The Primary Maths Podcast

In this episode, Jon is joined by Dr Kirsten Fenton and Holly Drummond, two experienced primary practitioners from Scotland who have been at the forefront of exploring how maths journalling can change the way pupils think, talk and feel about mathematics.

Kirsten and Holly are co-creators of the PACE framework and their research on oracy, curriculum design and maths journalling has been featured in The Herald, TES, Enlighten and Tom Sherrington’s Classroom Voices Blog. Between them, they bring over 25 years of experience across schools and universities, united by a shared passion for high-impact pedagogy rooted in reflection, equity and learner voice.

The conversation begins with their own contrasting experiences of maths at school—Holly’s early confidence giving way to later challenges, and Kirsten’s journey from maths anxiety to passionate advocacy. Together they share how these experiences shaped their belief that every child can develop a positive maths identity.

They explain what maths journalling really is—and what it isn’t. It’s not an add-on or a plenary task, but a pedagogical approach that integrates thinking, talk and written reflection throughout every maths lesson. From “brain dumps” at the start of a unit to “stop and jots” during teaching, the process helps children make their thinking visible, connect ideas and take ownership of their learning.

Jon, Kirsten and Holly discuss how journalling supports metacognition, oracy and reasoning, as well as how it can help to reduce maths anxiety by shifting classroom culture away from right-or-wrong answers towards curiosity and creativity. They explore how this approach builds inclusive learning environments and strengthens pupils’ confidence, self-esteem and enjoyment of maths.

There’s also discussion of practical strategies for getting started, how to respond to misconceptions in real time, and how to embed journalling without creating extra workload.

Kirsten and Holly share examples of how journalling looks in practice—from anchor charts and worked examples to real-life projects like planning a Halloween party. They explain how pupils use drawings, diagrams and sentence stems to express their reasoning and how this fosters a deeper understanding of mathematical ideas.

They end by reflecting on pupil voice, teacher collaboration, and the simple power of asking children to show us what you’re thinking.

Connect with Holly and Kirsten

Email: [email protected]

[email protected]

Recent publications:

• Show me what you think: Maths Journalling and the Case for Oracy in Scottish Primary Schools – Teacherhead
• Reimagining Primary Maths Education in Scotland Through Journaling – Enlighten
• Maths journaling is giving students control over lessons – The Herald
• How journalling can alleviate pupils’ maths anxiety – TES

In this week’s Aftermaths episode, Jon and Becky dive into a listener question from Amy in Nottinghamshire: What would you change about the maths curriculum?

The discussion ranges from curriculum overload to the role of problem solving, exploring whether maths could ever follow pupils’ interests in the same way as history or science. Jon argues that the current focus on calculating with fractions in Key Stage 2 comes too soon, while Becky calls for a rethink on topics like Roman numerals and imperial units. Both agree that depth of understanding and real-world application should take priority over coverage.

From there, they touch on geometry, progression, and the importance of not narrowing the curriculum just because some concepts feel difficult or less “useful.” As Jon puts it, schools should expose children to a broad and inspiring range of mathematical ideas — even those that may not have an obvious everyday purpose.

The Maths of Life segment takes a theatrical turn as Becky explores the Erdos–Bacon number — a surprisingly mathematical connection between film stars, mathematicians, and networks of collaboration. Jon discovers his own surprisingly low Bacon number and issues a challenge to listeners to beat it.

Finally, they revisit Jon’s interview with Leonie Briggs, unpacking the links between maths and science, the importance of cross-curricular learning, and how practical, hands-on experiences can make abstract ideas come alive. Becky highlights Leonie’s passion for showing pupils the real-world value of maths — from veterinary science to construction — while Jon reminds us that sometimes it’s okay to learn simply for the joy of knowing something new.

Highlights include:

• Should the maths curriculum focus more on skills than content?
• Why we rush fractions — and what we could teach instead
• Is it time to retire Roman numerals and inches?
• The joy (and challenge) of geometry
• How the Erdos–Bacon number connects maths and movies
• Why integrating maths and science matters more than ever

Get involved:

Email your thoughts to [email protected], leave a YouTube comment, or message Jon and Becky on social media.

At school, maths and science are often treated as separate subjects. But in reality, the two are deeply connected, from data collection and measurement to problem solving and pattern spotting. In this episode, Jon Cripwell speaks with Leonie Briggs, award-winning educator, author, and founder of AmazeLab, about how we can make those links explicit and bring both subjects to life for children.

