ABSTRACT
The National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) provides teachers with a very detailed breakdown of the content of the mathematics curriculum which should be delivered in primary schools. Inevitably perhaps this approach can mask the ‘big ideas’ with which we want the pupils to engage during the different phases of their schooling. It is important however that teachers maintain a view of these big ideas and see the detail as illuminating these ideas rather than seeing the detail as leading to the big idea. Faux (1998), in exploring what these big ideas might mean in school, suggests that the big ideas for number in the primary school would be:
Year 1 to Year 2: security in counting;
Year 3 to Year 4: security with additive place value, and with whole numbers including chunking in groups of 3, 5, etc.;
Year 5 to Year 6: security with multiplicative place value with whole numbers and developing a feeling for structure and structural relationships. In particular, security with multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 …
