Maths
Create & Communicate Maths
1
Lay the groundwork
Practices to whakaritea te pārekereke prepare the seedbed for all children.
Start by working with all the children in your setting. Create an environment that can support children to build skills related to Create & Communicate Maths.
- Consider your current environment and how you could make it better.
- Talk to others about what you are already doing.
- Select practices that will be meaningful in your setting.
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Why is this practice important?
An environment that encourages children's curiosity about and exploration and investigation of maths, supports them to develop their maths working theories and ways of understanding the world. Children’s explorations with maths might lead them to solutions (e.g., a construction or completed pattern) or generate further pathways to explore. For some children, the predictability and consistency of concepts such as number, shape, and pattern are reassuring and bring them a sense of security and meaning.How to apply this practice in your setting:
Work with whānau to learn about children’s experiences of maths at home or in the community. Create an enabling environment in your early learning setting that connects with these experiences.
Create provocations that encourage children to pose problems and generate and refine working theories (e.g., displaying unfinished weaving to invite children to continue, change, or complete its pattern; provide images of tall or patterned buildings near the block area to provoke curiousity; or display lavalava/pareu/sarongs to create interest in the art of stencil painting).
Support children to pose their own spoken or non-spoken questions (e.g,. a child’s actions may provide clues about their wonderings. Demonstrate ways of posing questions (e.g., through commentary or by asking “I wonder if …?”, “I’m puzzled about …”, “What do you think?” or "He aha ōu whakairo?”).
Use specific maths language and gesture where appropriate (e.g., the order of a pōwhiri, the number of people who do the karanga (call), and whaikōrero (speeches), and the different sizes of carvings and tukutuku panels).
Create contexts that enable individuals or groups to extend their explorations or investigations for sustained periods (e.g., make ‘work in progress’ signs to protect children’s work, or organise kai outdoors instead of dismantling ongoing work).
Share with whānau the ways that you support children to be curious about and use maths to explore and investigate their ideas.
Why is this practice important?
As children play and investigate their world, they use resources to create models or representations of their ideas, including their maths ideas. Their maths thinking is illustrated through a process of modelling and the models they create (e.g., when they rearrange furniture to construct a whare, their planning and construction process (modelling) and the final whare (model) shows spatial thinking and problem solving).How to apply this practice in your setting:
Take time to learn from whānau the kinds of creative play that mokopuna enjoy. Provide resources that support children to model or represent their maths thinking through such play.
When creating models or representations, support children to explore the properties of different materials. Together reflect on their choices and the materials' usefulness (e.g., comment on the properties of wood a child has chosen to hammer a nail into (“It’s very hard and thick”) or the features of a feather in a heuristic play basket).
Support mokopuna to adapt resources to suit their play purposes (e.g., by cutting out, folding, and pulling apart, or joining them). Use scaffolding to support children's thinking (e.g., fold a blanket in half and invite a child to do the next fold).
Introduce materials that provoke mokopuna to expand their explorations (e.g., add feathers alongside water play to encourage exploring the properties of weight).
Notice when mokopuna prefer one specific material and encourage them to expand the inventive ways in which they can use that single resource (e.g., using cardboard cylinders to build a tower or a track for their cars to go through).
Why is this practice important?
When mokopuna are supported to express and model maths thinking using different modes (e.g., symbols, gesture, language, movement, music, drawing, and role playing), they share maths thinking in ways that suit their interests. Using a range of modes to create models or representations, allows children options to practice purposeful maths thinking. Maths thinking includes testing properties and making decisions about how or what resources to use, adapting materials, or switching modes for a purpose.How to apply this practice in your setting:
Work with whānau to learn about the different ways (or modes) that mokopuna enjoy using to explore and express themselves at home and in their community (e.g., art (mahi toi), movement (korikori), language (reo), music (puoro), and dramatic play (ngā whakaari ā-whānau).
Provide a variety of resources (e.g., musical instruments and art or construction materials) that mokopuna can use to explore, represent, or model their maths thinking in different modes, including those enjoyed in their home contexts).
Provide sustained opportunities for mokopuna to create another representation of their construction or model in different modes (e.g., making drawings of their block construction or pattern, inventing symbols to illustrate their garden design).
Draw attention to the ways kaiako use different modes to represent their maths thinking (e.g., in birthday charts, when recording moe (sleep) times, or when ringing a bell to represent daily patterns such as kai time).
Why is this practice important?
When children have many opportunities to describe and clarify their thinking with others, then they can consolidate and expand understanding of their own thinking. This supports them to become more proficient at using language to communicate their maths thinking. The way children communicate their maths thinking provides a window into their ideas and working theories. This creates an opportunity for kaiako to support and scaffold learning and connect to further learning possibilities.How to apply this practice in your setting:
Make use of planned and spontaneous opportunities for mokopuna to communicate their thinking using spoken and non-spoken language, e.g. support pairs or small groups of children to share and discuss their ideas through art or conversation.
Pose open-ended questions as prompts for mokopuna to express their thinking in different ways, or to elaborate or expand their ideas.
Support mokopuna to think out loud and to ask questions during maths exploration, e.g. provide running commentary about your own actions “I want this to go there. I’ll push it sideways. I need to turn it. Yes!”.
Foster language of curiosity, puzzling, problem posing and prediction in a variety of modes, e.g. speaking, gesture, movement, artwork. For instance, wonder how something could be built differently or made stronger using alternative materials.
Notice and encourage the language of creativity, agency, dispositions and working theories, e.g. “I noticed you were trying new and different ways to put those smaller blocks together and you kept trying until you found what you wanted.”