Numero® in Primary Schools

Numero® helps develop a positive attitude towards Mathematics while enhancing understanding, communication, perseverance, and resilience.

Numero® enhances the Primary Mathematics Curriculum by offering engaging, playful experiences that foster mathematical thinking, including modelling, thinking aloud, and maths talk. It also encourages collaboration, communication, and diverse ways of expressing understanding.

‘How’ children learn is as important as ‘what’ they learn. Numero® is a fantastic resource in which to promote and enhance Mathematics through play as it allows children to integrate mathematical learning with a meaningful activity. When played as a class, in small groups or one on one, it constantly reinforces and promotes mathematical language as it arises through play.

Numero® allows teachers to share their enthusiasm for Mathematics while encouraging students to take risks. Adaptable from Junior Infants through to 6th class and beyond, it is an inclusive mathematical game that enables all students to participate, regardless of ability level.

Numero® offers higher-order learning opportunities that challenge and extend children’s mathematical thinking, encouraging them to explore various problem-solving approaches.

Numero® supports the development of key competencies outlined in the Primary Curriculum Framework, including: 

  • Being Creative : Investigate, use and share diverse mathematical ideas and solution paths. Numero® encourages students to explore multiple strategies and pathways to achieve target numbers, fostering creativity and problem-solving. 
  • Being Mathematical: Engaging in mathematical activities that involve enjoyment, effort, risk-taking, critical thinking and reflection. Numero® is inherently engaging and enjoyable, motivating students to take risks by trying various combinations of numbers and operations.
  • Being a Communicator and Using Language - Expressing thinking using mathematical language, signs and symbols. During game play, students use mathematical language to describe their moves, explain strategies, and justify decisions.
  • Being Well: Applying Mathematics in meaningful contexts and experiencing learning success. The game places mathematics in a fun and interactive context, allowing students to apply their skills in a real-time, meaningful way.
  • Being an Active Learner: Reflecting on and evaluating approaches and solutions to mathematical tasks. Players evaluate their strategies after each round, reflecting on what worked and what didn’t.

Numero® also supports the development of mathematical proficiency as outlined in the Irish Primary Mathematics Curriculum, including:

  • Procedural Fluency refers to how students develop skills in choosing appropriate procedures; carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently and appropriately. It is demonstrated when students choose appropriate methods and calculate answers.
  • Conceptual Understanding refers to how students build a knowledge of adaptable and transferable mathematical concepts and structures. It is demonstrated as students link the how and why of mathematics through Numero®.
  • Reasoning refers to how students develop capacity for logical thought and actions, such as analysing, proving, evaluating, explaining, inferring, justifying and generalising. It is demonstrated when students can explain their thinking, justify the use of strategies and responses, and then adapt knowledge to unknown situations.
  • Strategic Competence refers to the problem solving techniques that students develop to make choices, interpret, formulate, model and investigate problem situations. It is demonstrated when students use Mathematics to plan, investigate and verify answers.

 

 

 

 

The table below provides links between the Irish Primary Mathematics Curriculum and Numero®

Number: Uses of Number 

Stage 1

Learning Outcomes

Develop an awareness that numbers have different uses 

Mathematical Concepts 

Numbers can be used in different ways

Numbers denote quantity or the amount within a set 

 

Number: Numeration and Counting

Stage 1

Stage 2

Learning Outcomes

Develop an awareness that the purpose of counting is to quantify


Use a range of counting strategies for a range of purposes

Demonstrate proficiency in using and applying different counting strategies

Mathematical Concepts 

Quantities can be subsidised and compared without needing to count or assign a numerical value

The reasonableness of estimations can be tested by counting

There are five principles of counting; one-one, stable order, cardinal, order irrelevance and abstraction

There are a range of strategies for counting forwards and backwards

The last number in the count indicates the quantity in a set

There are a range of counting strategies, including grouping objects and arranging objects in various visual configurations

 

Number: Place Value and Base Ten

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Learning Outcomes

Develop a sense of ten as the foundation for place value and counting

Understand that digits have different values depending on their place or position in a number

Explore equivalent numerical expressions of numbers using the base ten system

Investigate how decimals and percentages (and fractions) can be compared, ordered and expressed in related terms

