Saxilby Church of England Primary School

Our school approach to teaching maths

At Saxilby Church of England Primary School, we are committed to working towards a mastery curriculum in our school with the following goals:

There is an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving age related expectations.
Intelligent practice us used to enable pupils to develop procedural fluency.
Practice and consolidation are essential.
The large majority of pupils progress through the curriculum content at broadly the same rate.
Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and through individual support and intervention.
Teaching is underpinned by methodical curriculum design.
Carefully crafted lessons and resources foster deep conceptual understanding for all pupils.
Early interventions are made to help all pupils keep up.
Teachers and other adults use precise questioning to deepen understanding.

In order to work towards these goals, as a school, we have adopted the following core philosophies, which will affect our classroom practice in the following ways:

All children are capable of succeeding.
In lessons children will have access to an age-related curriculum related to the new maths framework. We’ve begun to use Power Maths, in addition to White Rose Maths to support our own school needs. Differentiation will be addressed through the level of support they receive and the level of depth their tasks are pitched at. Power Maths text and work books are recommended for use by the Department for Education and runs alongside the White Rose Schemes.
Everyone moves through the curriculum at the same pace.
We do not ability stream at Saxilby. Pupils who grasp concepts more rapidly will be extended into greater depth on the age related objectives. Pupils who find specific concepts more difficult will be given extra support during, before and/or after lessons as capacity allows.
If the vast majority of pupils haven’t got it, go back and do it again.
The only way to achieve mastery is to build on a solid foundation of conceptual understanding along with procedural fluency. To ensure a good level of understanding, it will be necessary to move through the curriculum more slowly at times, allowing everyone to keep up and the rapid graspers to deepen their understanding.
Talk is good.
Aim 2 of the National Curriculum is for pupils to be able to reason mathematically. In order to develop this ability, children need to be able to talk about their mathematics. We aim to give children throughout the school, the ability to do this in every lesson.
Less in each lesson, small steps securely.
To ensure no child is left behind in their learning, and pupils develop a genuine conceptual understanding of the topics covered, we try to include less in each lesson, making sure all pupils are able to understand content thoroughly before moving on. The cohesive design of our maths curriculum and a stepped approach to planning enables teachers to achieve this.
More time on each topic, do it once, do it well
We have redesigned our curriculum in order to only cover a topic once, with place value and the key arithmetic skills taught first in each year group. These arithmetic skills will then be targets for the children to develop and embed from each January onwards.
Building concepts with resources
Teachers make a commitment to use resources that will develop and deepen conceptual understanding of maths. Models and images and resources need to be chosen by the teacher carefully.
A commitment to key skills.
In order to achieve mastery, pupils need to have procedural fluency. To this end, we have organised the curriculum with the key arithmetic skills first and we then monitor pupils’ progress at the end of each long term to identify next steps.