Active learning

Active learning engages children and young people, extending their thinking and developing their mathematical skills. Well-judged contexts and issues motivate learners and encourage them to find things out for themselves. These range from activities based on imaginative play for younger children to those which require older learners to use their mathematical skills in response to current real-life issues.

Problem solving is embedded within the experiences and outcomes in Curriculum for Excellence and is no longer a separate strand of mathematics. A problem solving approach is at the heart of effective learning and teaching of mathematics. Through active learning we challenge young people, for example by providing non-routine tasks and activities of increasing levels of complexity which require them to analyse and make decisions, explain their thinking and synthesize aspects of their existing skills. In best practice, we challenge them to challenge themselves.

Inspection evidence indicates that many primary schools need to build on active learning at the early stages. Across all sectors, teachers do not always provide sufficient challenge for higher-achieving children and young people. Expectations of children’s and young people’s capacity to learn need to be high enough in order to extend their knowledge and understanding in challenging experiences rather than by ‘spoon feeding’ knowledge with little reference to other aspects of learning or relevant contexts.

In a nursery class, children worked together to order numbers. In order to ensure appropriate challenge for individual children, they were given further opportunities to transfer this skill to other areas of their play, for example, in playing games by ordering numbers successfully on a simple washing line.

When children and young people are increasingly active in their learning, they:

 think deeply about mathematical ideas and concepts and construct their own understanding about them; and

 use their existing skills and knowledge in different contexts, test out their ideas and conjectures, and solve problems.

Mathematics through active learning 

As a result of learning experiences and outcomes in mathematics being more relevant to real-life learning contexts, children from P5 to P7 are carrying out the majority of their mathematics lessons through activities which make links across the curriculum where appropriate. The main aim of teaching mathematics in this way is to ensure that children enjoy exploring, investigating and applying mathematical concepts to understand and solve problems. There is an emphasis on collaborative learning to encourage children to reason logically and creatively through discussion. When children learn about the properties of three-dimensional objects, they link it to their topic work, where they learn about churches on the Isle of Lewis. Children work in groups to plan and design a three-dimensional church. During this design and make process, they use their knowledge to build nets, measure accurately and identify faces, edges, vertices and angles. This type of task results in children being actively engaged and their understanding being enhanced. Groups present their findings to their peers, including delivering a presentation. In their evaluations, children commented on how much this approach to learning has impacted on their learning and enjoyment of the topic.