Maths & Numeracy at Georgeham

Our Maths Curriculum – Intent

Maths at Georgeham begins with the belief that everyone can be good at maths, and to promote this idea our classes are taught ‘whole class’ rather than in ability groups.

We follow a mastery approach to maths which aims to ensure that children understand the structure of the maths they do and promotes fluency with reasoning. Children should be able to demonstrate their understanding of concepts in a variety of ways:

• Represent the maths in different ways
• Do some specific examples
• Notice patterns and test them out
• Put the maths in a context
• Explain the maths so someone else understands it
• Explain why the maths works – prove it!

We encourage questions, discussion and clarification of ideas, underpinned by the belief that making mistakes is an essential part of learning and not something to be avoided.

Our Maths Curriculum – Implementation

Maths in our Early Years

Our Early Years curriculum provides the strong foundations on which our maths in KS1 and KS2 is built. Children are encouraged to be independent and inquisitive learners with the confidence to question, clarify and share their thinking. Communication and language is the heart of our Early Years maths and you will see children encouraged to notice, think, know and wonder about what they see. They learn to speak about their maths in sentences, to discuss their ideas with maths partners and to explain their thinking using ‘I know…because.’

Children develop a deep understanding of number to 10, learning to subertise and becoming fluent with partitioning and combining numbers. Carefully thought out continuous provision includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. Learning is child led with adults confident in early years pedagogy providing exciting opportunities for active learning. They encourage children’s critical thinking as they play and explore, supporting them to make links between ideas and develop strategies for doing things as enthusiastic members of a playful maths community. It is in our EYFS that children learn to love maths!

Key ideas in our approach to Maths in KS1 and KS2

We begin each year with a ‘Week of Inspirational Maths’ where children work collaboratively in their new maths communities on problem solving tasks. We revisit what makes a good maths partner and reflect on 5 key ideas:

• Everyone can be good at maths
• Maths is a creative and wide ranging subject
• Speed is not important – thinking deeply and making connections are
• Mistakes = learning, easy is a waste of time
• Strategies for learning maths

Planning

• All children are included in the learning of all mathematical concepts for their year group and at the planning stage teachers consider what scaffolding/support will be required for children who may struggle to grasp the concept, and what challenge will be available for children who grasp the concept quickly. Decisions are not made on who these children may be before the unit.
• Lessons follow our medium term planning based on the Rising Stars units of work. Year group objectives are aligned and key objectives are identified for each unit’s end points with year group objectives considered within these at each stage of planning, teaching and learning.
• Teachers use a range of quality reasoning and problem solving resources. These may come from sources such as White Rose, Power maths, NRich, NCTEM, and more. This enables them to provide a bespoke teaching and learning experience designed to interest, inform and inspire our children, responding to the needs of the class rather than following a prescriptive set of lesson plans.
• The majority of teaching will be whole class with teachers attending to specific year group objectives through a number of different strategies including questioning, the use of different numbers in tasks and the use of rich tasks with different expectations related to outcomes. Where this is not possible teachers follow a flexible approach and may deliver separate inputs on the same or different days.
• Mixed ability teaching does not mean that all the children are always doing the same thing. Over the course of a unit at times some children will be revisiting or consolidating key ideas while others, who have understood an objective quickly, are working on a applying their knowledge in a more challenging context or problem.
• Lessons and groups/threes/pairs are planned based on formative assessments of the children’s prior knowledge and the organisation of threes/pairs is fluid depending on these assessments and the objective of the lesson rather than fixed ability groupings.
• The key objectives (or end points) for each unit are self-assessed by the children at the beginning and end of the unit, as well as being displayed on the working wall, so they have a clear understanding of what they are learning and how they are progressing.

