Maths Grants 2020

In 2020 the Jo Watlers Trust awarded £4,700 in grants to varous organisations across the UK to help further the teaching of maths. Many of the applications this year focused on providing resources to help teach more maths outdoors. 

• Tullarton Primary School: £640 to set up an outdoor woodwork hub so pupils can design, measure and build their own creations. This will help to engage reluctant learners, give a real purpose for their learning and effort and provide opportunities to involve parents. All pupils from 3-12 years old will be able to access this resource

• St Patrick's Primary School Lochgelly, £250 to put together equipment to set up maths areas around the outside areas of the school which are linked to their new maths packs. These can be used to consolidate learning in line with the many changes in education at present and make further connections with maths in real life.

• St Agatha's RC Primary - Leven: £750 to make maths packs that can be used without sharing them, and also as home learning packs. These will include playing cards, number lines, maths strings, mini kits of numicon, small clocks and place value counters. Read their report here

• Lochgelly High School Maths Department: £750 to buy concrete materials to support conceptual numeracy. In particular they will make use of algebra tiles (supports numeracy, integers, basic algebra leading into National 5 and Higher topics) and visualisers to display the use of the concrete materials by displaying them in the class for learners to view, as well as recording their lessons.

• St Thomas More School, Buxton: £200 to pay for prizes for whole school maths competitions. These were hugely successful during the lockdown and saw huge engagement from the school community. The prizes should help motivate students to get even more involved.

• Parkhill Primary School: £470 bought Learning Numeracy Bags for Primary 1 entrants. The aim of the bags is to support parental/carer engagement in numeracy at home. They expect this to develop pupils’ understanding of conceptual numeracy as they play games which enhance counting and addition/subtraction skills. Furthermore, concrete materials and resources will support the learning taking place in school

• Bellyeoman Primary School £750.00 to create an outdoor maths shed that will help their pupils (many of who are in SIMD 1 & 2) to provide as many mathematical experiences and opportunities as possible.. The shed will be filled with a range of equipment from counting, sorting and ordering to shape and measurement resources and will allow them to maximise the outdoor space which is particularly helpful in the current climate. They expect the equipment to be a fantastic teaching aid and that it will improve mathematical investigation, encourage play and allow children to grow in confidence in numeracy and maths. Click here for a report from the school.

• Fyvie Primary School £250.00 to purchase TTS maths outdoors kits for KS1, KS1 and outdoor ‘Numicon’ number frames. They plan also to purchase rope, hoop, additional stopwatches and matre sticks to make up kits for each of their 6 classes, filled with high-quality, durable, easily cleaned and practical resources.They have written about some of the ingenious ways they have used the funding and have some great photos in their report here. 

• Daviot School, Aberdeenshire £700.00: after refurbishing and developing their adjacent outdoor area, the infant staff really want to take maths teaching outdoors for P1-3 classes introducnig outdoor maths sessions at least once a week. The grant will pay for a range of outdoor maths activities such as giant snakes and ladders, giant dominoes, Jumbo ten frames, Outdoor Place Value counters, Giant playing cards and Outdoor Number mat