Mathematical Concepts 

Numbers can be distinguished according to their quantitative value

The relationship between one quantity and another quantity can be an equality or inequality relation

The value of an integer or decimal number is represented by the value of the sum of each of its constituent digits

Fractions, decimals and percentages are three ways of expressing part-whole relationships

The base-ten number system consists of 10 digits and is based on groups of ten

The base ten place value system extends indefinitely in two directions multiplying (to the left) or dividing (to the right) by multiples of ten

Multiples of 10 are a useful tool for converting between fractions, decimals and percentages

In a 2-digit number, the digit to the left denotes the greater value

A percentage is a way of expressing a fraction of one hundred or another way of writing hundredth. Per ‘cent’ means out of a hundred and uses the % notation

 

Number: Sets and Operations

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Learning Outcomes

Recognise and understand what happens when quantities (sets) are partitioned and combined

Select, make use of and represent a range of addition and subtraction strategies

Understand and apply flexibly the four operations; and the relationships between operations

Build upon, select and make use of a range of operation strategies

Mathematical Concepts 

Quantities (or sets) can be partitioned and combined

Commutative, associative, additive identity and distributive are significant properties of addition

Commutative, associative, identity and distributive properties apply to the operation of multiplication

For fractional and decimal computation, new and amended algorithms are needed as some meanings of whole number operations may be difficult to apply

Adding a natural number to a natural number makes the number (quantity) bigger

Numbers and symbols are used to construct and express number sentences. These can help to solve problems or are used to express contexts mathematically

One definition of multiplication is having a certain number of groups of the same size. An early representation of multiplication is repeated addition

A prime number has exactly two factors – itself and one, a composite number has three or more factors. The number one is neither prime nor composite

Addition and subtraction have an inverse relationship

A number fact is a mental picture of the relationship between a number and the parts that combine to make it

Division can be described as the splitting of a number into equal parts or groups, or the repeated subtraction of a number

Factors are numbers that multiply together to give a product

Subtracting a natural number from a natural number makes the number (quantity) smaller. This can be represented as a move on the number line or 100 square

Representations of subtraction can include reduction, complement and difference

Multiplication and division have an inverse relationship

Division can be described as the splitting of a number into equal parts or groups, or the repeated subtraction of a number

 

Number: Fractions

Stage 3

Stage 4

Learning Outcomes

Calculate the fraction of quantities and express in multiple ways

Build upon, select and make use of a range of operation strategies

Mathematical Concepts 

A numerator denotes the number of parts, the denominator denotes the total number of parts in a whole

Explore (model, compare and convert) the relationships between fractions, decimals and percentages

A fraction may be considered as a representation of division

Fractions can be represented in decimal and percentage form

Fractions can express value greater than one

 

Algebra: Patterns, Rules and Relationships

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Learning Outcomes

Identify and express relationships in patterns, including growing or shrinking shape patterns and number sequences

Identify rules that describe the structure of a pattern and use these rules to make predictions. represent the relationships between quantities

Identify, explain and apply generalisations, including properties of operations

Represent mathematical structures in multiple ways, including verbal expression and symbolic representations

Mathematical Concepts 

The commutative property of addition means we can swap the order of the numbers being added and still get the same total.

Representations can be used to show and explore the relationships between quantities

The structure of a pattern, or the property of operations, can be described succinctly by a mathematical expression, for example, the commutative property: a+b=b+a

Properties of operations (e.g., zero, commutative) and patterns in numbers can be used to determine number facts we don’t know from number facts we do know. Examples include doubles & near-doubles, inverses, adding 10, odd and even numbers

The associative property states that when three or more numbers are added or multiplied, the sum or product remains the same regardless of how the numbers are grouped

An integer is a whole number that can be positive, negative, or zero


The distributive property means that complex multiplication and division equations can be simplified by breaking one (in the case of the dividend) or both numbers down into smaller parts

A square number is what we get after multiplying an integer by itself. The square root of a number identifies what must be squared to get the number

 

Reference:

https://www.curriculumonline.ie/primary/curriculum-areas/mathematics/