Leonie shares how her career journey from veterinary practice to education shaped her practical approach to teaching, why she believes science should be colourful and creative, and how teachers can build pupils’ confidence by connecting learning across the curriculum. The conversation explores simple, memorable ways to integrate maths into science lessons (and vice versa) while keeping activities manageable and meaningful in a busy classroom.

• Leonie’s journey from veterinary and orthopaedic practice to science education
• How real-world applications of maths strengthen scientific understanding
• What “STEAM” means, and why adding the Arts can help break down barriers to learning
• Ways to embed maths naturally within science investigations
• How cross-curricular links can make learning more memorable and inclusive
• The importance of teacher collaboration and reflection when planning integrated lessons
• Leonie’s experience as a National Numeracy Champion and how to get involved
• Practical ideas to make STEM and STEAM hands-on without adding workload

• Make Your Own Rainbow: A Colourful Approach to All Things STEAM by Leonie Briggs
• AmazeLab : www.amazelab.co.uk
• National Numeracy – information about becoming a National Numeracy Champion: www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk
• Previous Episode: Supporting Pupils with SEND in Maths with Georgina Durrant
• The Aftermaths (Friday episodes) – reflections, takeaways, and The Maths of Life segment:

Leonie Briggs is an award-winning educator, author and founder of AmazeLab, a science and STEAM education company that creates hands-on, practical learning experiences for schools. She has taught across primary, secondary and post-16 settings and is a passionate advocate for creative, accessible STEM education. Leonie is also a National Numeracy Champion, supporting initiatives to build confidence with numbers for learners of all ages.

Find Leonie on LinkedIn or visit www.amazelab.co.uk.

Jon Cripwell is the National Education Lead for Primary Maths at Twinkl. He works with schools, trusts, and maths hubs to support high-quality teaching and learning, and hosts The Primary Maths Podcast, exploring the big ideas and everyday realities of teaching maths in primary schools.

Follow Jon on LinkedIn.

Don’t miss future episodes. Subscribe to The Primary Maths Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We’d love to hear your stories from the maths classroom. Send them to [email protected], and you might hear them featured in an upcoming episode of The Aftermaths.

Welcome to the very first official edition of The Aftermaths, our new Friday format where Jon and Becky unpack the week’s big ideas, share some classroom-ready reflections, and go off on the occasional mathematical tangent.

This week, Jon starts with an unexpected sideline into baby growth charts after overhearing a throwaway comment at his daughter’s netball match. What exactly does it mean to be on the 90th centile for length at birth? Behind that neat statistic lies a story stretching from 19th-century statisticians to American infant studies, British research in the 1960s, and the World Health Organization’s huge international project in the early 2000s. We trace the surprising history of how babies came to be measured against global charts, and why these centiles have become such an everyday part of parenting.

From there, the conversation turns to language. Becky introduces her latest instalment of etymathsology with a dive into the Latin roots of those tricky mathematical terms we all know but sometimes muddle. Ever wondered why we talk about a minuend, a subtrahend, or a dividend? It turns out the endings are not arbitrary at all. They come from the Latin gerundive form, meaning “that which must be done.” Suddenly a minuend is “that which must be made smaller,” and the subtrahend is “that which must be subtracted.” With this lens, the technical vocabulary of calculation makes far more sense, and even offers a neat way of helping children understand which number is which in a subtraction or division.

Along the way, Jon and Becky share listener questions, practical classroom strategies, and plenty of reflections on maths talk, pupil confidence, and the value of experiences like Forest School in developing spatial reasoning. They discuss why not every activity needs to end in the classroom to have mathematical value, and how contextual experiences outside can quietly boost attainment inside.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• The surprisingly recent history of baby growth charts and why the WHO stepped in
• How understanding Latin roots makes calculation vocabulary far easier to grasp
• Practical strategies for supporting children who freeze when asked to explain their maths out loud
• A discussion on mixed groupings, flexible pairings and why seating plans can be a tool for inclusion as well as behaviour
• Why memorisation without understanding can catch children out in the long run

If you are new to The Aftermaths, think of it as the companion piece to our Tuesday interviews. On Fridays Jon and Becky step back, reflect on the week’s themes, and share classroom-ready insights for primary teachers, maths leads and anyone who wants to think more deeply about maths in everyday life.

As ever, we would love to hear your thoughts. Email us at [email protected] or drop a comment on YouTube.

Welcome to Episode 16 of The Primary Maths Podcast. This week is one of our shorter Friday editions, where instead of a full guest interview we pick up listener comments, share a little research, and reflect on the big themes from the week. Becky is away, so I am joined by Sally Cole for a lively conversation that takes us from tractors to spatial reasoning.

