Mathematics & Numeracy

AoLE lead: Mrs N. Shahriveri

PGCE Primary with Mathematics, Mathematics Specialist Teacher (MaST), PD lead with NCETM.

“ I love maths! However, this wasn't always the case.

At school it was a subject that I had to learn; it was all about learning a process to get the right answers and I was often afraid of getting things wrong. I wanted to understand why different calculations worked, but instead was taught tricks rather than understanding. As a child this confused me and I grew scared to answer questions in case I was wrong. Maths didn’t seem like something that I would use as a grew older - how wrong I was!

When I became a teacher, I decided that I wanted to get this message across to as many children as possible, whilst encouraging them to see that making mistakes means that they are learning! I wanted them to discover that maths isn’t just about right answers - maths is full of connections and relationships, exploring ideas and solving problems. It surrounds us in our daily lives and in nature. What is more, numeracy – the application of mathematics to solve problems in real-world contexts – plays a critical part in our everyday lives, and in the economic health of the nation. It incorporates the four principles at the heart of the new curriculum for Wales.

My aim as maths lead is to ignite a passion for maths across the school, in both teachers and pupils; to make it relatable to real life experiences and to enable children to see that the answer is only the beginning. It is my aim for every child in school to have the confidence to try new things out in their maths lesson and eliminate the belief that "some children are good at maths and some aren't". I want all children at Twynyrodyn Community School to have the best education they can, and mathematics is a fundamental part of this: it is essential for everyday life and for understanding the world in which we live.”

Intent - why?

WHY is this our curriculum offer?

In the Mathematics and Numeracy Area of Learning and Experience, progression involves the development of five connected and interdependent proficiencies. To ensure progression in any mathematics learning, these proficiencies are developed and connective in and over time. These proficiencies are:

Conceptual understanding
Communication using symbols
Fluency
Logical reasoning
Strategic competence.

At Twynyrodyn Community School, these skills are embedded within Maths lessons and developed consistently over time. We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise the importance of Maths in the wider world and that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives in a range of different contexts. We want all children to enjoy Mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to reason mathematically. We are committed to developing children’s curiosity about the subject, as well as an appreciation of the beauty and power of Mathematics.

The four purposes are at the heart of our mathematics curriculum. They are the starting point for all decisions on the content and experiences developed as part of our mathematical provision to support our children to be:

ambitious capable learners ready to learn throughout their lives.
enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work
ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world
healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society.

Implementation- HOW?

How do we deliver our curriculum?

The new curriculum for Wales and the Maths curriculum at Twynyrodyn Community school reflect the principle that mathematics teaching is conceptually connected and coherent. This requires mastery and memory of earlier concepts; comprehensible starting points, consistent use of language, symbols, images and other representations, illuminating choice of examples and relevant digital tools. These principles and features characterise our approach and convey how our curriculum is implemented.

At Twynyrodyn, children study mathematics daily covering a broad and balanced mathematics curriculum including elements of number, calculation, geometry, measures and statistics. Alongside the daily maths session an addition 30 minutes a day is spent on Maths On Track sessions (MOT) which focus on The Big Five (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions) to build fluency and precision in these areas and to think about numbers in different ways. Due to the interconnected nature of mathematics, as Twynyrodyn we aim to teach maths in a cross curricular manner as well as discreetly to teach the practical application of mathematical skills. We focus not only on the mathematical methods but also focus on mathematical vocabulary and true understanding to broaden and deepen mathematical understanding.

Teachers reinforce our expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in Mathematics. Teaching is underpinned by methodical curriculum design and supported by carefully crafted lessons and resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge and ensure overall development of the five proficiencies. Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed variation within this builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts. Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring same day intervention, so that all children keep up.

Mathematics is taught coherently and sequentially. Units of learning are broken down into a series of small, connected steps with each building on the children’s prior learning. Each lesson focuses on one small step or a series of small steps. Learning throughout the school is introduced using a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach so that pupils develop a conceptual understanding of mathematics through a variety of manipulatives and representations. In addition, play forms an important part in the development of mathematics and numeracy, enabling learners to solve problems, explore ideas, establish connections and collaborate with others.

Across our school, teachers use careful questions to draw out children’s discussions and their reasoning. The class teacher then leads children through strategies for solving the problem, including those already discussed. Independent work provides the means for all children to develop their fluency further, before progressing to more complex related problems. Mathematical topics are taught in blocks, to enable the achievement of ‘mastery’ over time. Each lesson phase provides the means to achieve greater depth, with more able children being offered rich and sophisticated problems, as well as exploratory, investigative tasks, within the lesson as appropriate.

In lesson design, teachers explore local sources and resources, using our school’s environment to enhance learning in mathematics and numeracy. Learning within local, national and international contexts enables learners to understand the connection between mathematics and numeracy and authentic real-life contexts that span both Wales and the world. This also promotes and supports cross-curricular learning.

