St Richard’s RC is a voluntary aided Primary School in Manchester that’s consistently in the top 4% in the country with their KS2 Maths results. Teacher Andrea and Co-Headteacher and Maths Specialist John from St Richard’s have invested in the Propeller Maths Spinners and Cracking Concepts for their students. “The games from Propeller have been highly engaging, enjoyable, interesting and just an experience that the children really enjoy.”
Andrea and John have integrated the Spintelligence and Cracking Concepts kits during the school’s Golden Time in Key Stage 2. They were looking for something hands-on, practical in a fun way and could promote mathematical discussion. “It’s good to have a dimension that adds something in a creative way.”
Watch Andrea and John talking about the Spinners and the Cracking Concepts games below, or read the transcriptions under the videos.
Spintelligence Transcript
Andrea: I’m Andrea Toal, a year six teacher and maths specialist. We’ve embraced [Propeller’s] spinners during golden time as the children, actually, just love maths in the class and really did see it as a fun activity. Having watched the children at play, I saw what a fantastic resource they [the spinners] are in our lessons. I’ve always been someone who’s really promoted the quickfire and mental arithmetic at the start of each maths lesson and these, to me, where absolutely perfect in the sense that we can cover all the operations, all the key topics in year six, in a really fun non-threatening way for the children. And I really do feel that they’re promoted their mental fluency which, obviously, then impacts on their reasoning skills as well.
And I actually – I love how compact they are. The fact that they come in a little box, easily stored, but within that box there’s just a huge array of mathematics that caters for all abilities and all styles of learning. I have to say just from the very basic fact and the very basic component of the spinner, every child in the class is engaged with it. They find it exciting, competitive and they’ve all really really enjoyed using them.
John: I think, adding to what Mrs Toal was saying, is where our pupil premium’s very close to fifty percent, and our pupils perform just as well as our non-pupil premiums, we have very consistent high-standards and expectations.
We’re basically where we have old-fashioned standards [but] integrating the new. We’re not moving back from the basics, so we do arithmetic once, twice, three times a day, but the children aren’t away, necessarily, of doing it. It’s just as if it’s just a part and parcel of our world really. And the games, the games from Propeller have been a highly engaging, enjoyable, interesting and just, you know, an experience that you’ll really enjoy.
Cracking Concepts Transcript
John: We’re a school that’s done exceptionally well for many many years. We’re very much – we’re looking for a product that could be utilized for golden time throughout the school. Something that had a little bit of quality where children could develop an even greater depth of number sense. Fluency, to build on the standards. And I was actually looking through lots of different resources, looking to put a pack together especially for Key Stage 2, and came across these concept trays which were fantastic because they basically contained maths in a box!
[There were] lots of ideas that could be generated, and we decided a few months ago to roll those out throughout the school at Key Stage 2. I’m looking for products that were hands-on. Practical in a fun way, and could promote mathematical discussion. Even with a competitive element, because children love, love that side of maths. So, maths in a box really, that’s how it started.
We get fantastic results here, but as I say, it’s good to have a dimension that adds something in a creative way. And also, I think these maths games are generational. It transports children [and] adults back to when they were children as well. We live in a world with some fantastic ICT, but I think it’s good to have the engagement where you’re looking at each other. You can see progress and [the] building [of] mathematical fluency.