Maths | Booker Avenue Junior School

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Maths

Intent, implementation and impact

Intent
The 2014 National Curriculum for Maths aims to ensure that all children:

Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics
Are able to reason mathematically
Can solve problems by applying their mathematics

At Booker Avenue Juniors, the curriculum aims are embedded within daily basic skills and maths lessons and mathematical skills are developed consistently over time. We aim to develop efficient mathematicians, who know a range of methods to answer calculations and to solve problems and who can select the best method for a particular task. We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise the importance of maths in the wider world and to ensuring that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives in a range of different contexts, as well as in different subjects. We want all our children to enjoy mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to calculate confidently and to reason mathematically across the curriculum. We are committed to developing children’s curiosity about the subject, as well as to developing an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics.

Implementation

The following principles and features characterise our approach to teaching maths and convey how our curriculum is implemented:

Teachers reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in mathematics.
The large majority of children progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Differentiation is achieved using deepening activities and through individual support and intervention. Concrete resources are regularly used to scaffold learning.
Teaching is underpinned by methodical curriculum design and supported by carefully crafted lessons that foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge.
Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed variation within this builds fluency and a deep understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.
Access to daily reasoning questions allows children to achieve mastery of mathematical concepts.
Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.
Daily basic skills sessions are used alongside the main maths lesson to allow key skills and knowledge to be taught and revisited. This allows all pupils to access lesson objectives with a deeper understanding of the required skills.

To ensure whole consistency and progression, the school uses the DfE approved ‘Power Maths' scheme. New concepts are introduced at the start of a lesson within the context of an initial related problem, which children are able to discuss in partners. This initial problem-solving activity prompts discussion and reasoning, as well as promoting an awareness of maths in relatable real-life contexts that link to other areas of learning. Children may also use concrete resources to help them deepen their understanding. Teachers use careful questions to draw out children’s discussions and their reasoning. The class teacher then leads children through strategies for solving the real-life problem, including those already discussed. Teachers model further example questions relating to the topic being taught and pupils are given the chance to attempt further questions in pairs. Independent work provides the means for all children to develop their fluency further, before progressing to more complex related problems.

In Power maths, mathematical topics are taught in blocks, to enable the achievement of ‘mastery’ over time. Each lesson phase provides the means to achieve greater depth, with more able children being offered rich and sophisticated problems, as well as exploratory, investigative tasks, within the lesson as appropriate.

Impact
The school has a supportive ethos and our approaches support the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Children can underperform in Mathematics because they lack confidence, think they can’t do it or are not naturally good at it. The Power Maths programme addresses these preconceptions by ensuring that all children experience challenge and success in Mathematics by developing a growth mindset. Regular and ongoing assessment informs teaching, as well as intervention, to support and enable the success of each child.

The daily maths lesson

Basic Skills

For fifteen minutes each day, pupils study mathematical basic skills. Through counting, teacher modelling and practice, pupils regularly revisit the fundamental skills and knowledge that they need to access the mathematics curriculum. Basic skills are used to preteach the skills that children will need to access upcoming lessons and units of work. One day a week, basic skills sessions are dedicated to the teaching and practising of times tables.

Power Maths

Power Maths, recognised by the DfE, is structured around a whole class interactive teaching model that focuses on helping all children to build a deep understanding of maths concepts and confidence in maths.

For each year group, the curriculum strands are broken down into core concepts. These are taught in blocks of lessons giving sufficient time to develop a deep and sustainable understanding of core maths concepts. Each concept is broken down into lessons. Each lesson and concept builds on prior knowledge to help children build a robust and deep understanding of the concept before moving on. Opportunities are provided for same day intervention if necessary and also for deepening activities if pupils master the concept.

Each lesson is divided up into:

Discover and share activity where children can share, reason and learn.
Children then consider solutions as a class, with partners and independently.
Children then get the chance to practice the skills learnt to build fluency and develop deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. Challenge questions link to other areas of maths and encourage children to take their understanding to a greater level of depth.
Children review, reason and reflect on learning.

Power maths overview documents

The documents below outline the key teaching strategies and characters used to deliver the Power Maths approach:

Content and Coverage By Year Group

The documents below outline the topics covered in our Power Maths lessons in each year group.

Basic skills objectives

The documents below outline the basic skills objectives that are taught throughout the year in each year group.

Calculation Policies

The calculation policy shows the Power Maths progression in calculation (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and how this works in line with the National Curriculum. This policy shows how the consistent use of the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach across Power Maths helps children develop mastery in both written and mental methods across all the operations in an efficient and reliable way.

Work sample

The photographs below demonstrate examples of mathematics work from Year 3 to Year 6. The work shown evidences how pictorial models are used within The Power Maths curriculum to support the understanding of the pupils. It also demonstrates the progression within a lesson, from practice of the skill being taught to application of the skill using worded and reasoning problems.