging with the mathematics in the problem will leave them more confident and less in need of answers.

If you feel that an activity needs an answer sheet, email the author at info@numeracyCD.com and the answers will be emailed by return, or placed on the web site.

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