Lesson structure – teaching and learning

• Lessons will begin at different starting points (using our hexagon of understanding) rather than following a transmission model of teaching and, while each lesson will have a clear learning objective, it may not be appropriate (e.g. if the lesson starts with children noticing patterns) for the learning objective to be given to the children at the beginning of the lesson.
• The learning objective for each lesson has progressive success criteria that identify expectations for different levels of understanding, and outcomes specific to the older year are in bold.
• Children will often be learning in mixed ability groups or pairs with the expectation that they will be able to ‘do the maths’ independently by the end of the lesson. In these lessons the challenge for the children who already understand the concept may be to explain it in a way that enables their partners to understand it as well, to apply it in context or to generate their own examples and non-examples.
• Following the connective model, carefully chosen representations (manipulatives and images) will be used by all children to explore and explain concepts and ideas. The use of practical resources and pictorial representations should be seen in every lesson.
• Children listen to explanations and ideas with the expectation of understanding and are encouraged to make connections with what they know and ask questions to clarify their thinking without worrying about getting it ‘wrong’.
• Questions will be used to challenge thinking and check understanding, and answers are expected to be given in full sentences using mathematical vocabulary. Teachers will often use sentence scaffolds : I notice…I think… I know… I wonder… or stem sentences to support mathematical discussion, and there is an expectation that children can repeat, summarise or rephrase ideas they are listening to.
• Whole class tasks will be low threshold/high ceiling and so while all children will be often be working on the same task there will be an expectation that the work produced will reflect their different levels of understanding. This is identified on the L/O.
• Work in books should show intelligent practice with evidence of learning and variation rather than repetitive practising of similar examples. Younger years in particular may have considerably less recording in books than might previously be expected as the emphasis is on understanding and in lessons talk is often prioritised over written work.
• Children are encouraged to make their mathematical thinking visible through their questions, discussions and explanations and also using ‘thought bubbles’ in their written work. This is our development focus for maths this year.

Marking and feedback

• The most valuable feedback is given in the lesson and teachers will provide opportunities for children to explain their understanding so misconceptions can be exposed and addressed as they arise.
• Teachers praise effort rather than success, and celebrate ‘brain growing’ rather than getting things right, so children are encouraged to challenge themselves and see mistakes and misconceptions as opportunities for learning.
• Teachers encourage children to reflect on what they have learnt in the lesson so a child who has found the work easy will be asked how they have challenged themselves. Mistakes show you are learning something new and easy is a waste of time.
• Marking will identify misconceptions and inform planning for the next day. Children will often mark their own work to assess their understanding before moving on, and there is an expectation that they will correct mistakes and actively work to clarify their thinking when they identify misconceptions.
• Where children have been working in groups or pairs the teacher may end the lesson with an opportunity to assess – with written or verbal questions – the children’s individual understanding. This will be used to inform the next day’s planning and groupings.

Our Maths Curriculum – Impact

• Children enjoy maths, see it as a broad and creative subject with many connections to other subjects and the world they live in.
• Children believe everyone can be good at maths, see mistakes as a necessary part of learning and are willing to challenge themselves and give it a go.
• Children see themselves as part of a maths community: supporting each other’s learning, encouraging, questioning, challenging, building on understanding and celebrating each other’s successes.
• Children are confident talking about their maths and explaining their reasoning. They engage in whole class discussions, speaking in full sentences and using appropriate mathematical vocabulary.
• Children are fluent in number facts and can apply them independently in their learning.
• Children understand the methods they are using, are focused on working efficiently and can apply their understanding in increasingly complex problems and wider contexts.
• Children take pride in their maths learning, are enthusiastic to share their knowledge and work is well presented.

Our Maths Curriculum – Documents

Calculation Policy

Maths and the National Curriculum

We recently held an evening for parents outlining our approach to maths, focusing on four core ideas:

1. Everyone can be good at maths
   – for a great insight into this approach check out this short video by Jo Boaler How to Learn Maths for Students
2. Encouraging a Growth Mind-set in maths by praising effort not achievement
   – check out the work of Carol Dweck: Praise Effort not Achievement
3. Promote challenge and see mistakes as valuable learning… in contrast, things that are easy are often a waste of learning!
   Check out Jo Boaler’s film Mistakes and Brain Growth
4. Undertaking work in mixed ability maths groups to avoid fixed ability labelling
   – for evidence on the positive impact of trying mixed ability groupings in lessons see Jo Boaler’s film Maths Ability Setting

Much of our classroom work in maths is done in mixed ability groups – we encourage children to learn from each other and believe that being able to explain a maths concept to another children demonstrates that they have a really secure understanding of that concept. Children are stretched in their maths by deepening their understanding of concepts rather than moving onto the next topic – by applying their understanding to a range of tasks and knowing how to use a maths concept in different ways to solve problems or answer questions.