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Maths
The Teaching of Mathematics at Kings Hill
Our Curriculum
Our mathematics curriculum is based on a spiral curriculum approach which enables all pupils to revisit and reload knowledge regularly, rather than only once a year at a particular period – this has shown to be every effective for our school community!
In addition to our daily mathematics lessons pupils get separate fluency and times tables sessions, where pupils are taught explicit methods to become fast, fluent and effective mathematicians. For example, the use of rounding, complementing pairs and fact families.
Resources for our lessons are taken from a variety of resources including the White Rose Scheme, NRich, NCETM, PiXL and Maths No Problem. Using a variety of resources ensures pupils are engaged, motivated and challenged at all time.
Lesson Structure
We follow a Mastery approach to our Mathematics curriculum based on the Singapore teaching and learning models, as well as specialist support we have gathered taking part in our Maths ‘Teacher Research Group’ over the last year and a half.
Pupils are all challenged to learn together in groups, with the necessary challenge and support in a lesson, to allow all abilities to flourish.
All Mathematics lessons are based on a I do, We do and You do approach.
1.Flying Start
This ‘hook’ includes consolidation of arithmetic skills from across the last lesson, week, month, term and year group phase. Regularly reflecting back to prior learning ensures that pupils keep skills fresh and builds upon their long term memory. Rapid recall and number fact knowledge is key to support more advanced skills as pupils progress through the mathematics curriculum.
2.Guided Practice (I do, We do, You do)
Throughout the rest of the lesson the children are introduced to different challenges (4 to 5) that show progress in a skill across a lesson. These challenges are modelled by the teacher independently, before the students and teacher work together on the same concept. