Nursery World - Company profile (5)

BEAM (which simply stands for Be A Mathematician) was set up in 1987 as part of the Inner London Education Authority large maths group. Its aim was to produce resources that would complement the training given by maths advisers in the authority. When ILEA ceased to exist the Borough of Islington agreed to fund BEAM for a while on the understanding that it would eventually become self-funding. Sheila Ebbutt, who had worked as an ILEA primary mathematics adviser for ten years, was appointed managing director when BEAM became an independent company in 1990. She directs all aspects of BEAM's activities, which include writing and running courses, acting as a maths consultancy, publishing books and other teaching material and, latterly, producing CD-ROMs. She is also a member of the Early Years Maths Group which was set up as a pressure group to try to prevent maths teaching becoming too formalised at the early stages. The intention, as BEAM proclaims, is to make mathematics 'fun, creative and fascinating'. 'We feel almost evangelical,' Sheila says. 'Our aim is to improve teaching techniques and to get the very best resources. There is a proliferation of teaching materials nowadays - publishing is so much easier and we all have computers. But so much of the material is not well written or thought out, because it has not been tried out with either teachers or children.'

Sheila Ebbutt, who had worked as an ILEA primary mathematics adviser for ten years, was appointed managing director when BEAM became an independent company in 1990. She directs all aspects of BEAM's activities, which include writing and running courses, acting as a maths consultancy, publishing books and other teaching material and, latterly, producing CD-ROMs. She is also a member of the Early Years Maths Group which was set up as a pressure group to try to prevent maths teaching becoming too formalised at the early stages. The intention, as BEAM proclaims, is to make mathematics 'fun, creative and fascinating'. 'We feel almost evangelical,' Sheila says. 'Our aim is to improve teaching techniques and to get the very best resources. There is a proliferation of teaching materials nowadays - publishing is so much easier and we all have computers. But so much of the material is not well written or thought out, because it has not been tried out with either teachers or children.'

The team that Sheila heads includes five teachers, three of whom have been maths advisors, but BEAM does not rely only on their expertise when working on new products. Everything is thoroughly trialled in schools before being given the go ahead. It tries to make all its material accessible so that it is also suitable for use by non-teaching staff.

The BEAM approach is to use familiar playthings to encourage numeracy skills in the early years. For example, its Big Outdoor Maths Box (225) is a large wheely box, full of equipment for multi-activities and includes balls, quoits, beanbags, jumbo dice and number tiles.

Animated Stories for Young Mathematicians (57.50), which was reviewed favourably in the last issue of Nursery Equipment (see page 25), features a large illustrated book of stories accompanied by six soft toy characters to help the children act out the stories. We will see more of these characters on an Animated Stories CD-ROM which is being developed.

BEAM has identified a need for more CD-ROMs for use with whiteboards so this will be an area of growth in the next few years.

The company is also proud of its Hands-On Number Bonds which were launched last month. These are designed specifically for nursery and reception children and feature counting activities set in contexts which are appealing to children. The activities include people getting on and off a bus, apples growing on a tree and a playful kitten. There are two sets of Hands-on Number Bonds, priced 59.50 for the pair.

'We still live in a culture that is not maths friendly,' says Sheila.

However, with resources such as those supplied by BEAM there's every hope that the next generation will turn out to be more enthusiastic.

Telephone orderline: 01242 267945, publishing and training: 0207 684 3323, www.beam.co.uk