Making space for geometry in primary mathematics

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Description/Abstract

This chapter examines the structure and recommendations of the UK National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) with respect to the teaching of geometry at primary school. It looks at ways in which the NNS recommendations might be best taken forward and whether there are important aspects of geometry that the Strategy has omitted or to which it has paid too little attention. It suggests that until spatial and visual thinking is given greater status within the mental and oral segments of primary mathematics lessons, and until more curriculum space at primary level is devoted to geometry, children may well continue to have insufficient opportunity to develop fundamental visualisation and spatial reasoning skills that are so important in an increasingly visual world.