Consistency in teaching mathematics across the entire school is achieved by teachers planning and delivering lessons with the aid of high-quality and rich resources. These include White Rose Maths materials; The Department for Education’s approved textbook Power Maths and other mastery resources from NCETM, NRICH and subscription websites.

Impact - What?

What are the outcomes of our curriculum for our pupils?

Throughout each lesson formative assessment takes place and feedback is given to the children verbally and through written marking to ensure all children are meeting the specific learning objectives. Teacher’s then use this assessment to plan and to ensure they are providing a mathematics curriculum that will allow every child to progress.

The teaching of maths is also monitored throughout the academic year through book scrutinies, learning walks and lesson observations. In-school moderation of teachers’ assessments is conducted by phases, the Mathematics Leader and Senior Leaders. The Mathematics Leader rigorously monitors teaching and learning to ensure that pupils make good progress across the school.

Upon completion of Year 6, our curriculum enables pupils to be fully prepared and equipped to successfully continue their mathematical learning journey at secondary school and in their later lives.

Autumn MTP

Spring MTP

Summer MTP

LESSON DESIGN

Retrieval Practice

Children begin with a short activity built on the principles of retrieval practice; the act of recalling information without anything to prompt you. Children are exposed to a range of questions from their prior learning through White Rose's Flashback 4 resource. This daily review is an important component of deep and sustained learning. It helps strengthen the connection between the concepts learned. Automatic recall frees working memory for problem solving and creativity.

Episodic Teaching

Following this, the majority of lessons are designed using teaching slides developed by White Rose. Lesson design identifies the new mathematics that is to be taught, the key points, the difficult points and a carefully sequenced journey through the learning. Episodic teaching provides sufficient scaffold for all pupils to access the learning.

Through episodic teaching, the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration and discussion. Opportunities are designed to activate prior knowledge, requires pupils to collaborate and ask questions of each other and promotes an environment for pupils to productively struggle and persevere. The concrete-pictorial-abstract approach is utilised throughout the school, not in isolation, but together to develop secure and deep understanding. Concrete and pictorial representations of mathematics are chosen carefully to help build procedural and conceptual knowledge together. Teachers use questions to draw on children’s discussions, their reasoning and the children learn from misconceptions through reasoning. The teacher uses this part of the lesson to address any initial errors and teach the strategies to be used and the concept.

Independent Practice

Through the episodic teaching, the teacher will have a secure understanding of who requires support, who has understood the concept or who can go further in their learning. Pupils groups are fluid and based on children’s understanding. Differentiation for the vast majority of our pupils, occurs in the support and intervention provided to different pupils, not in the topics taught. Questioning and scaffolding individual pupils receive in class as they work through problems will differ, with higher attainers challenged through more demanding problems which deepen their knowledge of the same content. Pupils’ difficulties and misconceptions are identified through immediate formative assessment and addressed with rapid intervention – commonly through individual or small group support later the same day.

In Twynyrodyn we have put a name to the journey of mathematical thinking that we want all our pupils to go on. We want them to develop the basics, then to think deeper through reasoning and then to be able to apply these skills in different contexts. We have called these sections:

Do it - Using standard and non-standard variation of the concept. These are simple standard examples followed by non-standard examples to challenge procedural fluency. Children who require more support have this section scaffolded using concrete or pictorial representations to support their understanding and only be exposed to standard examples.
Twist it - Active argument about misconceptions and offers pupils the opportunity to reason about teacher initiated mistakes to challenge conceptual understanding. Children who require more support should be exposed to non-standard examples during this section to see if they can apply their knowledge in a different context. Higher ability children will be expected to reason and explain their thinking in a coherent and logical way using ‘ACE it’ to structure their answer (Answer, Convince, Explain).
Deepen it - This gives pupils the opportunity to solve familiar and unfamiliar problems to challenge their mathematical thinking and understanding, generalise, explore connections and discover relationships between different areas of maths.

Our lesson design is a framework, drawn from academic research and the latest pedagogy for mathematical teaching, to help plan and teach for secure and deep understanding. Teachers are able to use it flexibly and there will be lessons where it is not suitable e.g. lessons designed for pupils to explore/ investigate/ discover a new concept or to solve more complex problems that bring together several key learning points.

Learning experiences

Financial Literacy Project 2021.mp4

In December 2021, the whole school took part in a virtual Christmas Craft Market. Each class were set a budget, researched and cost materials, designed and created a craft product and managed their money. All profits raised by individual classes were spent on their Christmas parties.

510 products were sold and the total profit made was £561.

CSC Lead Practitioner work 2021-2022

This programme will consisted of four independent sessions looking at mathematical modelling with numbers, fractions, geometry and algebra. The sessions focused on accuracy of vocabulary, developing oracy in mathematics and modelling of mathematical concepts for reasoning and problem solving through use of a range of manipulatives. All sessions developed the principles of progression through the five proficiencies; Conceptual understanding, Communication using symbols, Fluency, Logical reasoning and Strategic competence.

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