Every day, people embark on the journey of returning to work. It is an experience that can be both exciting and a little overwhelming. If you are unsure about where to begin, here are some tips to help you navigate the transition with confidence.

Update your application form and online profiles

Take time to update to refresh your application form with any new skills or experiences you have gained during your career break. Update your LinkedIn profile and consider adding a brief explanation in your work history about your career break – being open and positive about it can demonstrate honesty and resilience.

Identify your strengths and goals

Reflect on your previous work experience and think about what you enjoyed the most. Could this be a chance to try something new? Being clear on your strengths and what you want from your next role will give you direction and confidence as you search and apply for jobs.

Don’t underestimate your transferable skills

When identifying your skills, do not forget any skills you have developed during your career break, these can be just as valuable as those gained in the workplace. Time management, problem-solving, communication, organisation, and adaptability are all examples of transferrable skills that employers value. Be sure to emphasise these on your applications and in your interviews, evidencing how they can apply to the role you are applying for.

Refresh your skills

We have just discussed the importance of transferrable skills, but it is also a great idea to refresh your skills. The workplace may have changed during the time you were away and there are many free or low-cost online courses available. recent training can demonstrate that you have been proactive about learning and upskilling yourself which can really strengthen your application. You’ll find a wide range of courses available on both HFL Education Hub Shop and Step2Skills Home. 

Reconnect with your network

Reach out to former colleagues, friends and contacts to let them know you are looking to get back into work. They may know of opportunities or be able to offer valuable advice and support. If you are returning after a break to look after young children, their school and /or nursery may be just the place to start! Networking events and online groups can be a great place to reconnect. Re-entering the workforce can feel intimidating, but having a good network around you for support and guidance can help!

Consider volunteering for experience

Volunteering can be an excellent way to gain new skills, build your confidence and expand your network. It also demonstrates your commitment and proactive attitude to potential employers. Whether it is a few hours a week or a more regular commitment, volunteering can help bridge the gap in your CV and lead to future job opportunities.

Prepare for interviews

If you're going to your first interview in a long time, preparation is the key to feeling ready! Be prepared to talk about your career break confidently and positively. Practice answering common interview questions with a friend or family member, someone who can help put you at ease. Have your own questions ready too.

On the day of the interview, aim to arrive early, stay calm and listen carefully to each question before responding.

Best of luck!

Many pupils find fractions, decimals, and percentages daunting, often perceiving them as complex and anxiety-inducing topics. However, with the right tools and models, and a positive attitude, these concepts can be simplified and effectively taught in maths lessons, enhancing pupil understanding and making connections across different areas of maths.

A beadstring is a visual and tactile tool, perfect for introducing and exploring percentages in upper key stage 2 and beyond.

If you are new to using beadstrings, it would be worthwhile reading the Step-by-step guide to using the 0-100 bead string from Year 1 to Year 6.

Teaching percentages with beadstrings

Simply put, a percent is a way of expressing a number as a fraction of 100 and so 0-100 beadstrings are great manipulatives to use in maths lessons when exploring percentages.

If the whole beadstring represents 100% (100 beads = all the beads in the whole), then each bead represents 1% (1 out of 100 equal parts). 

Connecting fractions and percentages with beadstrings

The beadstring can be used to draw out relationships with familiar fractions, visually linking them to percentages.

For example, the beadsting can be divided into 2 halves to connect:

• 50 out of 100
• 50/100
• 1/2
• 50%

Connections between benchmark fractions and percentages may also include:

• 1/10 and 10%
• 1/4 and 25%
• 3/4 and 75%

Understanding these relationships will enable pupils to visualise the proportional comparison when calculating percentages of amounts.

How to use beadstrings to link fractions, decimals and percentages

Beadstrings can be an excellent tool for linking fractions, decimals, and percentages, helping pupils to grasp these concepts more clearly. By incorporating decimals into these representations, we can further reinforce pupils' understanding of decimal fractions.

Using a speaking frame can aid this process by offering a structured approach for pupils to express their thoughts and reasoning, thereby enhancing their comprehension and confidence in maths lessons.

Calculating percentages of amounts with beadstrings

Once pupils understand that a percent represents a part of 100, the next step is to apply this knowledge to finding percentages of amounts where the whole is a different number. It's important to emphasise the connection between fractions and percentages, as pupils will have prior experience with finding fractions of an amount.

The images above demonstrate how to find 50% of 400 by understanding that 50% is the same as one-half, and half of 400 is 200.

Using this model, we can also determine what each bead represents by considering the relationship between the whole and the number of parts. If the whole is 400 and there are 100 equal parts, each bead represents 4.

