Cashes Green Primary School and Children's Centre

Maths

We teach Mathematics using the mastery approach. This means making sure all children have the opportunity to learn, secure and really understand the age-related expectations for their year group. By changing the format of our maths lessons, we believe all children will have a better grasp of key skills as they will be given time to consolidate skills as well as doing reasoning and problem solving in every lesson. Further to this, by not pre-assigning children to differentiated tasks all children will be given the opportunity to reach the age-related expectations of the 2014 National Curriculum for maths.

Maths Overview

Aims of the curriculum

We aim to teach for deep and secure understanding for all pupils in our school, through a range of tasks which develop children’s skills in line with the aims of the National Curriculum; fluency, reasoning and solving problems.

The work is delivered through whole class lessons which are carefully planned to help develop children’s mathematical understanding. Key concepts of number and place value, calculating, fractions, geometry, statistics and space are broken into small steps to ensure all children are able to access the learning. Children are challenged appropriately through rich, deep tasks which encourage them to think deeply, reason mathematically and apply their understanding in a range of contexts.

Teachers use a range of resources when teaching and try where possible, to introduce new topics with appropriate concrete and visual resources. These enable children to gain a deep understanding of the mathematical concept so that the learning is sustainable over time. This allows children to build new learning upon prior knowledge whilst always striving to consolidate those key skills they have already learned.

As part of the daily Mathematics lessons, the children receive daily basic skills sessions. These sessions provide an opportunity for practising key number and arithmetic skills. The sessions are taught and focused, encouraging children to make connections, see patterns, build their arithmetical fluency. Tasks will be differentiated to pupils’ skills and knowledge. (see lesson structure below)

Lesson Structure

The lesson will involve 3 main parts – A Basic skills starter (either at the same time or at a different part of the day), a main lesson and a short plenary.

Basic Skills Starter will be a minimum of 15 minutes and will focus on practise/ learning basic number facts relevant to the year group or reinforcing previous learning that children need to help them in future lessons. These will involve differentiated activities for the children based on their individual skills. In reception, Year 1 and 2 this will follow the NCETM matering number programme. (https://www.ncetm.org.uk/news/mastering-number-a-new-programme-for-early-primary-pupils/)

The Main lesson will involve 10/15 minutes of whole class teaching where all the children look at one key idea – Following the White Rose Maths planning https://whiterosemaths.com/resources/primary-resources/primary-sols/

Then there will be activities for the children to complete based on the whole class teaching.

Secure it – Will be the children’s chance to work on the key skill that we have been working on (maximum of 8 questions). Everybody starts on this bit. There should be elements of problem solving and reasoning activities in secure it tasks (Word problems as a minimum) for some of the lessons in a block. (see appendix 2)

Do it – This is where they use their reasoning skills to solve problems based on the key idea. These could be missing box problems, word problems, always sometimes never questions, correcting/explaining errors or misconceptions etc. (see appendix 2)

Deepen it – This is a chance for the children to extend their learning based the key idea of the lesson and use it to help them solve different problems. These could also be missing box problems, explaining why they would use a certain method, identifying misconceptions and how they would correct them. (see appendix 2)

The plenary will bring all the children back together to go back to the key learning idea – what are the key principles involved? Look at a Do it or Deepen it task or a different problem and solve together.

Maths in Reception Class

Maths, like all the other subjects, is slightly different in Reception as formal teaching runs alongside opportunities to practise skills in other areas through teacher directed continuous provision and free play. Teacher-led tasks do however follow the same format with tasks progressing through the three levels meaning children will be familiar with this system when they move to Year 1. The same types of challenge are also provided  and we are confident this will result in children with a deep understanding of the basic skills that the EYFS curriculum focuses on. They also follow the White Rose planning structure.

Interventions

Children that have struggled with the Secure It task will be given the opportunity to ‘catch up’ with their learning during afternoon/next morning maths intervention sessions. The children who go out will change from day to day depending on who has struggled during the lesson. It is important that it is done the same day so the children are ready for the next lesson.

Individual classes may have extra ‘basic skills’ intervention groups running separately. 

Overview

We will follow the White Rose overview as this fits in with the White Rose Tests that we do at the end of each term. (The objectives are pretty much the same it is just in a slightly different order. All the number objectives come first so will mean you can then work on these through basic skills sessions throughout the year.)

Assessment

We have a spreadsheet that is an ongoing assessment of the children. It should be filled in as you go along so you can see the gaps that the children have in their learning. Most of these gaps can be caught up in basic skills sessions.

We also do White Rose Tests 3 times a year. These tests should be used to check against the spreadsheets to see if your judgements are accurate. They should also inform your basic skills sessions for the next term.

Maths – Do it, Secure it, Deepen it activities – Appendix 2

Some of the DO IT and DEEPEN IT tasks can overlap. It is up to your judgement which you think will challenge the children more but over a block there should be a range of the different activities so the children get challenged in a variety of ways. 

Maths – Teaching for Mastery Resources – Appendix 3

Secure it – Will be the children’s chance to work on the key skill that we have been working on (maximum of 8 questions). Everybody starts on this bit.

Do it – This is where they use their reasoning skills to solve problems based on the key idea. These could be missing box problems, word problems, always sometimes never questions, correcting/explaining errors or misconceptions etc.

Deepen it – This is a chance for the children to extend their learning based the key idea of the lesson and use it to help them solve different problems. These could also be missing box problems, explaining why they would use a certain method, identifying misconceptions and how they would correct them.

Places to find ideas for these activities.

A lot of the activities I make up myself but there are lots of good ideas on the following websites.

Kangaroo Maths- Build a Mathematician - http://www.kangaroomaths.com/kenny3.php?page=KassessKS3

Kangaroo Maths – Got It - http://www.kangaroomaths.com/kenny3.php?page=KassessKS3

NCETM Resources section - https://www.ncetm.org.uk/resources/41211

NCETM Assessment Materials - https://www.ncetm.org.uk/resources/46689

Glow Maths Hub – Maths Nav    http://mathsnav.com/ks1.html

White Rose – Schemes of Learnng https://whiterosemaths.com/resources/schemes-of-learning/primary-sols/

Classroom Secrets - https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/search/?fwp_topic=white-rose

A Note on Challenge:

Whereas previously children doing well in a lesson might have been challenged by working with bigger numbers or decimals for example the emphasis now is on understanding methods, why they work and are chosen, explaining processes and applying skills into different contexts. Children will also now only in exceptional circumstances be exposed to objectives from higher year groups than their own as we believe there is plenty of scope for deepening knowledge and skills within each year group. It's important that children really grasp concepts before moving on so that each next step builds on solid foundations without gaps. This means that perhaps logical next steps might not be taken until the next year, for example in Year 2 children will work on the working out and rapid recall of two, five and ten times tables only, really understanding what multiplication and division mean and the different ways of representing problems and number sentences. Children will then work on solving problems in a variety of real-life contexts. They won't move on formally to learn  the other times tables until Year 3 and they're then expected to recall all the times tables up to 12x12 quickly by the end of Year 4. That said, we would, of course, expect children to be able to apply their methods of drawing arrays or sharing 'sweets on plates' to other times tables to work out the answers to calculations if needed. In this sense it might appear harder to see those children achieving high levels in their maths being stretched as the traditional approach of bigger numbers and harder calculations is no longer considered the best next step. Please do come in and ask if you're concerned about the level of challenge your child is getting in maths, whether you think their tasks are too hard or too easy the class teacher will be happy to discuss this with you and take your thoughts on board.