EYFS & Year 1 ten frames CPD
EYFS maths training: half a day on ten frames. Nothing else.
Our EYFS maths training is a hands-on half day for the people who teach four- to six-year-olds, on ten frames, the one representation that everything else is built on. It is not a whole-school session with an EYFS bit bolted on.
That's 7 — five and two more.
Tap the frame. This is the first thing we hand teachers, and the first thing they hand children.
Why ten frames
Children stop countingand start seeing.
Ten frames help children see a number as a structure instead of counting it one by one. A child who counts to seven every time is doing seven pieces of work. A child who sees five and two is doing one.That difference is the whole point.
Six is five and one
The top row is always full first. Children learn the structure of the frame before they learn the number, so six stops being a word they recite.
Eight is two away from ten
The empty cells are as informative as the full ones. Number bonds to ten stop being a fact to memorise and become something visible.
5 and 3 make 8!
Two rows of three
The same frame shows equal groups long before anyone says multiplication — and it is the same picture the bar model uses later.
The half day
Everyone has countersin their hands.
The half day is a hands-on workshop. Teachers work every task as their children would, then talk about what went wrong and why.There is no slide deck to sit through. Half the session is about the four questions below — the ones that turn an activity into assessment.
Fill it, hide it, say it
Build a number, cover the frame, and describe what is underneath. The first step away from counting one by one.
Counters, a frame each, a cloth
How many more to ten?
The empty cells do the teaching. Teachers practise the questions that make a child look at the gap rather than recount the counters.
One frame, two colours of counter
Two frames, one story
Comparing without counting — who has more, and how do we know by looking? This is the first bar model, without the bar.
Two frames side by side
Breaking the number apart
Seven as five and two, or four and three, or six and one — the same quantity, arranged differently. Part-part-whole starts here.
Counters and a sorting mat
Beyond ten
A second frame appears, and teen numbers stop being a spelling problem. Ten and three, not "thirteen".
Two frames per pair
Games that need no printing
The five-minute activities that fit in a carpet session, a transition, or the last ten minutes of a Friday.
Dice, counters, nothing laminated
How do you know that’s eight?
Turns a right answer into an explanation. The child has to point at the structure rather than recite the number.
How else do you know?
There is always a second way to see it — five and three, or two away from ten. This is the question that builds flexibility.
What can you see now?
Asked after one counter moves. It stops the recount and makes the child look at what actually changed.
What stayed the same, and what changed?
The one that quietly builds conservation of number, and later, place value.
What happens next
One afternoon,then a whole year of it.
The half day is one step in a year-long routine. What matters is what your team do with it in the weeks afterwards — and what that looks like in the children by July.
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Before
Counting every time, and no new ideas to try
Children recount from one whenever the question changes, and the team have run out of activities that move anyone on.Everyone is working hard and it isn't landing.
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The half day
The EYFS training session
Half a day, counters in hand, working the six tasks as the children would.Everyone leaves with the same routine and the same language.
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The following weeks
The team practise it until it is a routine
Five minutes on the carpet, in a transition, at the end of the day. It stops being an activity someone plans and becomes something the room just does.
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First half term
Children learn to read the frame
They fill the top row first without being told, and start describing what they see rather than counting it.
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Through the year
Number sense you can hear
“That's seven, because it's five and two.” It shows up in questioning and informal assessment long before it shows up in any book.You can hear it happening.
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End of the year
A secure grasp of number to 20 — and the start of place value
Reception children who can hold numbers to twenty confidently, and who have met the idea of ten as a unit before Year 1 formally asks them to.Ahead of where the curriculum expects them.
The practical bit
Two ways to do it, andwhat each one costs.
You can take this ten frames training in your setting for £599 or online for £399 a year. Same material either way: one is half a day in your setting with the counters on the table; the other is the whole thing on video, for everybody, all year.
Then
Part-part-whole, with the frame still visible
Then
The first drawn bars in Year 1 and 2
Eventually
The same picture, holding x, at twelve
Online, all year
399
a yearwhole school
Through the whole-school membership. The EYFS Ten Frames Course on video, and every teacher you employ can watch it — no cover, no date to find.
✓The EYFS Ten Frames Course — 65 lessons across six chapters
✓Every teacher and TA on your staff list, unlimited
✓Watch the lesson the night before you teach it
✓September starters included automatically
✓Covers Years 1 to 6 as well, not only EYFS
What's included →Face-to-face half day
599
in your settingwhole EYFS team
In your setting, with counters in hand. Booked on its own — this is the face-to-face session, not the video course.
✓Six hands-on tasks, worked by every teacher
✓Printables for every task, to take away
✓The EYFS Ten Frames Course on video afterwards
✓Nursery staff and TAs included
Ask about a date →Book the half day and the video course comes with it anyway.The two are not alternatives so much as the same training, twice.
Our clients
Schools and organisationswe’ve supported.
A few of the schools and organisations we have trained, consulted for, or built resources, teacher guides and videos with.