We start with some fun listener feedback on non-standard units of measurement. Michelle and Karen measure their runs in songs, Dave introduces us to the “Sheppey” (the distance at which sheep still look picturesque), and Eleanor points us towards the “Smoot” – the length of Oliver Smoot, immortalised when MIT students used him as a human ruler across Harvard Bridge in 1958. We talk about how these quirky measures still crop up in culture and what they reveal about the way we make sense of the world.

From there we move into more serious ground, exploring research from the Turner Kirk Centre for Spatial Reasoning in Glasgow. Their findings show that short, additional lessons in spatial reasoning can lead to significant improvements in maths, particularly for girls and disadvantaged pupils, and in some cases can close attainment gaps. We consider how activities like puzzles, junk modelling, Lego and outdoor play connect to these ideas, and how schools might bring more of the strengths of early years provision into Key Stage 1 and 2.

Finally, we reflect on this week’s interview with Tom Isherwood. Together we draw out practical strategies for teachers:

• Collaborative planning as professional development rather than everyday expectation.
• Dual coding with coloured pens to strengthen links between calculations and representations.
• Flipping “I do, we do, you do” to “you do, we do, I do” so pupils are led to discover ideas without leaving it to chance.
• Planning starters at the end of lesson design to ensure they connect directly to the key learning.

This is an episode that combines humour with substance, moving from measuring time in Bluey episodes to the serious potential of spatial reasoning, and finishing with classroom strategies you can try straight away.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with a colleague and leave a quick rating or review. You can get in touch with us at [email protected] (remember Twinkl is without an “e”), or leave a comment if you are listening on YouTube.

In this episode of The Primary Maths Podcast, host Jon Cripwell, Twinkl’s National Education Lead for Primary Maths, is joined by Georgina Durrant, Twinkl’s National Inclusion Lead. Georgina is a qualified teacher, former SENDCO, and author who has written widely on supporting learners with additional needs. She also hosts the SEND in the Experts podcast, speaks regularly at conferences, and has featured in national media outlets including The Guardian, The Telegraph, Sky News and BBC Five Live. Her work has been recognised with a Nasen Award for positive media impact.

Together, Jon and Georgina explore how we can make maths lessons more inclusive for every child. The conversation covers:

• Why maths anxiety can persist long after school years, and what this means for the way we teach
• The difference between memorising and understanding in mathematics, and why it matters for learners with SEND
• The challenges SENDCOs and teachers face, including funding, training and EHCP delays
• How maths leads and SENDCOs can work together more effectively to support staff and pupils
• Practical strategies for making lessons more accessible, from using manipulatives and visuals to framing language positively
• The importance of high expectations and recognising the “spiky profile” many learners have in maths
• The role of parents as experts in their children’s needs and how schools can learn from them

This episode is full of practical takeaways as well as bigger questions about what truly inclusive maths teaching looks like. Whether you are a classroom teacher, SENDCO, or maths lead, you will come away with ideas you can use straight away and insights that will spark reflection in your practice.

If you enjoy the show, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. Please share it with a colleague who would find it useful, and leave a quick rating or review on your podcast app to help us reach more listeners.

We would also love to hear from you. If you have a question about SEND or inclusive practice, email us at [email protected]

(that is Twinkl without an e), and Jon and Becky will address it in Friday’s episode. And if you have a funny or unusual maths classroom moment to share, send that in too – we love featuring your stories.

What happens when you’ve spent nearly two decades thinking hard about maths, taught in one school for most of your career, and then suddenly find yourself shaping maths teaching across more than 30 schools in a trust?

That’s exactly the journey my guest, Tom Isherwood, has been on. Tom is the Lead Practitioner for Maths at the Flying High Trust, as well as Assistant Maths Hub Lead with East Midlands West. In short, he’s seen it all: from lesson design in a single classroom to supporting schools through 20 Ofsted inspections in one year.

In this episode, Tom and I get stuck into:

• Why lesson design is about thinking not templates, and how planning one lesson for two hours can transform every lesson that follows
• The power of collaborative planning and why teachers clutch those “magic bean” lesson plans like gold dust
• How to balance consistency across a trust with giving teachers genuine autonomy
• Why the “I do, we do, you do” model makes Tom nervous (and what he suggests instead)
• The secret weapon of maths teaching that every school should invest in (hint: it’s not a new scheme of work)
• How to prepare for Ofsted without losing the soul of your maths curriculum
• And what it really means to be “up to something” as a maths leader

We also manage to squeeze in conversations about Shanghai exchanges, the joy of coloured pens, and why the number 27 is the most three-ish number of them all.

