I am going to make a confession… I don’t really know what Numeracy across the Curriculum means.

I get that it should ensure a consistent approach to numeracy across all subjects, but what does that actually mean? Is it as simple as ensuring graphs are drawn the same way in Science, Geography and Maths. Or do I need to start encouraging my English teaching colleagues to start solving a few quadratic equations whilst studying Shakespeare?

Fortunately, people far more in the know than me have come to the rescue:

1. Mr Collins

In a wonderful blog post, Paul Collins explains his approach to numeracy across the curriculum, including links to all the resources he used. I particularly his frank and honest description of the difficulties he has faced in getting the ideas adopted across the whole school

 2. Mrs Howard

I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Mrs Howard, a Numeracy across the Curriculum Co-ordinator from Hyde Community College, who has shared all her resources with my website on this page.

In her own words:

“Upon taking up the post of Numeracy Coordinator in September 2013, I decided that my focus would be to create clear cross-curricular links between numeracy and a range of subjects across the curriculum. I found that I was struggling to find a clear set of resources available online so decided to start making my own. Some of the resources are quick activities to do in form time, others are activity based where clear partnerships between maths and other subjects were established. 

An example of this is “Polygon Panic.” In maths students looked at the exterior/interior angles of a polygon drawn on a map and worked on a program that would allow a robot to travel round the route. They then followed this up in their ICT lessons by writing that program into a software program called “Scratch”, and then went on to investigate how they could draw various polygons using their knowledge of interior and exterior angles from maths. 

Linking subjects in this way has allowed students to better understand the importance of numeracy across the curriculum, not just in their mathematics classroom. Projects with English, Science, Art, MfL and PE have also been done to date. For each one the projects have been designed with the input of the staff in the other subject area, to make sure that the tasks were meaningful for both curriculum areas.”

3. Owen134866

One of my favourite uploaders to TES, Owen134866, has created a wonderful series of poster puzzles (thankfully with answers, as a few are pretty tough!) that we use at our school. Click on this link to download the full set.