Getting Started
Count on Us Guides
Before running the Count On Us programme in your school, you will have attended a teacher training session and drop-in on running in-school tournaments. Training slides will be made available here after the session.
During the training session, we will take you through your Count On Us resource kit, the activity rounds, the teacher handbook and pupil workbook and how to make the most of this online Resource Area. After completing the training, we want to make sure that you are excited about the programme and understand what you need to do to practise and prepare for the Count on Us Challenge.
Below you will find links to Count on Us guides and resources for both teachers and students. These will be important for running the programme in your school, so please remember to download and make good use of them.
- Guidance for Schools: detailed guidance on running the Count on Us Challenge in your school, including support on how to extend the activities to all Key Stage 3 students and across the school. It also explains how to run your own in-school tournament and contains all of the materials you will need to do this. Note that you will need to get started organising this as your very first action!
- Student Workbook: explains the tournament activities to students and contains a large collection of activities designed to help students with their catch-up work and add to their knowledge and skills in Key Stage 3 mathematics.
- Teacher Slides: this is the presentation from the training session. It covers similar ground to the Guidance for Schools, but is a useful reminder and includes a short practice Algebra round. The activity sheets for this are also here to download in the Round 4: Algebra section below.
Rounds
Prepare your students for Hedgehog, Count on Us Shut-the-Box and Data-Chart-Analysis:
- Watch the videos to show you how to play Two Dice Hedgehog and COU Shut-the-Box.
- Follow the instructions and guidance on these pages.
- Play the game of Two Dice Hedgehog with the dice supplied. Play the game in clubs and class and get your students to discuss their strategies.
- Play the Game of COU Shut-the-Box in clubs and class playing one versus one to become familiar with the rules. Then play in teams to practice tournament play. Use the cut out version in the Student Guide to make sets for classroom use.
- Print, cut out and make sets of one of the Data-Chart-Analysis practice card sets (link below). Start with the sets used in the heats and build up to the harder sets used in the finals. Get your students to complete the task and check the answers on the last page of the card set.
Prepare your students for GridLines Geometry:
- Watch the training video.
- Follow the instructions and guidance on these pages.
- Start using Level 0 and then Level 1 cards as lesson starters. Give your students opportunities to find any solutions to cards without using the number cards.
- Become familiar with the rules of the full GridLines game and play with number cards.
- Download the GridLines Geometry software and use it in class and clubs or share it with your students.
Prepare your students for the Target Maths:
- Follow the instructions and guidance on these pages.
- Explain the Target Maths rules to all of your classes and start using cards and the software as lesson starters.
- Encourage your students to play on their own and move on to competitive play.
- Download the Target Maths software and use it in class and clubs or share it with your students.
Prepare your students for Algebraic Problem Solving:
- Follow the instructions and guidance on these pages.
- Make sure that your students are able to solve algebra problems of all types in the Key Stage 3 syllabus (or as many as possible!) Notably, they will need to be able to draw and read from straight line graphs.
- Set up a practice algebra round using the materials from one of the previous year’s Heats (in the downloads section). There are three sets to work through.
- Now you are ready to set up a practice algebra round from a previous year’s Final. You may be surprised by how hard the algebra rounds used in finals are, however, the students who compete are ready and do amazingly well. (In the downloads section.)