Whether you’re a classroom teacher, a maths lead, or a leader of leaders, this episode will give you practical insights, some healthy challenges to your current thinking, and a reminder of why lesson design matters more than any single scheme or structure.

Tune in, reflect, and maybe rethink your next maths lesson plan.

Get in touch: [email protected]

#twinklmaths

Welcome to Episode 14 of the Primary Maths Podcast. This week we’re joined by Lewis Horsley, who somehow manages to juggle teaching Year 2, leading maths and KS1, sitting on SLT, supporting ITT students, being a Primary Mastery Specialist with the East Midlands West Maths Hub, and facilitating the NPQLPM course… all while also completing his NPQH.

Lewis sat down with us to talk about the joys and challenges of teaching and leading maths in primary school. We cover:

• What makes maths lessons engaging for both pupils and teachers
• Why a noisy classroom can actually be a productive one and how purposeful talk builds mathematical thinking
• How collaborative planning can transform professional development for teachers, and Lewis’ top tips for making a session truly effective
• The importance of doing the maths yourself first and how it helps uncover misconceptions before pupils face them
• The four golden questions Lewis always comes back to when planning lessons (and why they work for every subject, not just maths)

We also get into why pupils need to hear that getting things wrong is not only inevitable but essential, how to avoid staff meetings where everyone is laminating instead of listening, and why “accidental teaching” is sometimes the most powerful kind.

Lewis has started sharing his thinking in a new blog series called Plan Maths, hosted by Derby Research School. You can find the first instalment here: Plan Maths – Derby Research School. Keep an eye out for part two coming soon.

As always, Becky and I unpack the key takeaways in our debrief after the interview. From purposeful talk to remembering the value of doing the maths yourself, there’s plenty here to spark reflection and maybe even change what you do in class tomorrow.

If you enjoy the show, don’t forget to follow or subscribe on your podcast app of choice, and share it with a colleague who loves (or maybe needs to love) maths as much as we do. You can also leave us a rating or a review — it really helps others to find the show.

And finally, we’d love to hear from you. What are your favourite non-standard units of measurement in everyday life? Drop us a message at [email protected] or in the YouTube comments.

#twinklmaths

In this episode of the Primary Maths Podcast, Jon and Becky are joined by a special guest to help tackle one of the perennial challenges in maths education: the transition from primary to secondary. Why does it so often feel like pupils are treading water in Year 7, revisiting content they’ve already covered? And how can schools work together to make that move a smoother, more purposeful step forward?

Jon is joined by his Twinkl colleague Pete Mattock: teacher, leader, prolific speaker, and author of Visible Maths, Conceptual Maths, and Leading Maths. As National Education Lead for Secondary Maths, Pete brings the secondary perspective on why the step into Key Stage 3 can be such a tricky one, and what practical steps could help bridge the gap.

We discuss:

• Why Year 7 often feels like a reset button and whether that’s always necessary
• The role of baseline tests, schemes of work, and different representations in fuelling the sense of “starting again”
• What stronger collaboration between primary and secondary teachers could look like in practice
• Why information should flow both ways between schools
• How the Key Stage 2 curriculum might need “thinning out” to ensure depth over coverage

As ever, Jon and Becky also bring you a Maths of Life detour: this time exploring the bizarre history of BBC maths sitcoms (yes, really), and imagining what a 2020s revival might look like, with a possible cameo for Carol Vorderman…

Whether you’re a Year 6 teacher preparing pupils for the big step, a subject leader writing action plans, or a secondary colleague wondering how best to build on Key Stage 2, this episode is packed with insights, challenges, and ideas to take forward.

To get in touch, contact us at [email protected]

In the final episode of our summer specials, Jon and Becky wrap up the holidays with a mix of puzzles, pop culture, and polygon talk.

Becky recounts her weekend at the Rubik’s Cube UK Championship, where maths hides in everything from official timing rules to the mysterious “God’s Number.” Jon takes us from the beach (counting grains of sand!) to the history of charity singles, comparing Band Aid’s millions in the 1980s with LadBaby’s record-breaking - yet surprisingly modest - fundraising totals.

We also launch a brand-new feature: Ety-math-ology. Becky digs into the origins of shape names like polygon, rhombus, and diamond, uncovering some surprising stories about the language of geometry and how it can trip us up in the classroom.

It’s been a fun run of summer specials, but from next week the Primary Maths Podcast returns to its usual format: interviews with experts in maths education. Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast with a colleague as the new term begins.

#twinklmaths