Mathematics

Jonathan Cason

We have spent a lot of time this year perfecting our mastery scheme of work which all students follow from year 7 to year 9. The department has looked at the latest ideas in “atomising” which involves breaking processes down to very distinct steps and ensuring understanding before moving on and finally bringing the steps together. This aids understanding and gives students a sense of achievement throughout each process.

We have also looked at ideas around quality control and quality assurance in teaching. The difference being quality control is about controlling misunderstandings with further support and quality assurance, the process of predicting misunderstanding and insuring it does not happen in the first place. We strive to be a quality assured department. Each year the maths department teachers take on the role of tutor to year 11 students in order to allow extra sessions of maths to be taught to targeted groups. This year we adapted our year 11 booster sessions to take account of the changing circumstances by keeping teaching groups together with their class teacher as opposed to breaking them up into new groups thus mitigating against further mixing. This appeared to work quite well and we will look in to trying this in the future.

The Maths department recently ran training for the LSAs covering support in end of term testing and final exams to ensure consistency across all groups. Supporting a student in a maths exam is and extremely difficult job and requires a particular set of skills, the LSAs are to be congratulated for their effort and professionalism with this. The department continues to present lessons using the full suite of interactive tools on the smart white boards in each teaching room as the subject is particularly suitable to this type of resource. (it’s also cheaper and better for the environment than board pens!)

We are particularly proud of the three year 11 students who took up the offer of free afterschool lessons, ran virtually by Dr Strabic from Sevenoaks school, which enabled them to achieve and Addition Maths qualification. We will be offering the same chance to next years’ top students.