Young Mathematicians with Nick
I spent a very happy 45 minutes watching this lesson today. The children were learning number bonds to 20 and practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. I am not sure what I enjoyed watching more, Nick jumping around bringing the lesson to life for the children and making everyone (including me) laugh, or the children being so excited about learning!
The learning in this class is very visual. The children were asked to count Lego blocks on the screen that totalled 20 but were magically regrouped to make different number bonds i.e. 15 + 5 and then 17 + 3. It was really lovely to see how much the children were interacting and how Nick was constantly assessing their learning and reinforcing it before moving on.
Nick is very good at subtly including positive reinforcement and teaching the children how to be a positive learner and how to be kind to themselves. This was very much woven into the lesson. I am sure that from the child’s point of view, they know that he genuinely cares and he helps them to think about themselves as a learner. He encourages them to accept themselves as they are and not to give up if they find something difficult, which is such an important part of a good teacher’s role and goes way beyond teaching the subject of Maths! There was a great deal of positive praise, for the group and for lots of individual children. At least twice, everyone was encouraged to give a little round of applause when someone had spoken up and had a go. Even when a child got something wrong, there was total acceptance of the fact that it is a very good thing to try and absolutely natural to not get everything quite right all of the time. They were praised for their bravery and effort and you could see from their face that they felt great about having a go!
I think my favourite quote of the lesson was when one of the children suggested jumping to help them to count together in 10s. Nick’s instruction was “Okay, everyone up on your feet. Make sure there are no drinks on the floor that you can knock over or crocodiles or snakes that might get in your way.”
Nick lets the children suggest a theme for Maths games which he then tries to incorporate into the lesson the following week. This week there was a Star Wars themed Maths battle against Darth Vader with some very impressive light year sound effects every time a child had a go at the question and a pretty good Darth Vader impression from Nick – “This is your destiny Jedi (child’s name)!”
There was also a fun football themed game where the children had to count how many balls landed in the net the balls with each ball being worth 2, 5 or 10 points and someone made a suggestion for a new theme for next week. It was fun! I am pretty sure the children didn’t want the lesson to end and they had no idea just how much learning they were doing!
Suggested extra learning
All our lessons include any relevant worksheets as part of the weekly lesson but you may also want to consider these optional extra learning resources for this class. You do not need them to join the class though.
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KS1 Maths Year 2 Targeted Question Book (Paid Link)
Closing comment by Nick
I asked Nick to talk to me about Young Mathematicians after the class and his comment is below. If your children attend this class, or any of Nick’s classes, please do comment below and share your experiences.
I love being able to combine my love of teaching and the creative use of technology to teaching all my LLP classes. Young Mathematicians is all about having hands on fun with Maths. With a variety of activities to keep you on your toes, we’ll get you jumping and jiving wherever we can in this awesome, interactive class full of Mathematical learning! Come join us and see if we can help your Mathematician reach their maximum potential!”
Nick