This model and speaking frame can be used to find 50% of other numbers and adapted to calculate different percentages, such as 25% of 400, 10% of 400, or 20% of 400. 

Teaching efficient strategies using the beadstring

This model can be revisited for finding more challenging percentages of amounts. Different strategies can be explored, encouraging pupils to use their known and familiar facts.

For example, to find 27% of 300:

• Use knowledge of finding 25% and 1% (and use 1% to find 2%)
• Or, find 10% (and double this to find 20%), 5% (by halving 10%), and 1% (and then double)

This approach helps pupils regroup percentages using strategies they are comfortable with.

Rehearsal opportunities

Regular use of practice scaffolds supports pupil understanding by providing a structured approach to translating between different models and here, making links to multiplication and division. This helps pupils build confidence and develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.

Practice scaffolds also allow pupils to make connections between different strategies and apply their knowledge in various contexts.

In the example scaffold below, the story is used as the starting point and then connections drawn from there.

Alternatively, the information originally provided could be the calculation, or the bar model, or even the ‘calculate it’ section. Starting points could be varied across the class depending on the children’s confidence with the concept.

When could rehearsal take place?

• Early morning maths warm-up: Start the day with a quick practice session using beadstrings to find percentages of different amounts.
• Maths lessons: Integrate scaffolded practice into your main teaching activities, allowing pupils to apply new strategies in a guided setting.
• Independent practice: Provide scaffolded worksheets for pupils to complete independently, reinforcing the strategies learned during lessons.
• Group work: Encourage pupils to work in pairs or small groups to solve percentage problems using beadstrings, discussing their strategies and reasoning.

To read more about practice scaffolds: Making times tables stick: how to use a practice scaffold for learning multiplication facts

How to solve The 1% Club’s ‘1% question’ using a beadstring

Before Christmas, I watched an episode of the 1% Club on ITV with my family. This quiz show features increasingly difficult questions, culminating in the 1% question, which only 1% of the people originally asked answered correctly.

Spoiler alert: I’m sharing the 1% question from this episode because it brilliantly illustrates how a beadstring can reveal the mathematical structure behind the answer.

When solving it, I visualised and manipulated the beadstring model in my head!

The question: In a room of 100 people, 99% are left-handed. How many left-handed people need to leave to reduce that percentage to 98%?

Before reading on, try:

• Using a beadstring to solve the problem.
• Using a beadstring to prove your answer if you solved it differently.

Finding the solution to this percentage question on a beadstring

We know that there are 100 people in the room and 99% are left-handed.

 Now what if the percentage of left-handed people changes to 98%? 

If we stick to each bead representing 1 person, there would now be 98 left-handed people. However, this would also mean that there are now 2 right-handed people.

The question asks how many left-handed people leave the room. It doesn’t say any right-handed people enter. 

We know there is 1 right-handed person. If 98% of people are left-handed, this must mean that 2% are right-handed.

2 out of 100 beads represents the 1 right-handed person so each group of 2 beads on our beadstring must now represent 1 person.

If each group of 2 beads represents 1 person, we must put the remaining 98 beads into groups of 2.

This makes 49 equal groups, meaning there must be 49 left-handed people still in the room.

At first, there were 99 left-handed people (99% of the original total) and now there are 49 left-handed people (98% of the new total).

This must mean that 50 left-handed people left the room.

Year 6 teachers, this could be a great scenario to present to your classes! We would love to hear how they get on.

Please share your experiences with us at laura.dell@hfleducation.org or on X @hertsmaths.

Are you looking to enhance the way your primary school pupils learn and engage with mathematics? Our dedicated primary maths teaching and learning advisory team is here for you.

As the English leader in a primary school, few things excite me more than the arrival of a fresh batch of new books. Adding the school stamp and handing them over to each teacher, knowing the joy and learning they’ll inspire, feels like giving a truly meaningful gift. This feeling is even more rewarding when the books are as diverse, high-quality, and thoughtfully chosen as those from the English team at HFL Education – books referred to in ESSENTIALWRITING, the writing scheme we introduced this year. 

Top 5 wins:

1. Thought provoking and attention-grabbing texts
2. CPD incorporated
3. Reduced workload
4. Models for writing included
5. Pupils writing for a clear and meaningful purpose

For us, one of the most exciting and welcome aspects of ESSENTIALWRITING is the increased focus on representation and diversity in the carefully selected texts. These books do more than teach English. Not only do they serve as high-quality models of language and imagery, but they also broaden our pupils' understanding of the world, immersing them in diverse settings and perspectives through a wide range of characters and experiences. This deep engagement becomes the foundation for great writing, helping children develop an authentic voice as they truly connect with the texts. We want our pupils to encounter role models and protagonists they can relate to; stories that serve as both mirrors reflecting their own experiences, and windows into different perspectives. The literature chosen within ESSENTIALWRITING achieves this beautifully, at the same time as providing excellent models for the craft of writing that everyone can access. 

