ABSTRACT
Consolidation and practice form an important part of the model we introduced at the start of Part II. It is very difficult to get the right balance of activities, intervention, monitoring and feedback to ensure children can explore new ideas, practise skills and consolidate knowledge. In addition to creating opportunities for consolidation and practice, the teacher needs to monitor children’s thinking and practical activity, paying particular regard to errors and misconceptions. The classroom culture may not always help in this regard. There is plenty of research evidence dating from before the introduction of the NNS that children were prepared to ignore right answers and disregard what they knew to be right, because they believed that mathematics is not supposed to make ‘common sense’. As we discuss below, this adds an extra burden to teachers who are working to reduce children’s errors and misconceptions in mathematics. We need to know more about how the culture of the classroom is currently shaping children’s thinking.
