Primary 1 -maths curriculum question

[Pumpkinette]

Just wondering what the expected levels are by the end of primary 1?

DD's school works on a system of The Story Of (not sure if all schools do this). So basically they do the story of a number (ie: the story of 6 would be all the combination of numbers that add up to 6 - 1+5, 2+4 etc). From what I can see they do the story of 1 to 9 adding then the next stage they start over again but this time doing subtraction.

Anyway with the curriculum for excellence it's hard to find out what the expected levels are for each year group. Does anyone know?

I would normally ask DD's teacher but she is off just now and we have a substitute teacher just now who is due to leave this week and will be replaced by another substitute teacher on Tuesday.

So I have looked a bit further into it and they are teaching number bonds. They are doing 1-10 adding then after this 1-10 subtracting. Her class has 3 groups. My DD was in the top group but is now working on her own.

So where should they be with this by the end of the school year - roughly?

Primary 1 (or YR for England equivalent)

Number bonds within 10 are very important as they underpin all maths in the future. Added to place value as she gets older her mental arithmetic and ability to problem solve will be much improved if she has a sound understanding of them.

I don't teach p1 but as a teacher of an older class in Scotland I can see the benefit of this sound understanding! It is a good school which will spend time on these skills as it will pay off in the future. I would be happy they are not racing on skimming over number work.

Help at home through active and fun games, looking for patterns etc...

In England reception children are expected to work with numbers 1-20. Add and subtract and solve problems involving doubling, halving and sharing.

The reason I'm asking is because DD is working quite a bit ahead of the class but unsure if she's at the 'normal' level in comparison to her age group. The top group in her class are on adding number bonds and I believe now at 8. DD is in her own group and done all adding and onto subtracting and is on 8 moving onto 9. She tells me that she finishes her work before the rest of the class and gets to go to the reading area for the rest of the time. I would rather they gave her some extra maths work in that time to be honest. She gets her homework for maths and it takes her less than a minute to do the sheet so I think it's a bit too easy for her. I feel like she isn't challenged with maths at all. She doesn't count on her fingers either she does it in her head and does genuinely appear to enjoy solving the sums.

They are also working on telling the time and she has picked that up pretty well. She can do on the hour, half past, quarter past/to, 5 past/to. She gets 10 past / to sometimes but not always. Not sure how far along they are in the teaching in class with this though.

She says that maths is her favourite part of school and frequently asks me to do sums for her in the house. I've been doing a mix of adding and subtracting up to 15. I've been leaving out different parts of the sums for her to figure out the missing number rather than just the answer at the end. We've also been doing halves and quarters but more in day to day things like baking and sharing rather than on paper.

I think I'm just a bit concerned that if she's quite far ahead of the curve (for her class) just now then me encouraging her might be a hindrance rather than a help.

I didn't want to put all this in the first post because I don't want to come across as sounding like I was boasting or anything. I just wanted to see what was the norm for this age group (and it's impossible to find any levels for the CFE online)

Really interesting to a teacher in England (we don't have lévels either but we do have clear expectations for each year group which seem much higher than those you are posting)

By the end of P1 they should be able to add and subtract within 20 and be able to identify the tens and units place value column. Doubling within 20 but not halving, and they should be sharing into groups but not in a formal way (so they're not being told that this is division, they're just sharing. Although using the language is important).

They should also be doing money before time. Also, there's no practical reason for P1 to be taught anything more than o'clock, half past or quarter past for more able. If they can't count on in 5s yet then trying to introduce them to time is fairly pointless and counting on in 5s is in P2.

They should still be securing their number stories regularly though, so even though children should be able to add and subtract within 20 by the end of P1, you'll still find P2 children revising their number stories to 10. That's just because of the importance of number bonds.

If she's topping out of the P1 curriculum just now I'd say to completely forget about time and focus on number. Get her counting in groups of 2, 5 and 10.

this is England's version

And this is one of the big differences between education in England and Scotland. England goes for breadth (e.g. let's try and cram as much as we can into their brains) and in Scotland we go for depth. We try and ensure that they understand what they're doing before we move on an try to put things in their heads that they aren't ready to understand.

