| How do teachers build on students’ existing skills? |
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Research taster
Students can develop informal and individual knowledge about mathematics from their experimental and playful out-of-school experiences that can be helpful to formal learning. In order to realise this potential, teachers need to play a key role in drawing this knowledge together so that it becomes shared common knowledge. 
Your evidence
Would you find it useful to collect information about your students’ experiences of mathematics outside the classroom? Could you ask your students to work in groups of four to create a list of games that they play at home or in the playground that use numbers? You might like to encourage students from different ethnic backgrounds to name and describe games that are specific to their culture. Ask your groups to describe some of the games they have been discussing to the whole class. You might find it useful to make notes of what your students say and collect their lists at the end of the lesson.
Moving forward
Having expanded and shared your pupils’ knowledge and experiences of number, you are in a good position to think about how any of the games that the students identified could be used in the classroom. Could you identify ways in which these games might provide opportunities to build on your students’ existing knowledge and extend their learning? Do you already have a bank of maths games to which you could add these games? Could you make explicit to your pupils the ways in which their different games and experiences connect with each other through mathematical concepts?  Find out more The full project is InterActive Education: teaching and learning in the information age, led by Prof. Rosamund Sutherland, Prof. Susan Robertson, and Prof. Peter John. The project website is at: http://www.interactiveeducation.ac.uk/
You might like to read a digest on how talk support pupil learning at: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/speakandlisten/talktalk/
For more further reading on group discussions in classrooms visit: http://www.rtweb.info/ch13/nfr13.html#Group
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