1. Supporting non-
specialists to
promote
numeracy across
the curriculum

2. What’s the difference
between numeracy
and maths?

3. Don’t call it numeracy!
• Numeracy is vital, but irrelevant across
the curriculum
• Much better to focus on conceptual
understandings and ‘mathematical
thinking’

4. Why do students
struggle with
maths?

5. The effect of ‘affect’
• Being bad at maths is socially
acceptable
• Few students are cognitively
incapable of passing maths at GCSE
• But it makes some students ‘feel
stupid’.

6. Learning vs activities
• Performance is not the same as
learning:
962
• Learning happens when you think hard
about subject content
• Anything which occupies working
memory reduces our ability to think
• Memory is the residue of thought.

7. What not to do

8. What not to do
• English: count the number of lines in a
poem
• Art: calculate the amount of paint
needed to cover your canvas
• PE: time yourself running 100m, take
your pulse, draw a graph…
• History: Multiply the number of King
Henrys by the number of King Georges

9. Thinking like a mathematician
• Number
• Operations & calculations
• Shape, space & measures
• Data handling
Limited applications
across the curriculum
Useful
everywhere
Make the implicit explicit

10. Thinking like a mathematician
• Identifying structures & relevant data
• Being systematic
• Searching for patterns
• Thinking logically
• Predicting & checking
• Breaking down problems into smaller
parts
• Interpreting solutions in context of
problem
• Estimating to check likelihood of answers

11. The golden ratio: 1.61803398875

12. A way of understanding the world

13. Is all beauty
mathematics?

14. A mathematician, like a painter
or a poet, is a maker of
patterns …
The mathematician’s patterns,
like the painter’s or the poet’s
must be beautiful; the ideas like
the colours or the words, must
fit together in a harmonious
way. Beauty is the first test.
GH Hardy

15. So, what can we
do in lessons?

16. 6 degrees of separation
How do you get
from here…
…to here?

17. 6 degrees of separation
1. Select a topic or theme
2. write 1-6 down a page
3. Put your topic at no. 6
4. Get from the stimulus to your topic in no
more or less than 6 steps

18. 6 degrees of separation
Get from this clip to your chosen topic in 6 steps

19. Asking mathematical questions
• How could you sort these.......?
• How many ways can you find to ....... ?
• What happens when we ......... ?
• How many different ....... can be found?
• What is the same/different?
• Can you group these ....... in some way?
• Is there a pattern?
• How can this pattern help you find an answer?
• What do think comes next? Why?
• Is there a way to record what you've found that
might help us see more patterns?
• What would happen if....?

20. Domain specific thinking
(with maths)
• specialising – trying special cases, looking at
examples
• generalising - looking for patterns and
relationships
• conjecturing – predicting relationships and
results
• convincing – finding and communicating
reasons why something is true.

21. Organising information
Felines Rodents
Canines

22. Comparison alley
1st thing
2nd thing
What they
have in
common
Dulce et
Decorum Est
In Flanders
Field

23. Shall I compare…
thee
…
to a

24. Macbeth
ambition
friendship
Duncan
murder
Lady
Macbeth
The
witches
Banquo
predictions
power
Macduff
revenge

25. The person below the
‘Quaker Christians’ set
himself alight in
protest at the Vietnam
War
‘Quaker Christians’
goes in the centre
right hand square
The three aspects of
Christian Just War
Theory make up the
centre column
The person below the
‘Quaker Christians’ set
himself alight in
protest at the Vietnam
War
The only two square
that relate to Islam
are both in the left
hand column
The statement ‘war
must be started by a
legitimate authority’
goes next to the name
‘Norman Morrison’
The two word phrase that
describes those people
who refuse to fight in a war
based on their moral
compass goes is in the right
hand column
One aspect of just war
theory is that ‘the
good must outweigh
the evil’
The name for the small band of
Christianity that believes there
is a light in everyone and so do
not believe in taking life under
any circumstances is
underneath the phrase
‘conscientious objectors’
The phrase ‘Just
War Theory’ goes in
the top left hand
square
The name for the Muslim
struggle to achieve outer
peace which may involve
going to war to protect your
country or religion is written
in the left hand column
The name for the
combination of inner
and outer jihad is on
the bottom rowNorman Morrison
War must be started by
a legitimate authority
Just war Theory
The struggle for
peace
Waging war must
be the last resort
The good must
outweigh the evil
Conscientious
objectors
Quaker Christians
Outer Jihad

26. Presenting information
• Maths provides new ways of seeing
the world:
– Graphs
– Timelines
– Flow charts
– Graphic organisers
– Pie charts

27. Tension graphs

32. Accuracy matters
• What does maths teach us about
attention to detail?
• Getting it right vs. getting it done
• Where can we apply the concept of
ERROR CHECKING across the curriculum?
– Dates in history?
– Notation in music?
– Learning lines in drama?
– Punctuation in English?

33. The mathematics of writing
• Grammar, like mathematics, is
sequential.
• Subject, Verb, Object (or other)
I am a teacher
• Construct a sentence that follows this
pattern: P O, S V O C, P O, S V O
VS O

34. Understanding scale
• A million seconds = 11 ½ days
• A billion seconds = 32 years

35. Seeing relationships
www.informationisbeautiful.net

37. Key points
• Being unable to think mathematically
is not socially acceptable
• If it doesn’t help pupils think about
subject content, it’s a waste of time
• Make the implicit explicit
• The secret of numeracy… is that
there’s no such thing.