Mathematics teaches us how to make sense of the world around us through developing a child’s ability to calculate, to reason and to solve problems. It enables children to understand and appreciate relationships and pattern in both number and space in their everyday lives. Through their growing knowledge and understanding, children learn to appreciate the contribution made by many cultures to the development and application of mathematics.
The school delivers the 'Mastery Maths' approach which involves working with the Maths No Problem scheme of work in correlation with: White Rose Maths and any resources that will be useful to achieve the desired outcome. In a typical lesson pupils sit facing the teacher and the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion. Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem because each supports the development of the other. It is recognised that practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice used is intelligent practice that both reinforces pupils’ procedural fluency and develops their conceptual understanding.
Significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning. The structure and connections within the mathematics are emphasised, so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained. Key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are learnt to automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and enable pupils to focus on new concepts.
Our principal aim is to develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding in mathematics. We do this through a daily lesson that has a high proportion of whole-class and group-direct teaching. During these lessons we encourage children to ask as well as answer mathematical questions. They have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources such as number lines, number squares, digit cards and small apparatus to support their work. Wherever possible, we encourage the children to use and apply their learning in everyday situations.
In all classes there are children of differing mathematical ability. We recognise this fact and provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a range of strategies – in some lessons through differentiated questioning, and in other lessons by organising the children to work in pairs on open-ended problems or games.
In KS1, lesson design includes a break before independent practise to allow children to process new information. This may be split across a break, assembly or next day. Whereas KS2 will complete the session when timetabled in.
Daily intervention allows for the slower graspers to keep up with the class, and prevent gaps from occurring. Rapid graspers are challenged through greater depth, not acceleration.
Journals are used to further enhance the children’s learning from the lesson. There are five different types of journals: descriptive, evaluative, creative, formative and investigative. Usually the teacher will produce the title but sometimes children may be asked to think of a title which can be used for assessment. At first, children are encouraged to use everyday language but as their understanding deepens they will be asked to use mathematical language. Diagrams are also encouraged whenever possible.