Systematic Number Fact Teaching
Are your children stuck counting on their fingers? Counting in ones and on fingers is not an efficient way to solve equations and over reliance on counting is associated with low attainment in maths. All children can learn to calculate efficiently if they are taught how. Number Sense Maths does just that: teaching confidence with number and calculation, and fluency in addition and subtraction facts.
Resources for Schools
NSM Number Facts®
NSM Number Facts® is scheme of work focused on number fact teaching that moves children from counting to calculating by the end of KS1. The programme builds fluency in addition and subtraction facts and a deep understanding of number and number relationships. Schools access the teaching resources by subscribing to the NSM Teacher Portal from £99 per year.
Resources for Home
NSM At Home
NSM At Home is a range of workbooks and animations that give parents and tutors the confidence and resources to teach and support early maths learning. The engaging workbooks and animations are based on key elements of NSM Number Facts®. They come with flashcards, mats and counters, and they make learning highly visual, practical and fun.
A Tale of Two Pupils
Meet Ella and Sara. One is ready to move on to column addition and beyond. One is not. Which one are your children like? Number Sense Maths teaches all children the number facts, strategies and confidence that high attainers like Sara have mastered.
Ella really enjoyed maths in Year 1. She learnt how to do simple additions and subtractions by counting on her fingers. She could do calculations like 6 + 5 by putting the bigger number in her head and counting on. Most of the time she could get the right answer quite quickly. Now she is in Year 2 she is finding maths harder. As she meets bigger calculations, like 19 + 27, she's finding that she's running out of fingers. Her teacher is teaching her new approaches for adding larger numbers, like adding the tens first and then the ones, but she's struggling to use these methods as she has to concentrate so hard on adding the parts, like 9 + 7. Things take much longer for her than Sara now and she's not really sure why.
Sara is in the same class as Ella. She also enjoyed maths in Year 1. At first, like Ella, she would count on her fingers to help her add and subtract. However, she found other ways to do some of these calculations. The class had learnt that 5 + 5 = 10, so Sara started to use this to help her work out that 6 + 5 = 11. She also noticed she could work out how to add 9 by adding 10 and then taking 1 away, which was much easier for her. Once she knew that 10 + 7 = 17, she could work out 9 + 7 easily by calculating 10 + 7 - 1. Soon Sara realised that by thinking about putting together and taking apart numbers in different ways, she barely had to count on her fingers at all. Sara’s teacher is really pleased with her progress.
Feedback from Schools
