Maths
Intent
Here At St Wulstan’s, we believe that all of our children can succeed in Maths. We encourage and believe all children should have a positive mind-set towards Maths and therefore we teach ‘Whole Class Mastery lessons’ where all children go on a journey together during their lessons, which is led by their teacher.
We are now in our fifth year of teaching Maths in this way and our children are extremely enthusiastic about their Maths lessons. We have noticed a rise in attainment since teaching Maths in this way. In 2018 and 2019, our SATs results were above national average (for both attainment and progress) and we believe this is because of our 'Teaching for Mastery' approach.
Implementation
Our Maths lessons are carefully crafted and are taught as a 'journey'. All children go on the journey together, however, some children may need extra support, whereas others may continue to explore a wider range of Mathematical concepts.
Those children who need extra support are given the opportunity to attend pre-teaching sessions, which take place prior to the lesson. These sessions are designed to cover pre-requisites and address common misconceptions in order to ensure children have the confidence and ability to succeed in their Maths lessons. Support is also given to pupils during lessons through the use of CPA and careful scaffolding/questioning.
Our Maths lessons are designed through using the notion of 'intelligent practice'. This ensures that children's learning is continually scaffolded and challenged appropriately. Tasks designed using intelligent practice ensure that children are flexible in their thinking. Those children who go onto explore wider mathematical concepts do so by accessing 'star challenges'. These challenges are designed to ensure that pupils 'go deeper' with their learning, through reasoning and problem solving.
Our Maths curriculum is designed to ensure that there is clear progression year by year. The curriculum is also designed to ensure that Maths concepts are embedded into children’s long term memory. We ensure that concepts are explored deeply and our Long Term Plan is carefully designed in order to ensure that the new learning children gain, builds upon previous knowledge. The Maths long-term plan is also sequenced carefully to ensure that units taught are done so coherently. The careful design of our long-term plans ensures that pupil's long term knowledge is consolidated.
In addition to carefully designing our long-term plan, we also consolidate learning through regular fluency sessions. These sessions, alongside supporting consolidation, are designed to ensure that children become fluent and efficient with number facts, develop procedural and conceptual fluency of written methods and encourage children to spot patterns in number. We believe that when children are exposed to patterns and become fluent with number facts, they become confident learners and their working memory becomes ‘freed up’ to allow deeper learning.
Impact
Through implementing the Maths curriculum we expect to see:
- Children who enjoy and access their Maths lessons regardless of ability
- Knowledge being maintained from year to year
- Children who are critical thinkers
- Children who are fluent with number facts
- Children who are High School ready and secure in Mathematics when they leave St Wulstan's
- The % of children working at age related expectations to be higher than national average
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The % of pupils working at Greater Depth higher than national average
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no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non disadvantaged)
Support at home
To support the understanding of Maths, we are beginning to create Videos which explain our written methods.
Follow the links for each year group:
Addition
Multiplication
Year 5 & 6-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee5HZItzVH4
Year 3 & 4- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05J75lFRcDU
Division
Year 6 Long Multiplication (chunking method)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0gzuajjRfE
Year 5 & 6- Short division- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5_Ju71KXN0
Year 3 & 4 Division- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGxJri2qxFs
Children work extremely hard during their time in school. However, if you would like to help your child with their learning at home, here are some aspects to focus on...
KS1
- Number bonds to 10 and 20.
- Number facts to 20
- Adding 10 to any single digit number (knowing the units don't change)
- Adding and subtracting 10 to any 2 digit number
- Doubling
- Near doubles e.g 7 + 6=
- Adding 1 and 0 to any number
KS2
- Number bonds to 10, 20, 100, 1000
- Adding 10, 100, 1000 to any number number (knowing the units don't change)
- Decimal and fraction fluency e.g 0.4 + __ = 1 4/10 + ? = 1
- Doubling and halving
- Dividing and multiplying by 10 100 1000
- Addition strategies- knowing addition facts to instantly recall e.g. 4 +8
- Dividing/multiplying by one and 0.
- Times Tables
The website below is engaging and fun for children and helps them to practice their fluency skills.
Top Marks: Hit the Button
Children in KS1 will also benefit from watching the BBC one programme 'NumberBlocks.’ There are powerful Mathematical concepts behind this programme and it is also very engaging. The episodes can be found on BBC I Player.
Can you solve any of the below with your children?