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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 2h

An example of the sort of work I did in Y3 and Y4 Maths Clubs using questions from international Y3/Y4 maths competitions.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Currently in interesting webinar: AI: How to Accelerate Learning & Improve Education

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The Early Childhood Maths Group website is full of helpful activities, educational research and resources earlymaths.org

earlymaths.org

ECMG

Early Childhood Maths Group

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The Early Childhood Maths Group YouTube channel has some terrific videos of young children engaging with maths www.youtube.com/@ecmg9196

youtube.com

Early childhood maths group

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Guided play had a greater positive effect than direct instruction on early maths skills, shape knowledge and task switching. It also beat free play on spatial vocabulary. research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/publicati...

research-portal.uea.ac.uk

Can guidance during play enhance children’s learning and development in educational contexts? A systematic review and meta-analysis

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Wow! The auto CC functions on Adobe Premiere are useless unless the sound is perfect. It came up with utter gibberish when captioning a video with a teacher and small group of very young children. Trying to help out producing support videos for parents of very young children.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Spot the dyslexic! @alexpethickPKC Many apologies for spelling error

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Ofsted model of school inspection aiming to improve standards is an outdated and flawed model. There are other more supportive models. Here is a comparison of Ofsted and the Singapore School Excellence Model (SEM). mathswondering.school.blog/2026/09/26/o...

mathswondering.school.blog

Ofsted inspection v Singapore inspection ethos

Two very different philosophies of what “checking a school is any good” should look like: Ofsted (England) – external, high-stakes accountability Inspectors from outside the school arri…

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Reposted by Bernie Westacott

Jonathan Hall @studymaths.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

UPDATE: I've just added a pen overlay tool to the Algebra Tiles. It needs a bit of tweaking (rubber tool etc) and once I'm happy I'll roll it out to the rest of the manipulatives. mathsbot.com/manipulative...

A screenshot of the Algebra Tiles tool with the new pen overlay being used. In this case to complete the square.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

That was meant to be 'countries' not 'counties'

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Have paired questions with eg 4 red 2 yellow then 2 red 4 yellow to draw out that 2-4 is the ‘opposite’ of 4-2. This helps them develop strategies for calculating things like 116-118 later on. Some counties spend some time on this and it pays off later. eg 116-118=-(118-116)=-2 and b-a =-(a-b)

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I like to use Polypad when introducing and developing formal written methods for factorisation. Here are 2 ways to manipulate the number cards to work out the total - this can then also be shown in written factorised form at some stage.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Under Welsh Labour government the traditional, rigid national curriculum was completely abolished. It was replaced by a highly decentralised model that legally mandated every individual school to design its own unique curriculum from scratch. What did they expect to happen?

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Found this in my video collection of Singapore Bar Model method. A typical algebra approach by a secondary Y8 pupil using formal algebra compared to how a Y5 student might use the Bar Model method to solve it. Sometimes I do both just to check if I can and also because I like to visualise a problem.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I do believe we've discussed this one before?

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

2 great work-through videos on this important area of algebra from Dr Kevin Olding @mathsaurus.bsky.social . Read the appreciative feedback from pupils in the comments. Background youtube.com/watch?v=2pKr... Application youtube.com/watch?v=b7UT...

x.com

Kevin Olding - Mathsaurus (@mathsaurus) on X

Online maths challenge courses for ages 7-18 - many totally free (see pinned tweet). MMATH @magdalenoxford MSc @BirkbeckUoL PhD @SAMBa_CDT FRSA

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Reading '10 Rules for raising kids in a Hi-tech world' “Now that I’m 12, I want to take 200 pictures of myself in a skimpy bikini and put them someplace where everyone in my school can see them and tell me if they like how I look.” (A fairly accurate definition of Instagram.)

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Reposted by Bernie Westacott

Mark McCourt @markmccourt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I look forward to speaking at ResearchEd this Saturday. If you’re attending, why not join me during session 3.

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Reposted by Bernie Westacott

Jo Austen @joausten.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Lots of talk about GCSE resits recently... I’ve got some time before my new job in January & I’d like to do something useful so... 💻 FREE Grade 3 ➡️ 4 weekly webinars (Mondays, 5pm) 💻 🧑‍💻🧑‍💻 🧑‍💻 Small group (max 6) live lessons @ £15 each 🧑‍💻🧑‍💻🧑‍💻 More info & sign up: grade3to4bynovember.carrd.co

grade3to4bynovember.carrd.co

Grade 3 ➡ Grade 4 by November

GCSE Maths resit webinars and online classes with Jo Austen

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Just looking back over PowerPoints I used for PD in schools back in 2019. Using multiplicative reasoning to solve typical mixed direct and inverse problems. Getting pupils to think about whether the change in one quantity will directly or inversely change another.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Can a 27-pupil, needs-blind-but-fee-charging independent school meaningfully move the UK's Stem pipeline, or is it more a proof-of-concept for what state education could borrow if it worked?

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The Gentle Parenting movement is doing so much damage to very young children. Use of the phrase 'connection not correction' is a red flag in this context. People/teachers/parents should read the original research and not rely upon TikTok or commercial companies making money.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Using the gym in the summer holidays…

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Interesting post from Craig Barton on the use of AI to draw maths diagrams using written instructions/specifications enabling students to get plenty of controlled variations of questions. Things are moving so quickly in the AI world. open.substack.com/pub/eedi/p/a...

open.substack.com

AI can (finally!) create high-quality maths diagrams

Party time in the Barton household

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

For children aged 3-years-old to 6-years-old, according to research, how long should each homework be in major subjects like maths and English, and how many per week? Summary of what I found. Links to research highlighted in screenshots can be found in the thread below 👇

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Reading up on HOMEWORK - this week I've been looking at the most effective approach when setting maths homework in the 11-to-16-year old age range. Here's what the evidence says across the three dimensions: duration, frequency, and type. Links to references are given below.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Good heavens - the standard of debate and argument in the current session in HoC is so poor. Even when they have prepared written notes, they witter/waffle, and repeat points already made. Where are the great speakers and minds of yesteryear?

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I totally agree with what @adamboxereducation.bsky.social wrote on X re the role of HoDs. (Couldn't find it on here, so copied link to his X post). x.com/adamboxer1/s...

x.com

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Working on app with built-in examples to cover basic types: part-whole addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; comparison additive and multiplicative - draws a bar model and then solves the problem. Users can dictate their own problem into the app - it will draw a model and solve it.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Thank you, Marc! Much-appreciated. I need to spend more time getting into this app creation world, just to see how sophisticated I can make them - also, interactive, moving objects maths games for young children.

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Bernie Westacott @berniewestacott.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I used the ac method for non-monics, where the user has to split the middle term as a first step, then factorise from there. I think I've managed to eliminate any ones with common factors where there shouldn't be any - let me know if you find any!!

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