Many of the books are thoughtfully linked to key areas of the curriculum. For example, in Year 4, the texts India, Incredible India and Africa, Amazing Africa explore the rich and diverse cultures of India and various countries across Africa, challenging common stereotypes about these vast and varied continents. These are studied alongside Take a Bite, a delightful book that delves into food, recipes, and cultural traditions from 26 different countries, offering pupils an engaging and global perspective. Other books link to map reading, historical figures and growing plants, for example.

As subject leader, I am grateful for the subject knowledge teachers are gaining from using ESSENTIALWRITING. Teachers at Highover, both new to the profession and experienced, have found that using the planning is CPD in itself. I booked my team onto the ESSENTIALWRITING webinars so I could ensure consistency of approach across classrooms which aids progression and transition across year groups. 

The unit plans are detailed and clear which reduces workload for our teachers at Highover. They take the teacher through steps (rather than lessons) which build towards a final piece of writing with a clear purpose, for example to entertain or to inform. The steps ensure that teachers can move at their pupils’ pace, which removes the temptation to plough on without ensuring depth of understanding or stopping for consolidation as required.  

This supports Ofsted’s findings from the Strong Foundations research, recommending that schools should:

‘Make sure that the curriculum clearly identifies the foundational knowledge and skills that children will need for later learning’ and that we must ‘give children sufficient high-quality opportunities to practise using foundational knowledge and skills so that they become fluent.’

Another particularly popular aspect for our team is the annotated written models which teachers can use when modelling writing, as well as the ‘think out loud’ bubbles which help you model the writing thought process. 

HFL Education has designed the plans with a focus on writing for a purpose such as ‘to persuade’ or ‘to entertain’. This means our children are thinking more about the effect they want to have on their audience and less about features of a specific genre which can often lead to tick-lists of success criteria. Persuasive speeches and letters always get the children fired up to write with a great sense of purpose and authority. 

For example, the Year 6 unit which uses the text Talking History, inspires children to write a speech about something they are passionate about, from banning social media to reducing traffic on the roads. Our Year 6 pupils performed their speeches as part of a BBC-television-show-inspired Room 101 game show with their parents as the audience. A judge decided which speech was the most persuasive and therefore what would be sent to Room 101. (In this case, macaroni cheese won against spiders, traffic jams and loud noises!)   

In Year 3, Stella and the Seagull evokes children’s understanding of the impact of plastic waste and their passion to do something about the problem. Our Year 3 pupils wrote and sent letters to the prime minister to explain the problem and implore them to make changes. With texts as engaging as this, pupils realise that the purpose of their writing is to share their voice - we can teach language choices that are linked to their own interests. 

At Highover, we moved away from providing a ‘list’ of success criteria for writing a while ago. I We found the approach to be very limiting. It takes away the creativity, encouraging a ‘writing by numbers’ approach. We were inspired by James Durran’s ‘boxed’ success criteria. As soon as we started using these, we found it had an impact on the quality of what pupils produced. The ‘boxed’ layout helped children focus on the  intended impact on the reader and gave them space to collect ideas and examples to include in their writing.  ESSENTIALWRITING plans have developed this idea further by creating ‘pyramid’ criteria which we are now using in all year groups. Here is an example from the Year 6 narrative unit Night of the Gargoyles:  

We view oracy as a key skill for our pupils. At Highover, we believe good talkers make good writers. We want our pupils to be confident to go out into the wider world and present their ideas and articulate their opinions confidently. The ESSENTIALWRITING text choices are excellent prompts for oracy discussions around topics ranging from friendship, gender stereotyping, feeling left out, discrimination and environmental changes to the views inspired by famous historical figures such as Martin Luther King and Greta Thunberg. Children find these topics relevant and relatable and can’t help but become immersed in discussions based on them. Thankfully, ESSENTIALWRITING incorporates oracy into the planning so that we can weave it naturally into the writing process for each unit. This leads to writers who are engaged and motivated.  

With thanks to Sophie Driver and her colleagues and pupils at Highover JMI School in Hitchin for so generously sharing their reflections on the implementation of ESSENTIALWRITING in their school this year. How wonderful to see such brilliant writing! Keep an eye out in the summer term for part 2 of this blog, where Sophie dives into the school’s writing for pleasure journey. 

If you are interested in finding out more about ESSENTIALWRITING – and how you can develop both children’s and teachers’ knowledge, motivation and confidence in the craft of writing - then do read more.