“Year 7 is not a settling in period. It is the first chapter of an ambitious story, and it should read like one.”
(Myatt, 2026)
Ambitious Maths Teaching for Year 7 Students
Do we set an ambitious tone with our first few maths lessons? Or is it simply a repeat of Primary school learning wrapped up in ‘fun’ activities?
Year 7 is not just a time of new possibilities, new knowledge and a different perspective for students. It is also a time for teachers to tell the story of mathematics.
As maths teachers of new Year 7 classes, we hold a unique opportunity to engage every single learner. From those students who are keen mathematicians, ready to embrace challenging mathematical concepts, to those students who dread maths lessons and have already repeatedly told themselves, “I am not a maths person.”
They all arrive to their new maths teacher with a preconceived idea of what is about to take place. Expectations of using algebra in their first lesson are a common theme among students. Some are keen to do something different, only to be disappointed by doing “more” column addition or subtraction, or even a recap of their times tables. Others are relieved that they are not about to make maths more confusing. And of course: “Are we going to do Times Tables Rock Stars?”
Some students have already decided that they are good at maths, others have decided they are not. We have an opportunity to surprise these students. An opportunity to engage every single student in our classroom, to reset their assumptions about maths.
We don’t often get the chance to give students something unexpected in maths.
Why waste this opportunity?
What Could This Look Like?
At the June ResearchED in Mildenhall, Dr Christine Counsell OBE gave the keynote speech on Harnessing the Power of Story. She made a compelling argument for making meaning through story and suggested that, by using story in Year 7, we could build on Primary structures to ease students into Secondary school.
This does not mean shying away from challenging concepts or mathematical vocabulary. By using story, we can build up the structures around challenging concepts and use mathematical terminology as standard, because without it the story loses its flow.
“When we teach through story, we offer students a structure for memory, emotion and understanding. A well-told story doesn’t just convey information. It builds schema and fosters empathy. It creates durable mental hooks that help knowledge stick and resurface when needed.” (Hickman, 2026)
So what if we began Year 7 with a story?
Not a story about a famous mathematician or a worksheet of rules. Not a recap of everything students have already studied.
What if we started with something they think they already know but have never been explicity taught? What if we start with nothing?
Once Upon a Time There Was Nothing?
One of the first topics taught in secondary mathematics is directed number. I have seen students move directly from -1 to 1, or from 1 to -1, as though zero simply doesn’t exist.
This isn’t simply a counting error…
Many students see zero as an empty space rather than as the point that separates positive and negative numbers. Without appreciating zero as the centre of the number system, calculations involving negative numbers become much harder to understand.
The same issue appears elsewhere. Older students often struggle to understand why any number multiplied by zero equals zero, why we can’t divide by zero, why anything to the power of zero is 1. While they can often recall the rule, they rarely understand the reasoning behind it. This, I believe, can often cause my problems when students go on to higher level maths.
Perhaps this is because zero is almost invisible in many of the mathematical representations we use earlier on in their maths journey.
In his recent article, Number: A Disinformation Timeline, published in AMiE Mathematics Teaching, Michael O’Duill argues that our teaching of number begins with the digits 1–9, effectively omitting zero as a number in its own right.
For many children, their first encounter with zero is in the number 10, where it is introduced simply as a placeholder within our place value system. He also suggests that our reliance on manipulatives to develop early number sense unintentionally reinforces this omission, as children manipulate quantities that exist rather than exploring the concept of having none.
Times tables usually begin at one. Hundred squares treat zero merely as part of 10, 20 or 30. Multiplication grids often omit it altogether.
We assume zero is obvious, when in reality it is one of the least explored concepts in the curriculum.
If students reach secondary school without a secure understanding of zero as a mathematical concept, they are more likely to see it as a collection of special rules rather than as a powerful idea that connects mathematical thinking.
This is exactly why Year 7 is the right time to stop and ask: What exactly is zero?
A Number That Changed Everything
Ironically, zero was not always considered a number.
The earliest number systems were designed for counting physical objects: sheep, coins or sacks of grain. If you had three sheep, you counted three sheep.
If you had none, there was simply nothing to count. There was no practical need to say, “I have zero sheep.” As mathematics developed, however, a placeholder became essential.
The ancient Babylonians, for example, used spaces within numbers to distinguish place value. Without a symbol for an empty place, it could be difficult to tell whether a number represented 26, 206 or 260. Eventually, a placeholder evolved into the concept we now recognise as zero.
The development of zero as a number took centuries and drew upon ideas from India, the Arab world and Europe. Historians often point to evidence of zero being used in India by the ninth century, where it appeared not only as a placeholder but also as a number in its own right. Its acceptance was not immediate.
During parts of medieval Europe, zero was viewed with suspicion and was even associated with the devil by some. Despite this resistance, zero eventually transformed mathematics forever. And this is where the story becomes interesting for our Year 7 students.