I've just had a boy from England join my class, and some of his responses have been quite telling. His mother thinks he's incredibly bright, and he's probably top of middle in the class. Every time we move on to a new concept in any subject his hand shoots up and he says "I've done this! I just did it before we moved here!" but strangely he can never seem to remember any of it. Particularly in maths, he seems to have covered everything in just the year before he'd moved up here alone, and he just joined the class in January. But he certainly can't remember any of it it apply it now.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like structured "this is what we teach and when" lists, but I'm very glad that they aren't as full to bursting as that one.

I'm sure that every teacher has had that experience of knowing that the children should know something but they don't! I do have an extremely poor class though in a lot of ways. It's just that this boy is very different, he's extremely sure of himself but then as soon as you ask him to do something he then panics and realises he can't do it. I can also tell from what he's said he's done that they have been moving forward faster than we have been while we've been going sideways, and for good reason. Scaffolding depth is really important and I think that's where the links to IDL come in. Although I know that's fraught with controversy too!

I agree with that, and I'm pretty glad to see SALs coming in because at least you can measure against them.

I agree that it's particularly important for early stage parents to be able to see what their kids should be able to do so they can help them, but up the school I think it's less important with regards to anything except number.

Definitely agree with you about "I can explore numbers" but I also like the CfE a little bit because it gives teachers professional judgement and a little bit of wiggle room. I was trained in it though and that seems to be the big difference between people who hate it and people who don't mind it!

Letsghostdance this is actually a new "mastery" curriculum so no moving on before mastered previous skills/knowledge we've only had it since September so it will be interesting to see how many achieve mastery at each stage.

It's interesting that you see it as breadth when much of the criticism of the new curriculum is about it being narrow.

mrz, that could possibly be due to wording of the different curricula? If you read the Scottish one you can see that it's in contention for being the most open ended thing in the world. Which is why we're now getting SALs which are specific areas of learning. I really don't know what either the old or new English curriculum look like, but that would be my best guess.

Obviously I'm not familiar with the CfE (I've taught pupils who previously followed CfE but that's all). I've read criticism from parents, teachers and academics and understand there is an OECD report due in December which should be an interesting read.

Oh, there's definitely criticism to be given to the curriculum but then again no matter what the gov't do there'll always be criticism. You've already said that the new English curriculum has been questioned by teachers.

I think if you've only known "levels" as a pupil and teacher it's very difficult when that's removed and I can see why some feel they have no "structure" but imagine how they would feel if presented with CfE

I feel like that must be how teachers who were trained and have taught under 5 - 14 (our previous curriculum) must feel because each child was assigned a letter grade per year of progress. A achieved in P1, B in P2 all the way up to F. Now we have 5 levels which cover the entire primary and secondary curriculum. We still have to give children levels within those, but it's not as structured.

And now we have no levels and schools can devise their own system for assessing ... Interesting times

Can I ask with the Key Stage 1 what year this is aimed at? I'm guessing it's YR rather than Y1.

DD is 5.5 and started school when she was 4 years 8 months. So one of the younger ones in P1 but if in the English system she would have been one of the older pupils.

Ok anyway so the plan for any extra work she asks me to do with her will be working through number bonds up to 20. Looking into multiples of 2,5 and 10 but not in a memorise the times table type of way.

Adding in pennies - she's pretty good with money but more in pounds and 50p's. We've had her save her pocket money to buy toys she wants for a while now so she has a good concept of money (although we done this more to teach her the value of things rather than for the counting side of things)

She can count to 100 but I haven't checked if she can do it backwards. She can tell me the numbers before and after a number if I ask her.

I know they did cover 3d shapes a while back in school but this hasn't stuck that well. It's a bit hit and miss when I ask her. Her 2d shapes are pretty solid - the simple ones anyway.

With teaching the time. I've not actually done anything with this. She can look at the clock and will tell us the time. She also has a watch that she likes to wear sometimes.

I am putting together an activity book just now for when we travel in the summer. I will add in some activity sheets that cover off these things (as well as colouring, dot to dots, word searches etc) I was also thinking of adding in some basic sudoku.

Key Stage One is Years 1 & 2 - but as you can see in the link there is a separate programme of study in maths for each of those year groups in the NC for England. These are the Early Years Outcomes for Reception.