Maths

At Middleton St Mary’s, we believe that all children can become fluent, reasoning and problem-solving mathematicians. We want children to engage in mathematical thinking that will allow them to develop a connected conceptual understanding of the subject. Over the last few years, we have been developing our practice in a range of ways through working closely with the West Yorkshire Maths Hub including:

• Making use of concrete manipulatives and pictorial representations that help learners to uncover and articulate mathematical structure.
• Crafting lessons so that mathematical talk is encouraged
• Using the principles of intelligent practice when choosing or writing questions
• Promoting a positive can-do mindset that expects to learn from mistakes
• Providing enjoyable and engaging tasks that build skills and allow misconceptions to be diagnosed.

We use a mastery approach to teaching National Curriculum Mathematics and use the National Curriculum/NCETM resources and the White Rose Maths Schemes of Learning with the ultimate aim that all pupils:

• become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils have conceptual understanding and are able to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately to problems

• reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language

• can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

Early Bird Maths

Early Bird Maths is a morning maths activity based on arithmetic style questions and laid out in the same format but on the classroom whiteboard. As children arrive, they open their maths books, write the short date and the title ‘Early Bird’ and work through the questions. The teacher then works through the answers asking how children worked out the answer to one particular question or misconception and stressing the importance of showing working out. Children mark their own answers and edit in purple pen.

Numbots and TT Rockstars

Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables which children can practice online as a rockstar. All children and staff in KS2 have a log-in for TT Rockstars! A copy of children’s own login details will be glued in the back of children’s reading records so they can access TT Rockstars at home and another copy is kept in class so that they can access TTRS on iPads at school.

Numbots is a programme by the same company which helps younger children to count and recognise patterns in number.