Maths

Intent

‘Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.’ 2014 National Curriculum

At Manor Primary School, we provide children with a mastery rich mathematics curriculum with the intent of developing confident, happy and resilient learners. The ability to reason, problem solve and recall key facts is of high priority throughout our school, with a focus on how to overcome challenges and to ‘overlearn’ key facts a priority throughout the mathematics curriculum.

Implementation

At Manor Primary School, mathematics is split into two parts during the school day. Children take part in an hour long maths lesson, which is structured in a way that develops both children’s varied fluency and mastery abilities. Children also receive an additional 15 minutes of ‘Overlearning’. In this session, children practice the rapid recall of key mathematical facts and skills from earlier in their learning journey at Manor Primary School. This may include ‘overlearning’ key facts and skills from a previous academic year in order to plug gaps or build confidence, while later in the year being used as an opportunity to revisit skills and concepts from earlier that academic year. In order to support the planning of a challenging and progressive curriculum, teachers use the White Rose Hub schemes of learning to base their lessons on. (https://whiterosemaths.com/resources/schemes-of-learning/primary-sols/)

A mathematics lesson at Manor Primary School uses a circular structure, designed to provide every child with the opportunity to discuss their learning, develop their fluency skills and tackle mastery activities. Foundation stage follow the structure over a period of 3 days, exploring the same fluency and application of a skills based approach, tackling age appropriate problems.

Mastery/SATs style Question

Each maths lesson begins and ends with mastery or SATs style question. There is a balance throughout the curriculum between reasoning style questions, based on White Rose Hub style support materials, along with SATs style questions tailored to match age related expectations of a given year group.

Discuss

Children are then given the opportunity to discuss the given problem with a partner. Children are encouraged to think about how they would go about solving the problem, which information within the problem is important, and what skills are needed to be able to solve the problem. This allows children the opportunity to share their misconceptions, discussing their learning with peers and teaching staff.

Teach and Activity

Teachers are now able to address any misconceptions that have arisen from the ‘discuss’ stage. Teachers also model to children the key skills needed to achieve the lesson’s ‘I can’ statement in a variety of ways. Children follow this with an activity designed to build their fluency skills in the given area of mathematics. This will cover a range of learning strategies, including the use of concrete, pictorial and abstract representations by children to show and develop their understanding of a topic.

Misconception Check

Identifying and addressing misconceptions is a key aspect of learning. Teachers use discussion and marking within lesson to identify any misconceptions that have arisen. Teachers then use these misconceptions to stop the class and make a teaching point, in order to support those who have already shown the misconception, and to prevent others from making the same errors. Children are encouraged to support and help each other as part of a team when discussing misconceptions.

Varied fluency

At this stage, children who have displayed a good level of confidence and fluency throughout the lesson are encouraged to show their work in different ways. This could be through the use of pictures, bar modelling, part-whole models and other methods.

Mastery time

To end the lesson, children revisit the problem from the beginning of the lesson. This is now their opportunity to complete the problem and show their mastery of the ‘I can’ statement being studied.

Impact

Children are continually assessed throughout their learning journey in order to identify gaps in learning, in order to support children to make progress. For each maths lesson, the teacher completes a marking grid assessing the children against the success criteria using the school’s NAPEL assessment framework. Children who have not achieved an ‘Expert’ level (displaying mastery/problem solving skills) are given intervention by either the class teacher or teaching assistant, that is tailored to meet their needs to encourage progress. This may involve intervention designed to plug gaps in basic skills and knowledge to help a child to develop their fluency skills in order to access their age appropriate curriculum. Other children may be given intervention to build upon their existing fluency skills, progressing onto mastery activities.

Children are formally assessed at the end of each term in order to track progress. Pupil Progress Meetings also take place each term between each teacher and the Headteacher in order to discuss the progress of children.

The White Rose Hub Primary Progression map is used alongside the long term plan to ensure and measure progression throughout the school.

White Rose Hub progression documents: https://whiterosemaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/National-Curriculum-Progression-Primary.pdf