Maths

How do we teach maths?

We use a mastery approach to teaching maths here at Corby Glen. The idea that every child can be exposed to Maths appropriate to their age regardless of ability is one that many would argue is unrealistic. However, for years we have watched gaps develop in the achievement of the children in our classes as they move through the school. We will never close this gap if we never expose our children to maths appropriate to their age and consistently set low expectations with our differentiation.

With our Mastery approach,  we have removed the ceiling on children's achievement and their confidence and self-esteem has grown as lower achieving children in maths move at the same pace as their classmates. This has had a huge impact on all of our staff members, who have made dramatic changes in terms of teaching and learning as a result. More importantly, we have seen an impact on our children in terms of their attitude towards Maths, their conceptual understanding and their willingness to explore and investigate.

We use a scheme called ‘Maths - No Problem’ which are Singapore style books to plan and teach our maths lessons. The only way to achieve mastery is to build upon a solid foundation of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. To ensure a good level of understanding, it is necessary to move through the curriculum at a different pace to previous years. Children will spend much longer on certain areas to fully embed the concept before moving on rather than how they were historically taught by spending approximately 1 - 2 weeks on each area, each term. We explicitly teach each topic once throughout the year but these areas of maths are met continuously through our representations and lead in stories in other maths lessons. Therefore nothing is truly taught in isolation.

What does a maths lesson look like?

• Each class starts the maths lesson with a 10 minute Active Maths session. In Active Maths our children learn times tables in a number of different ways; develop their number recall and fluency and recall learning from previous maths sessions in a recall quiz. This helps children retain the knowledge gained from previous sessions and use this to further develop their fluency.

• Every Maths No Problem lesson begins with a lead in story or anchor task. Children are given the opportunity to explore and investigate the problem with a friend and unpick what they need to find before developing a strategy for solving it.
• Maths journals or whiteboards are used for children to record their thinking, be that a calculation, a drawing or a bar model.
• Children are provided with resources such as Dienes, place value counters, Cuisenaire rods or even just strips of card to fold and manipulate. Children of all abilities will use resources not as a calculation tool but as a way to model their thinking and demonstrate understanding of a mathematical concept.
• All children are capable of succeeding. In lessons, all children will all have access to an age-related curriculum with differentiation being addressed through scaffolding and the level of depth at which tasks are pitched. All children are exposed to greater depth tasks and have the option to have a go if they feel ready. No greater depth task moves beyond the age-related objective for the lesson, it will simply explore the broader concept.
• Everyone moves through the curriculum at the same pace. Pupils who find specific concepts more difficult to grasp will be given extra support during interventions before, during and after lessons.
• 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. Children are encouraged every lesson to talk through their reasoning using mathematical vocabulary.
• We cover less content in each lesson but instead, focus on a single concept to explore and understand in depth. Lessons now provide the small building blocks required to develop a genuine conceptual understanding.

• Assessment takes place in every single lesson and the next lesson is adapted in response to this. Children complete review and revision sections in their Maths No Problem workbooks each time the reach the end of a topic. We also carry out unit test from White Rose and termly NFER tests for each year group.

Maths Calculation Policy

How can I help my child at home?

In this section you will find videos and documents to demonstrate what the different areas of maths look like and how to support you child in their learning. For key stage specific 'how-to' guides on the different operations and the strategies used please see the links below for KS1 and KS2.

​It is also important for children to not only secure strategies but to have a deep understanding (mastery) of the relationships between numbers and therefore why those strategies work. To view videos explaining this process for each operation and other areas of maths, please see below.

What does it look like?

These documents outline all of the number objectives for each year group including EYFS. They also provide helpful guidance and examples as to possible questions and tasks that demonstrate childrens' achievement of these objectives.