play. This provides positive opportunities for children to use marks in the context of
their play. When we carried out this research, in England role-play was rarely found
in classrooms with children beyond the age of 5. This effectively ruled out the use
of blank paper within any play situations for children once they move into their
second year in school. However, this may now be changing since the introduction
of the materials in Continuing the Learning Journey (QCA, 2005) which supports a
play-based curriculum for children up to the age of seven years of age.
In only 6 per cent of examples of mathematics on blank paper did teachers refer to
children ‘making their own marks’; using ‘emergent writing’; using paper ‘in their own
way’ or making ‘jottings’. This paints a disappointing picture, especially since most of
these teachers used worksheets for a greater part of the time. Blank paper appeared
therefore to be viewed as an extra to the teachers’ usual activities or for occasional use.
We wondered what happened to the pieces of paper on which the children made
their own marks. In our own teaching we have found that these pieces provide
invaluable information that helps us assess, support and extend children’s learning
and build a constantly unfolding picture of their development. We explored addi-
tional questions through telephone interviews with a sample of the teachers in this
study. When asked, 77 per cent of the teachers said that the children took home
what they had done and several replied that they did not keep them. Of the 6 per
cent of teachers interviewed who did occasionally use blank paper, less than a
quarter kept examples with children’s marks: these were used for the school records
and only a sample of what the children had done was saved. Blank paper was more
likely to be used occasionally and therefore its use was of a different status to work-
sheets. The marks children made on paper during their play, for example, were gen-
erally not saved by teachers, suggesting that these marks were not seen as significant
in contributing to the children’s developing understanding. In mathematics it
appears that a widely held view is that children’s mathematics on paper is significant
only when it is the outcome of a teacher-directed activity.
These findings point to written mathematics that is largely on worksheets or fol-
lowing the direction of the teacher. Furthermore, we believe that it must be almost
impossible to trace children’s development unless a comprehensive, dated collection
of pieces is kept. It ispossible to do this but clearly it is rarely done. In our work in
visiting many Early Years settings we also seldom see examples of children’s own
mathematical marks displayed.Teachers’ difficulties
One of the problems teachers face is that young children’s own mathematical think-
ing on paper is not always easy to decipher. It is quite easy to disregard children’s
mathematics on paper as incomprehensible or poor (Litherand, 1997). Even when
children explain their thinking it still can present teachers with dilemmas because it
may look wrong, or appear untidy. They may have crossed out things or chosen not
to use the standard procedures. Teachers may feel that it takes too long to ask the
child about it since it takes time to tune into children’s thinking.82 Children’s Mathematics8657part 1b.qxd 04/07/2006 18:12 Page 82