Mathematics
Our teaching of mathematics endeavours to give the children opportunities to be confident and competent in their knowledge of number, calculation, geometry, statistics and measure. Children take part in a mathematics lesson each day. We plan the activities so that they build upon the prior knowledge of the children. While we give children of all abilities the opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding, we also build planned progression into the scheme of learning, so that there is an increasing challenge for the children as they move up through school, regardless of their starting points. We ensure that children gain skills to investigate number, patterns and rules, solve problems and puzzles, explore shape, space and measures and learn key facts by heart.
We now use The White Rose Maths scheme across the whole school. This then ensures that as children move through the school they are able to develop their knowledge building on the prior learning from the previous year. Teachers use White Rose as a basis for their planning but ensure that activities and teaching elements are indivdualised for the chidren in their class, taking account of the specific needs of the pupils. Children are engaged in activities to develop fluency, problem solving and reasoning through their choice of activity. Following the teaching element of the session children will be able to choose either red, amber or green levels of difficulty. In order for all children to have somewhere to move to we have introduced a Go challenge for pupils who have completed the green activity.
Please find the progression document that we use from White Rose Maths below:
Fluency activities are carried out at the beginning of each lesson and through our use of Flashback 4 questions. These are low stake assessments whih follow up on prior knowledge from the previous year group, previous topics of study in the current year and areas of current focus. This enables the teacher to be able to assess whether the children have held knowledge in their long term memory as well as which areas may need to be addressed again.
We approach our learning, where possible, through the adoption of our whole school topics so that the children can make clear links within their learning. Basic skills are planned into many cross-curricular activities so that children have the opportunity to further develop and apply their skills.
Feedback is given both orally and written and the children are developing their ability to self and peer assess. Children from Y2-6 have the opportunity to self-assess against the success criteria of each session which is then agreed by the teacher during the marking process or in 1:1 discussion with the child.
We recognise that all classes have children with differing ages and mathematics skills. We provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability and experience of the child.
We achieve this in a variety of ways by:
- setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
- setting tasks of increasing difficulty (not all children complete all tasks);
- enabling group and peer support
- encouraging tasks that require children to use different skills on a weekly basis;
- grouping children by ability to help with support but allowing children to make the choice of difficulty in the activity they chose;
- providing resources of differing complexity that are matched to the ability of the child
- using teaching assistants to support the work of individual children or groups of children;
- linking learning to the ‘real world’ and the ‘school drivers’ where possible;
- Ensuring that all children have the opportunity to access specific mathematical language and vocabulary.