Strategies for Enhancing Numeracy Skills: A Comprehensive Report

This report delves into various aspects of enhancing numeracy skills in educational settings. It begins by discussing the selection of appropriate resources and equipment, emphasizing the importance of considering students' needs and leveraging both physical and virtual resources, especially in light of changing educational landscapes. The report then outlines diverse strategies for improving numeracy, such as using consistent language, providing concise information, and incorporating visual aids. It further explores the role of collaborative learning in fostering a supportive and challenging environment, highlighting techniques to build classroom community and boost student self-esteem. The report also addresses the value of mistakes as learning opportunities and emphasizes creating a mistake-friendly environment. Finally, it examines the use of technology, such as tablets and interactive apps, to promote student engagement and collaboration, ultimately making numeracy learning more interactive and less burdensome. The report references several academic sources to support its findings, providing a comprehensive overview of effective numeracy teaching practices.

Numeracy and learning

TABLE OF CONTENTS
3. Selecting resources and equipments for teaching numeracy skills..........................................3
4. Various strategies used to enhance the numeracy skills..........................................................3
5. Ways to use collaborative learning for establishing and maintaining a supportive and
challenging environment.............................................................................................................4
6. Using learners mistakes as opportunities for further numeracy learning................................4
7. Use of technology in enhancing numeracy skills....................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

3. Selecting resources and equipments for teaching numeracy skills
The selection of the resources must be done by considering the needs and requirements of
the students and then finding the right sources for engaging them in the teaching an learning of
the numeracy skills. The physical resources prove to be the best for teaching by making use of
practical knowledge and the physical equipments but due to pandemic things changed and the
complete learning and teaching shifted to virtual ways and online platforms. So at these times,
the educators must make use of the online platforms in order to teach the students the numeracy
skills. The major challenge for the educators is to examine the evidence based and reliable
resources which can be matched with the needs of the learners (Wang, 2018). The guidelines of
the school and system must be followed in order to avoid the mistakes in the resource selection.
The institution’s duty of care must be considered for protecting the students from the offensive
materials and engaging the caregivers and the parents’ community. The resource must comply
with the school processes and the education department and must also be linked to the
curriculum. There must be breach copyright and the resource selected must be such that it can
challenge the students at appropriate level.
4. Various strategies used to enhance the numeracy skills
 There are many chances of confusion so it is must to use the consistent language by
presenting the numbers in expected and consistent formats. This helps in removing the
burden to perform the calculations and also helps in making the comparison of numbers
easier.
 The information presented must be most necessary but must be able to be fully
understood because too much information if provided can be overwhelming especially to
those who have lower numeracy skills (Cheung and McBride, 2017). The information
must be such that and enough to make decisions instead of overwhelming.
 Being visual can help in ensuring the understandability by making use of numbers and
the shapes for reflecting the meaning of numbers. The numbers, visuals and words must
be combined for explaining the risk statements. The different types of visuals such as line
graphs, pie charts, maps etc. must be used for communicating different concepts.
3

5. Ways to use collaborative learning for establishing and maintaining a supportive and
challenging environment
This can be done by building a strong classroom community through promoting pair
work, providing students with opportunities for sharing regarding their cultures and backgrounds
and seeking to connect to the students through trips etc. It can also be done by building self-
esteem and efficacy of the learners so that they can believe that they can achieve the goals as
they can have negative feelings about themselves (Al-Samarraie and Saeed, 2018). Positive non-
verbal communication must be implemented by exploring the areas like eye contact, gestures,
facial expressions, proximity etc.
6. Using learners mistakes as opportunities for further numeracy learning
The educators must see the mistake as source of understanding by ensuring that the
students understand and recognise the reason for the mistake. The motivation and the self-esteem
of the students must be improved which can help in experiencing them about their efforts and
ways to improve the competence. The mistakes also provide the teacher the information about
the individual student’s stand and also about the incorrect and knowledge deficits which hinders
the learning of the students (Fanshawe, Saltmarsh and Larsen, 2021). The teachers must also
develop a mistake-friendly learning atmosphere where the students do not feel ashamed of their
mistakes instead motivating them not to give up and continuing to work for the correct solution.
This is how, constructive ways can be developed for dealing with mistakes.
7. Use of technology in enhancing numeracy skills
The numeracy skills can also be enhanced in an innovative manner by making use of
various technological gadgets such as tablets, i-pads etc. The mathematical apps help in
promoting the students collaboration and engagement. This decreased the difficulty which was
faced by the learners while playing with the numbers. This makes the learning interactive rather
than treating it as a burden (Miller, 2018). The learning through the interactive technologies do
not lessen the opportunities for children to learn the numeracy concepts instead the learners feel
much more collaborating and engaged with the creative apps.
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al-Samarraie, H. and Saeed, N., 2018. A systematic review of cloud computing tools for
collaborative learning: Opportunities and challenges to the blended-learning
environment. Computers & Education, 124, pp.77-91.
Cheung, S.K. and McBride, C., 2017. Effectiveness of parent–child number board game playing
in promoting Chinese kindergarteners’ numeracy skills and mathematics interest. Early
Education and Development, 28(5), pp.572-589.
Fanshawe, M., Saltmarsh, S. and Larsen, E., 2021. Learning and exploring teacher identity:
Preparing for teaching in the Partners in Literacy and Numeracy (PLaN)
programme. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, pp.1-15.
Miller, T., 2018. Developing numeracy skills using interactive technology in a play-based
learning environment. International journal of STEM education, 5(1), pp.1-11.
Wang, C., 2018. Mathematics teachers’ expertise in resources work and its development in
collectives: A French and a Chinese cases. In Research on Mathematics Textbooks and
Teachers’ Resources (pp. 193-213). Springer, Cham.
5