How We Teach Maths 

We believe that in order to best prepare our students to have success in mathematics moving into high school and beyond that we need to develop mastery. We use a direct instruction approach chunking mathematical concepts into small pieces of information so that students can master that chunk before moving to the next chunk. For example, let's look at the problem of 345 x 25. First, we would ensure every student is able to line up their numbers vertically with proper place value. This would be demonstrated on mini whiteboards to ensure that every single student understands that chunk of learning. Once we know every student has that chunk of the process we move to multiplying by our ones column being the 5. This chunk of learning is then demonstrated by everyone on their whiteboards. We would encourage students to use mathematical thinking to multiply by 5, there are a variety of strategies they could use, skip counting, multiplying by 10 and halving, looking at 5 x 5 as a square number etc. This is where differentiation is involved ensuring all students are successful. Once all students have demonstrated understanding on their mini whiteboards the teacher would move to the next chunk of teaching. Demonstrating that the 2 in 25 does not represent 2 but rather 20. This is an integral part of understanding in multiplication rather than simply rote learning. Because the 2 represents 20 and not 2 it is vital for students to put a 0 or a place holder in the ones column when multiplying the second digit. The teacher would demonstrate examples and non-examples showing that without the 0 you are simply multiplying 345 by 2 rather than 20. Making connections to the power of 10 and previous learning. Teachers would also chunk the fact that you must carry the additional value to the next place value column interating the previous learning that each place value column can only hold one value that represents the same values as the column. Students are then led to continue the standard algorithm for multiplication. When all students have demonstrated success the teacher would remove some of the guidance and have all students do another example using mini whiteboards. Once 80% of students have demonstrated they can independently solve multi-digit multiplication questions they are set off to independent practice. Practice is the fundamental process for moving information from the working memory into the long-term memory. During independent practice, the teacher would work with any students who were not successful at independently solving multi-digit problems. Because the teacher chunked the process into small pieces they know what chunk of learning they need to provide intervention to the students, it could be a gap in place value knowledge, missing a strategy for computation of a certain number, or perhaps not understanding how to carry additional value from one column to the next. By following this model for teaching mathematics we are able to ensure every single student has success every single day. To see some of the research behind our approach please read the article below.