National numeracy skills are low, with almost 17 million adults lacking skills for the lowest GCSE grade and 65% of adult prisoners at an 11-year-old level or below. Students with low numeracy are twice as likely to be unemployed. Miss B's Resources provides various activities teachers can use to improve students' numeracy, such as impact lines focusing on number sense, battle words applying coordinate knowledge, and a thermometer of understanding activity rating learning more accurately than simple traffic light systems. The resources aim to incorporate numeracy development into different lessons to help overcome beliefs that maths can't be improved.

1. Miss B’s Resources
#NUMERACY4ALL
www.missbsresources.com
@missbsresources

2. What is numeracy?
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3. www.missbsresources.com
What is wrong with
the labels?

4. National Facts
 According to the most recent Skills for Life survey, almost 17 million
people in the UK have numeracy skills below those needed for the
lowest grade at GCSE – for literacy the comparable figure is 5 million…
 Students who enter secondary school with low numeracy skills but good
literacy skills are twice as likely to be excluded
 Year 9-11 students who have poor numeracy skills are in three times as
likely to truant
 65% of adult prisoners have numeracy skills at or below the level
expected of an 11-year-old.
 Poor numeracy skills means you are twice as likely to be unemployed
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5. Damaging effects of ‘I can’t do maths’
Television
Belief that numeracy isn’t important
Acceptable to be rubbish at maths and no
reason to improve their maths skills.
‘I can’t do maths’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy
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6. R.I.P.
‘I CAN’TDO
MATHS’
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Trigonom
etry
Fracti
ons
Log Tables

7. Numeracy Week
Guest Speakers
Children in Need
Support from maths staff
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8. Subject Knowledge – Tip Mats
How could you use these within your lessons?
What topics would you like support with?
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9. Numeracy Week
Guest Speakers
Children in Need
Support from maths staff
Tutorial Videos
Tip Mats
Support Sessions with maths staff.
www.missbsresources.com

10. Resources – Number Sense
 It’s not about making your lesson a maths
lesson.
 It’s about finding ways to make small
changes in order to help students with their
numeracy/number sense skills.
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11. Impact Line
Impact lines focus on students number sense
and their understanding of directed
numbers.
Provide students with or allow the students
to create a list of advantages and
disadvantages, on a particular concept/
topic . The students then collaboratively
discuss which will have the largest positive
and negative impact.
As a challenge students should work out that
0 means the event has no impact at all on
the topic.
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12. Battlewords
Romania
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13. Battle Words
The idea is that students apply their knowledge of co-ordinates to remember and define key words.
Battle Words has two levels with easy being a one quadrant grid and hard being a four quadrant grid for
higher ability students.
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14. Writing Weigh- In
Tackles students understanding of weight as well as
helping them apply VCOP to improve extended
writing task. This activity also gives students a chance
to practise their addition skills.
The resource works on the basis the heavier the
assignment the more sophisticated the answer is.
Teachers should set a minimum weight for the
assignment, which can easily be differentiated for
groups of students. When setting the weight use kg
instead of g so pupils have to remember 1000g = 1kg.

15. Total Word Out
Students have to identify and total
key words from the lesson using
scrabble blocks. This activity allows
the students to think about higher
order and subject specific
terminology. It also allows students
chance to practice their addition
skills and finding average.
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16. Total Word Out
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17. Connections
Connections allows students to take a journey
tailored specifically to their individual needs within
a lesson. A student can hop of the train and
continue attempt to master a skill when needed,
before catching the connection to the next station.
Students are required to work with time and
calculate how long their individual journey has
taken, how long they spent in stations and how
long they spent on the train. On a student’s arrival
at the final destination students should attempt to
complete an arrivals challenge.
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18. Thermometer of Understanding
The Thermometer of Understanding
allows students a chance to rate
their learning more accurately
than a simple Red, Amber and
Green, (RAG). Students have to
think about directed numbers,
(positive and negative numbers), in
relation to their learning within the
lesson.
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19. Miss B’s Resources
#NUMERACY4ALL
www.missbsresources.com
@missbsresources
Thank you for
listening.