Interactive whiteboards and primary numeracy
Interactive whiteboards are by their very nature interactive, and this interactivity extends and develops the teaching styles that teachers have traditionally used, as well as offering opportunities to use software in new and different ways.
For example, for young children, the kinaesthetic feedback they get by using the drag and drop facility of the board can allow them to engage with the abstract concepts of number and letter sounds. They can, for instance, drag three objects into an area of the board with the number 'three' on it, reinforcing an exercise in numeral identification visually, kinaesthetically and auditorily.
Maundene Primary School in Medway has had interactive whiteboards throughout the school. In a numeracy lesson for a Foundation Stage class, teachers used one to practise numbers from one to ten and number lines.
The first part of the lesson employed maths software in an exercise in which the children counted a series of sounds and identified the appropriate numeral on the screen. The numbers could also be represented on the screen as letters or dots, and changing the representation developed the children's learning.
The board enhanced the lesson because it allowed the exercise to be a shared one and enabled the teacher to appropriately refine each question for individual pupils. The children also found the board easier to control than a normal computer, so that the ICT skills they were asked to employ were appropriate to the level of the learning objectives for the lesson.
The lesson then progressed to look at number lines using another maths software package, which included a number line tool. The children all had a printed number line on which they solved the problems set them by the teacher. They showed these to the teacher, who then demonstrated the problem on the board, often with the help of individual pupils.
The key element to the teaching here was that the teacher or the children could demonstrate the process required, thus significantly improving the children's understanding of the number system and mathematical problems.
Staff at the school have observed a singular improvement in maths skills since the introduction of their whiteboard teaching. The kinetic and visual experience of moving elements around the screen and of annotating the work is especially appropriate for children of this age and allows them to understand and adopt learning more effectively.
Bligh Infant School in Strood, Kent used software to work on number skills in a Foundation Stage class. The teacher began the lesson with a game of 'hide and seek', in which the children were asked by a voice on the software to find a 'teddy' under a specific number, and then to uncover the correct number by clicking on one of the doors projected on the board. The teacher also asked each child to check their responses by counting every item out loud on the board, thus consolidating the learning further.
The lesson then moved on to individual computers, with children wearing headphones to continue their work alone.
The interactive whiteboard was used to set up the lesson, demonstrate the learning processes the children would engage in by themselves, and motivate them through the collaborative work to complete the individual work with a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction.
Teachers at Bligh felt that the visual impact and interactivity that interactive whiteboards offer are particularly beneficial to those children with less developed skills.
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