Maths

maths

Intent

At Dallington, we believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for a secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through small steps through teaching for mastery. We foster positive can-do attitudes and we promote an attitude of: ‘We can all do maths!’. All pupils are encouraged to be their own leader at Dallington and are encouraged by the belief that by working hard at maths they can succeed.  We aim for all children to have high self-belief. Enjoyment for maths is a high priority for Dallington and we promote curiosity and problem solving to foster live long learners.

Implementation

At Dallington CE Primary School, we are committed to providing a motivating, challenging and comprehensive maths curriculum that is accessible to all. Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of maths involves the following:

  • We have a Teaching for Mastery specialist teacher and as a school we continue to work closely with Sussex Maths Hub to link to local schools. This will ensure all staff understand and embrace the mastery approach using the ‘5 big ideas’ of mastery in their teaching. It ensures all teachers have regular continual professional development through webinars and TRGs.
  • To ensure whole consistency and progression, the school uses the NCETM mastery professional development spines (PMPD). In addition, we use number blocks and I see Maths resources to support planning. We have been following the ‘Ready to Progress’ and ‘Curriculum Recovery’ on the NCETM to support with Covid recovery. The PMPD spines material ensure teachers are well supported with planning and unpicking of small steps to plan well sequenced lessons. It ensures significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained.
  • All classes have a daily fluency session in addition to the maths lesson. This provides additional time to teach strategies for mental maths. The children learn key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are learnt to automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and enable pupils to focus on new concepts.
  • ‘Keep up not Catch Up’. At Dallington we assess the children’s understanding during the lesson which inform the daily intervention groups. It allows the children who might be struggling with a concept more support to ensure they are ready for the next lesson. This ensures that we close the gap for age related expectations. In addition, we also run interventions for individual children to support their progression in fluency facts.
  • Concepts are shared within the context of related problems, diagnostic questions, or misconceptions, which children are able to discuss with partners. These problem-solving activities prompt discussion and reasoning, as well as promoting an awareness of maths in relatable real-life contexts that link to other areas of learning.
  • Across Dallington school, we have a consistent working maths display in every classroom to ensure coherence across the school. It ensures that all classes are using the correct stem sentences and generalisations. It also ensures that children are identifying ‘what is’ a concept or ‘what is not’ to ensure variation and deep understanding.
  • All children across the school have access to concrete resources to support and deepen their understanding as well as presented with the concept in a variety of ways, including different pictorial representations. Teachers use well-thought-out questions to promote discussions whilst also valuing the questions posed by the children.

Impact

The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children will have deep understanding of concepts that can be applied to a range of problems to ensure long term and sustained learning.  The children will be able to demonstrate a quick and secure recall of facts and will have fluency skills to apply to a wide range of contexts. Children at Dallington will enjoy learning maths and have self-belief that they can achieve. Furthermore, children will be able to articulate their reasoning and understand the generalisations both orally and through their written descriptions in their books. Children’s chances of success are maximised if they develop deep and lasting understanding of mathematical procedures and concepts.

Misconceptions and gaps in understanding are quickly identified and same day interventions are deployed and feel confident to keep up in the next lesson. Teachers will know the children are on track to meet the end-of-year expectations through the use of AFL strategies and summative tests.