Synopsis: This book is part of a series of books in the Belair World of Display series. It looks at the primary curriculum in a cross-curricular way through the medium of art, design and display.

Review: The Belair books are well-known to teachers for accessible and attractive ideas and this book on mathematics is no exception. This teachers’ guide uses the objectives from the revised primary mathematics framework objectives as a starting point.

The introduction explains the rationale behind the layout of the book and the different sections in each theme based idea. The display ideas are all linked to the curriculum covering objectives for number and calculating, shape and space measures and data handling. Each double page spread then takes a theme such as ‘The Theatre’ or ‘Pirate-Packing Problems’, to give just two examples, and shows how to create and use a display around the topic. The focus of learning for each activity is clearly displayed and photographs illustrate how the display should look when completed.

Sections cover art and display, starting points for the activities, further activities to extend learning and challenge children, working wall for quick display ideas and then a section on cross-curricular links. The format makes this easy to follow with key questions and the visual examples of ways to support learning make it an attractive book for teachers who wish to make mathematics display central to the classroom.

Some of the activities require the teacher to prepare resources to accompany the ideas. This could be time consuming ,so teachers may wish to adapt ideas and use ready made resources in their classroom for the same activity. This is a book for teachers to ‘dip into’ for ideas when they want to create new and purposeful attractive displays.

2008-04-07