Maths 3Is

Throckley Primary School Mathematics – Intent, Implementation, and Impact Mathematics is important in everyday life. It is integral to all aspects of life and with this in mind at Throckley Primary we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards mathematics that will stay with them beyond their time at our school. The school has developed a mastery approach to Mathematics using resources from White Rose Maths Hub to support teachers in delivering this approach. Throckley Primary is part of the Great North Maths Hub Mastery workgroup. This gives the school the opportunity to receive support from a mastery specialist teacher as well as the opportunity to share good practice with other schools in the workgroup. Our curriculum has been developed as follows:

Intent Mathematics equips pupils with the uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world. These tools include logical reasoning, problem solving skills and the ability to think in abstract ways. Mathematics is important in everyday life. It is integral to all aspects of life and with this in mind at Throckley Primary we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards mathematics that will stay with them beyond their time at our school. Mathematical skills and knowledge should be delivered, explored and revisited through conscious decision making and awareness of learning and progress needs and abilities. Children should develop resilience and self-confidence in applying their learning skills.

The School’s Curriculum Drivers:   

Understanding our place in the world Aspiring to achieve Broadening horizons

As part of the mastery approach, a positive teacher mind-set and strong subject knowledge are key to student success in Mathematics. The school is committed to providing a purposeful and empowering Mathematics curriculum. It is not the case that some pupils can do Mathematics and others cannot; no pupil should be left behind and the focus is keeping up over catching up. By making high expectations clear and emphasising the value of Mathematics education, pupils are encouraged to build confidence, resilience and aspire to achieve. Abilities are neither fixed nor innate, but can be developed through practice, support, dedication and hard work. Natural talent is just a starting point and does not determine who has more or less potential to achieve. This way, pupils at the school are broadening their horizons with a Mathematics curriculum that fully prepares learners for their next steps in their school career and opens doors to understanding their place and the place of Mathematics in the wider world, regardless of a child’s background and ability.

A positive teacher mind-set in Mathematics encourages a love of learning and resilience that enables everyone to achieve. We are committed to ensuring that all pupils are given the opportunity to achieve mastery in the key concepts of Mathematics, appropriate for their age group, in order that they make genuine progress and avoid gaps in their understanding that provide barriers to learning as they move through education. Assessment for Learning, an emphasis on investigation, cross curricular Mathematics, problem solving and the development of Mathematical thinking and a rigorous approach to the development of teacher

subject knowledge, are therefore essential components of Throckley Primary’s approach to this subject.

The school’s curriculum concepts (influence, belonging and choice) are woven through Mathematics to provide a wider context for learning through an interconnected narrative.

Mathematics equips all pupils with the uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world (the concept of influence). These set of tools include logical reasoning, problem solving skills and the ability to think in abstract ways (the concept of choice). Pupils learn the concept of ‘belonging’ by exposure to where Mathematics can take them in society within the wider world.

Our Mathematics curriculum is diligently sequenced to ensure that knowledge gained is cumulative; this aids apt progression as well as frequently providing pupils with the opportunity to draw on knowledge from previous year groups through our bespoke spaced retrieval strategies. Through this, our pupils understand the importance of the knowledge they gain through their Mathematics lessons while at Throckley and how it can be transferred to all areas of the curriculum. Providing pupils with these opportunities to put it into practice what they have learnt, we aim to ensure they are not only secondary school ready but can apply what they’ve learnt from primary school to their future career paths.

Woven into every Mathematics lesson, the Throckley OWLs (Our Wonderful Learners) encourage positive learning behaviours and support children in developing the skills that we believe are necessary for success in the wider world. At Throckley Primary School, we encourage children to use our OWLs to actively plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning within Mathematics lessons, especially when reasoning and problem solving. By channelling a specific OWL, pupils are able to develop transferable skills that they can use within the subject of Mathematics in order to develop metacognitive skills. They can understand how they learn best or what tools they can use to aid their knowledge of Mathematical skills. Once assured of the behaviour the OWLs symbolise, they can apply them throughout their lives so that they are resilient and confident learners.

