It is vital that children have a deep understanding of numbers in order to be able to access more complex maths as they progress through school. Children should be able to match numerals to amounts, understand numbers can be made and partitioned in different ways, and be able to use known facts to derive new knowledge. Research showing how children’s number sense develops over time can be seen in the images below (click to enlarge):

When children are fluent they are able to calculate accurately and efficiently and be flexible in their choice of strategies. They feel confident in working with numbers and can explain their thinking and apply their understanding in different contexts. As such, making sure children have a solid number sense and a secure understanding of the relationships between numbers in EYFS and KS1 is extremely important.

Early Years

In EYFS, children spend time building up their understanding of numbers to 10 through having a number of the week, daily number sense sessions and having numbers and their representations embedded throughout the classroom and provision areas. They also learn to subitise – meaning instantly recognising a small group of objects without counting them (young children can perceptually subitise up to 5 objects).

Key Stage 1

This focus on number sense continues into KS1, where we are introducing the White Rose Fluency Bee programme from Autumn 2023. This is a structured teaching programme designed to give children confidence with numbers and develop core maths skills. It is taught in discrete 10-15 minute sessions with hands-on activities, various representations of number and lots of mathematical talk between the children.

If you would like to support your child’s development of number sense at home, we recommend the White Rose 1-Minute Maths app, which is free and available on the android and apple app stores.

Rewards for Number Fluency

Finally (and most excitingly for the children!), Parkside has ‘Marvellous Maths Badges’, where children are rewarded for their knowledge of addition and subtraction number bonds. When children demonstrate to an adult at school that they know their number bonds to a given number, they’ll receive a coloured maths badge during reward assembly. They can then wear this badge to school and show off their fantastic work!