Welcome to the Maths department at Outwood Academy Shafton.

We are a department of 13 maths teachers and one higher level teaching assistant.

We love working with students and watching them develop into young budding mathematicians. We are very passionate about teaching maths and our knowledge rich curriculum deepens understanding and stretches and supports all abilities.

We are often involved in the UKMT challenges and we have inter school competitions within our family of schools yearly.

We work closely with Hegarty Maths, from which we use this platform for our online homework learning.

We also have a OGAT Maths Revision website, where there are weekly updates for Hegarty completion across the trust, and lots of information and guidance to support you in your revision and home learning.

We look forward to welcoming you to OAS

What skills will the study of Mathematics teach you?

You are a citizen in this world and you need to know the basic skills of number and how to apply them to a range of problems – known as ‘being numerate’. It will teach you:

• Not to be afraid of “being lost” and having to struggle to find one’s way through the problem – RESILIENCE!

• To use calculation to solve basic problems

• To make and use generalisations—often quite quickly. One of the basic abilities, easily detectable even at the level of primary school: after solving a single example from a series, a child immediately knows how to solve all examples of the same kind.

• To have rapid and sound memorisation of mathematical material.

• To be able to concentrate on mathematics for long periods without apparent signs of tiredness.

• To be able to offer and use multiple representations of the same mathematical object. (For example, switching easily between representations of the same function by tables, charts, graphs, and analytic expressions.)

• An instinctive tendency to approach a problem in different ways: even if a problem has been already solved, you are keen to find an alternative solution.

• To utilise analogies and make connections.

• Skills to link two (or more) elementary procedures to construct a solution to a multi-step problem.

• To recognise what it means to “know for certain”.

• To detect unstated assumptions in a problem, and either to explicate and utilise them, or to reject the problem as illdefined.

• To be efficient, a distinctive tendency for “economy of thought,” striving to find the most economical ways to solve problems, for clarity and simplicity in a solution.

• To be aware of the presence and importance of an underlying structure.

• To use rapid abbreviation, compression or a curtailment of reasoning in problem solving e.g. algebra.

• How to grasp encapsulation and de-encapsulation of mathematical objects and procedures.