Because mathematics was not simply discovered by a handful of extraordinary geniuses. It was developed, challenged, adapted and shared by people across thousands of years and across different civilisations and cultures.
Mary Myatt, in KS3: The Ambitious Years – Why Years 7–9 Matter More Than We Think, argues for a Key Stage 3 curriculum that values equity and diversity:
“When pupils can see their own heritage, culture, and experience reflected in what is taught and treated as worth knowing, they are more likely to identify with academic learning.”
Mathematics is one of the world’s most diverse achievements. The ideas we teach have been developed over thousands of years by people from many different civilisations and cultures. Yet the history of mathematics often receives little attention beyond the occasional image of a famous mathematician.
By overlooking this rich story, we miss the opportunity to show students that mathematics is a living, evolving discipline. To show them that mathematics was not created by a handful of geniuses with extraordinary abilities, but developed by people from many different cultures and civilisations asking questions about the world around them
And we miss the opportunity to surprise them, as suddenly, zero is no longer just zero. It is a story.
From Rules to Meaning
This historical perspective can also strengthen conceptual understanding.
In Teaching Meaning, Christian Moore-Anderson writes:
“A misunderstanding isn’t due to faulty reasoning, but a difference in meaning.”
This observation is particularly relevant to the teaching of zero. When zero is presented merely as the exception, “you can’t divide by zero”, “anything multiplied by zero is zero”, students may remember the rules, but they are not helped to understand why those rules exist. This can impact on their future learning of maths. We tell them what zero does without helping them understand what zero is.
Year 7 offers the perfect opportunity to revisit this overlooked concept. Rather than assuming students already understand what zero is, we can deliberately rebuild students’ understanding of zero, connecting its history with its mathematical significance.
We can discuss why zero exists.
We can investigate its position on the number line.
We can explore what happens when we multiply by zero.
We can examine its role in place value, coordinates, algebra and equations.
And perhaps, most importantly, we can replace memorised exceptions with meaningful understanding that goes beyond the maths classroom.
The Golden Thread Through Maths…
Zero is far more than a digit.
It is the reference point for integers and coordinates. It defines the origin on graphs. It underpins place value. It is central to algebra, equations and functions. It appears throughout probability, statistics and calculus.
Rather than being an exception, zero is a golden thread that connects mathematical ideas across the curriculum. This is where the story of zero can become something much bigger than a lesson about number. It is almost like giving students a UV light that exposes the mathematics hiding in places they hadn’t noticed before.
- Why don’t we have negative years in history?
- What does BC and AD actually mean mathematically?
- Why was the year 2000 the 21st century and not the 20th?
- How old was a person who was born in 19 BC and died in 46 AD?
- Why is zero referred to as nil in some sports but love in others?
- Why does 0° mean different things? 0° kelvin and 0°C?
- In computing and electronics, the binary system relies on just two digits: 0 and 1, representing off and on.
- In geography, the Equator marks 0° latitude, while the Prime Meridian marks 0° longitude. Their intersection is affectionately known as “Null Island” — a fictional location used by mapping systems to represent coordinates at (0, 0).
Students encounter zero across many subjects, often without recognising the common idea that links them together. This is the golden thread.
The Never-Ending Story
Perhaps this is what we should be aiming for in Year 7. Not simply preparing students for the next topic, establishing routines, or checking whether they can remember the mathematics they learned in Primary school.
Instead we can begin a story. A story that shows them that mathematics is bigger than the classroom, that the ideas they are about to learn have histories, characters, conflicts, discoveries and consequences, that allows them to see mathematics in history, science, geography, computing, art and the world around them.
If we can get this right, perhaps students will never really leave the maths classroom. We can give them the tools, knowledge and story that illuminate the mathematics in everything they encounter.
And perhaps this is what ambitious Year 7 mathematics should look like.
Mary Myatt’s words keep coming back to me:
“Year 7 is not a settling in period. It is the first chapter of an ambitious story, and it should read like one.”
So why not make the first chapter unexpected?
Why not begin with zero?
Bibliography
Hickman, S. M., 2025. The Role of Storytelling in Education’s Hinterland. [Online]
Available at: https://theunconsciouscurriculum.com/2025/05/09/the-role-of-storytelling-in-educations-hinterland/
[Accessed 21 Aug 2026].
Moore-Anderson, C., 2026. Teaching Meaning. s.l.:s.n.
Myatt, M., 2026. KS3 The Ambitious Years. s.l.:Mary Myatt Learning Limited.
O’Duill, M., 2026. Number: A Disinformation Timeline. [Online]
Available at: https://atm.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Journals/MT300/16.pdf
[Accessed 21 08 2026].
Zafar, H., 2026. Providing Context to the Maths We Teach. [Online]
Available at: https://harryzafar.substack.com/p/providing-context-to-the-maths-we?r=sdg3g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
[Accessed 21 Aug 2026].
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