Implementation The Mathematics curriculum has been carefully mapped out to ensure revisiting of key knowledge throughout the year, whether this be through basic skill inputs, starters, interventions, or whole class teaching. Class teachers’ planning incorporates time to recap previous learning to then build on knowledge and understanding in new, related areas of study.

The National Curriculum for mathematics describes in detail what pupils must learn in each year group. The school has developed a mastery approach using resources from White Rose Maths Scheme to support teachers with the planning, delivery and engagement of mathematics.

As part of the mastery approach a positive teacher mind-set and strong subject knowledge are key to student success in mathematics. It is not the case that some pupils can do mathematics and others cannot. No pupil should be left behind. The focus is keeping up over catching up. By making high expectations clear and emphasising the value of mathematics education, pupils are encouraged to build confidence and resilience.

Abilities are neither fixed nor innate, but can be developed through practice, support, dedication and hard work. Natural talent is just a starting point and does not determine who has more or less potential to achieve. A positive teacher mind-set in maths encourages a love of learning and resilience that enables everyone to achieve. We are committed to ensuring that all pupils are given the opportunity to achieve mastery in the key concepts of mathematics, appropriate for their age group, in order that they make genuine progress and avoid gaps in

their understanding that provide barriers to learning as they move through education. At the heart of our collective teaching pedagogy lies evidence-informed practice. We value Rosenshine’s principles of instruction and these can be seen in practice in classrooms across school.

What will I see if I visit a lesson in Throckley Primary School?

Creative, dynamic and passionate teachers: At Throckley Primary, we love learning. Class Teachers work collaboratively to weave all aspects of Mathematics into lessons to make learning exciting and purposeful. Individual teachers choose contexts for their mathematics lessons that encapsulates their classes’ interests.

Clear, detailed explanations and modelling: We fully understand the importance of teaching being explicitly clear, and tailored to individual need. The use of WAGOLLs and WABOLLs (What a good/bad one looks like) and emphasising non examples, means that expectation is clear and children are scaffolded during independent practice. Children across school are taught to analyse mathematical methods in order to identify key steps to devise an effective success criteria; teachers display success criteria on their working walls for children to use as a resource. Support is layered; class teachers’ keen understanding of assessment allows them to know each child as an individual and know when the time is right to remove a layer of support, guiding the child to independence, at a pace right for them.

Quality talk: At Throckley Primary, classroom talk is explicitly taught. Age appropriate prompts in the classroom support children in dialogic talk by scaffolding and extending responses. Talk ‘norms’ are embedded; with differentiated sentence stems displayed which support children in reciprocal talk. Children are taught talk moves, including how to agree, disagree, support, challenge, clarify and summarise. In Mathematics, the NCETM ready-toprogress resources provide stem sentences which teachers hand-pick for their lessons. This exposes children repeatedly to vocabulary-rich lessons which will become embedded into their everyday language.

Skilful teacher questioning: A commitment to staff training in this area has led to a teaching team that is skilled in using questioning to support learners in reaching their potential. A mix of strategies allow class teachers to direct questions to individuals where necessary, or use a ‘no hands up approach’ to allow children to contribute freely. To stretch children to the appropriate cognitive level, class teachers use prompts and cues to extend thinking. To develop this further, class teachers probe for reasoning and clarification, and, as pupils move further up the school, they are taught to give full, detailed and reasoned responses. In Mathematics books, skilful questioning can be seen through the use of ‘moving on’ comments which allows a question to be ‘squeezed’ and show whether a child is mastering the curriculum.

Spaced retrieval of key learning: Across school, we have developed a number of strategies, which support children in the recall, and retention of key knowledge in Mathematics. Class Teachers use White Rose ‘Flashback 4’s’ regularly at the beginning of a lesson which allows children to retrieve knowledge form last lesson, last week, last month and last year.

Clear learning intentions and tasks, which are appropriately challenging: We value the Blooms Taxonomy framework and this underpins learning sequences across the curriculum.

Building areas of study around Blooms allows us to build factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge, resulting in fuller understanding and greater depth. Our aim is for children to remember key knowledge, but also to develop a full understanding of it in order to then apply this in context, creating authentic outcomes, which draw on their learning experience over time.

