Implementing 'Phonics for Maths': 'Do’s' and 'Don’ts'
Timetabling
Do: Agree a discrete daily session across the school, or until children have finished their ‘Phonics for Maths’ journey. This should be around 15-20 mins per day, as it should be cognitively intense/‘exhausting’. Children who are behind with their journey (but shouldn’t be) may need a ‘double-dose’! Additional and incidental short visits to this domain throughout the day are invaluable (even if they are only seconds long).
Don’t: Don’t become tempted to allow a curriculum squeezing of this domain. ‘We don’t have time’, is a common response; akin to not having time to teach reading. Indeed, until a child is responding, without hesitation, to all the basic number questions the ‘Phonics for Maths’ programme expects of them, they won’t be able to fully access the wider mathematics curriculum with the smoothness and outcomes that their potential allows.
Curriculum Design
Do: Isolate the ‘Phonics for Maths’ learning journey away from the overall mathematics journey. The teaching and learning happens largely out of context, with each new ‘piece’ of number fluency temporarily isolated from all other connections except for the background fluency we are using to build new fluency with. This is critical in freeing up cognitive capacity, as well as illustrating to students (and demonstrating to skeptical staff) that processing number out of context, ready’s us to apply that same thinking into any context.
Don’t: Don’t allow staffroom confusion with ‘mastery’ or with the entire ‘number’ part of the mathematics curriculum. A ‘Phonics for Maths’ programme is mastery in the sense that it seeks to gather cohorts onto a common high-attaining point, then on progressing all children as one. However, it is not mastery in the sense of a constant search for deeper learning, with children making independent multiple-representations and expressions of single ideas. This deeper learning is the role of the wider mathematics curriculum. Again, the programme here will actually allow for higher levels, earlier, if strong basic number responses are used foundationally in subsequent deeper mathematical learning. Having a number-fluency programme that is integrated into the wider maths programme, making constant links across, can be counter-productive. Isolation is key. If the programme is well thought out and strongly implemented, it will ‘race ahead’ of the overall maths provision. Students will come to new basic fluency in a clean isolated manner in the programme, re-experiencing it in real life contexts and mathematical challenges/problems later on. This parallels with children accessing more text-level ideas once they are reading fluently.
Outcomes
Do: Value and expect quick-thinking from large groups; instant recall of facts, short moments between thoughts when calculating mentally, and an ability to cope with quick transitions from one question to the next. When a cohort leaves a new piece of number fluency and moves on to the next, we should see smooth, relaxed, processing of number. The class-fluency should be impressively high. At the individual level the one outcome to look for is ‘accuracy without hesitation’. Without getting into too much detail here, the determinant of this success is much more the background fluency learners entered into the classroom with, rather than the quality of instruction received. High standards in the lesson can only come from system success. Put another way, an individual classteacher can’t overcome system faults in one lesson.
Don’t: Don’t expect speed all the time. So, don’t expect the above description of speed when a new piece of number fluency is first won. As learners progress, we always use earlier fluency to build new fluency. However, the background parts still need cognitively assembling and new concepts need space to be assimilated. What we should see, is the teacher introducing a clearly identified and isolated new piece of number fluency with careful modelling and out-loud thinking. This ‘slower pace’ of input then contrasts with the teacher now ‘shifting through the gears’, as they dial down their explanations and dial up the rate of questioning. In short, accuracy proceeds pace. Don’t expect pace before accuracy!
Using the ‘Sequence of Learning’ for Leadership
Do: Provide an explicit sequence of learning with clearly defined endpoints for each term. The ‘Phonics for Maths’ programme should support a transparent framework for all staff to see which children are on-track and which children aren’t. Not only will clearly defined termly endpoints allow everyone to see ‘on-track/off-track’ once we hit the end of term, triggering an aggressive response next term, they will also empower seeing ‘on-track/off-track’ as we teach. This is absolutely crucial, explaining why those end points need to be locations integrated in the sequence of learning, not an abstract piece of pupil data. Children in danger of not hitting the end point, or not closing in on the rate of progress needed to start hitting end points, should ‘jump out’ to school leaders from their precise position and rate of movement along the sequence of learning; entering us immediately into rapid responses, systemised gap-plugging, pedagogical conversations and implementation strengthening (centered on prevention and cure).
Don’t: Don’t work on empowering teachers without addressing/fixing the system. Some schools have a never-ending backlog of learning gaps because, as they plug them in one place they accumulate them in another place. Some schools have excellent teachers, but each year they inherit yet another class with a wide range of number-fluency ability, immediately crippling their teacher-productivity. Some schools are perennially locked into a cycle of swimming against the number-fluency tide, unsure where to proportion blame or where to break out. Some schools aren’t using a clear, accurate, detailed and fully-resourced sequence of learning to drive a systematic ‘Phonics for Maths’ programme. Many of these schools already have a systematic and highly-structured phonics programme, also having invested staff meeting and classroom time/energy to its implementation; yet, they haven’t implemented an equivalent programme for number-fluency, despite the fact that number progression is naturally far more hierarchical and sequential! Don’t…be these schools!
Professional Development
Do: Realise that ‘Phonics for Maths’ delivery has, in many ways, more in common with phonics than maths! Indeed, and here is the crux of the issue, seeing ‘Phonics for Maths’ as a separate entity in itself, a separate subject (temporarily at least), is the big leap forwards. Teaching it requires a set of pedagogical domain protocols that we don’t see when teaching some other aspects of mathematical development, for example, problem solving. Then we also have the pedagogical content knowledge to consider. As with phonics, the adult that is delivering that phase of progression needs to know the building process and the precise learning points incredibly well. They need to be expert in successfully getting the content across to all learners; more ‘simplifiers’ than teachers. The programme itself should provide clear overarching teaching structures to lean on for high learner impact, low teacher preparation and a continuing deepening of the school’s understanding of the system and the principles behind it.
Don’t: Don’t assume professional development time you’ve already invested in with regards ‘Mastery’, ‘Maths’, ‘Fluency’ and ‘Number’ will have you covered here. The professional development time you’ve already invested in phonics itself, may well prove the most relevant.
Choosing a ‘Phonics for Maths’ Programme to Implement
Do: Choose your programme carefully. Evaluating possible programmes to adopt at the system level. Ask yourself, ‘Is this a strong, gap-plugging, gap-preventing, system?’. Check that it resonates with you and ticks all the do’s and don’ts of ‘Phonics for Maths’ discussed here.
Don’t: Don’t assume your wider mathematics provision has you covered. Don’t be taken in by promises of ‘small steps’ and ‘fluency’. These terms are generic these days and no longer give indication of a strong systematic programme. Don’t give your maths leader two weeks off, expecting them to write and resource your school’s very own programme. Leading the implementation of an adopted programme is time-consuming enough. Don’t choose an excellent ‘Phonics for Maths’ programme, to then only partially implement it. Don’t lose patience with implementation. System change requires time and persistence. Don’t forget what has probably already worked for you with Phonics, and how you can lean into those past implementation successes.
After all, this is…like phonics for Maths.
For more information and to see a full 'Phonics for Maths' programme, visit Winning With Numbers
