Maths

At Shirley Heath, we follow a Mastery approach to teaching Maths:

What is Teaching for Mastery?

Mastering maths means pupils of all ages acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths. Achieving mastery means acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that’s been taught to enable pupils to move on to more advanced material. (NCETM).

To ensure our children master the maths curriculum, we follow the White Rose scheme of learning. Each unit of work is broken down into small, manageable steps with clear progression of skills and knowledge. Units are carefully sequenced to ensure prior learning is regularly revisited and used to support new ideas and concepts.

Children gain a deep understanding of new concepts using the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach; they have the opportunity to explore ideas using a range of practical resources and visual images before tackling unfamiliar, abstract questions.  Children are encouraged to answer mathematical questions in full sentences with a focus on using correct mathematical vocabulary and a range of sentence stems to develop their mathematical reasoning. Within lessons, there are opportunities for children to share their ideas with others, explore different approaches and solve a range of challenging problems.

Additional daily fluency practise allows children to become secure when recalling mathematical facts and procedures. The use of Times Table Rock Stars encourages children to learn and practise their multiplication and division facts.