Resilient, independent learners: At Throckley Primary School, we teach children metacognitive strategies, including how to select, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

Shared success criteria allow children to have ownership of their learning and support them to be able to monitor their progress. Shared and verbalised class teacher thinking also models the thinking process for children and this is evident across school.

Our Wonderful Learners (OWLs) have been created to support children’s metacognitive development. Our OWLs encapsulate six learning behaviours, which we believe are integral to success both in school and beyond.

Classroom scaffolds and displays allow children to see what each behaviour looks like in practice. As children move up the school, they are taught to independently identify the learning behaviour needed for a given task. OWLs support children’s self-regulation and also provide scaffolds for group and paired work.

Beautiful Work: At Throckley Primary, we celebrate beautiful work! Driven by our value of ‘pride’, we teach children the importance of well-presented, carefully planned work. Children are proud to display their outcomes; resilience, effort and progress are praised.

Live marking: Children’s work in Mathematics is marked in line with the whole school marking policy. Think Pink is used to allow children either to go back and correct mistakes or to extend their learning with an additional ‘moving on’ question. During lessons teachers should identify when pupils have shown a sound understanding of a task and intervene with a “learning pitstop” and provide more challenging work. All work must begin with the short date and title, which is to be underlined and children should be using 1 digit 1 square in their books whenever appropriate.

Use of manipulatives and ‘roaming around’ the CPA: Each class is provided with resources that can provide support and scaffold learning. Teachers may plan concrete manipulatives into their lessons or higher up the school, children are taught to become independent learners and can select the appropriate scaffold themselves. As a mastery approach, every child works towards the same objective and the use of concrete, pictorial and abstract methods makes this possible.

Mathematics at Throckley is based on the following principles:       

Policy and provision are evaluated and reviewed regularly.

Resources of time, people and equipment are planned, budgeted for and detailed in the subject leader’s action plan.

The use of a local Maths Hub keeps the subject leader up to date with changes in the subject.

Teachers engage in joint professional development through lesson study/ coaching to optimise the quality of teaching in mathematics.

The maths subject leader works with NQT’s and RQT’s to support and develop their practice through modelled lessons and team teaching.

The governing body discharge their statutory responsibility with regard to mathematics.

Planning of mathematics ensures continuity and progression across all year groups and key stages.

When planning for objective coverage, teachers are expected to take the following mastery strategies into account:          

Small steps Implementing the Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract (CPA) approach to introducing, exploring and applying mathematical concepts Consider the use of variation when constructing independent tasks to allow opportunities for reasoning even with fluency work.

Considering key questions and mathematical vocabulary at the point of unit planning Multiple opportunities for verbal and written/drawn reasoning (explaining and using mathematical vocabulary to explain methods or reasoning) within unit exploration Inclusion of relevant problem-solving opportunities, where children are expected to draw on and apply multiple concepts to address or approach a challenge Modelling of all skills and approaches Modelling and sharing of efficient and accurate application of methods as well as good ‘bad’ examples to encourage children to understand and explain why the answer or method did not work or cannot be correct.

Opportunities to explore maths concepts/objectives at ‘greater depth’ Include all learners, providing relevant support for those with additional needs (educational, medical or otherwise)

Assessment for Learning, procedural variation, an emphasis on investigation, cross curricular mathematics, problem solving and the development of mathematical thinking and a rigorous approach to the development of teacher subject knowledge are therefore essential components of Throckley Primary’s approach to this subject.

Impact The exploration of Mathematics at Throckley is interactive and engaging, with content made relevant to children’s real-world experiences and contextualised thus to support consolidation and retainment of knowledge and skill.

Children approach mathematical study with confidence and enthusiasm, and view tasks and challenges that call for application of varied knowledge across units of work and the selection of multiple skills with self-assuredly and a willingness to collaborate.

Approach and response to reasoning activities will improve term on term, with the expectation that by the end of the year, children are happy to accurately define and use mathematical vocabulary introduced by their teacher, as well as complete stem sentences to complete mathematical statements or reasoning.

Teaching and support staff should also see this period of implementation as an opportunity to highlight and further improve concepts that are received well and have clear impact on progress and learning, while also analysing and evaluating practice that needs to be addressed, reviewed or replaced.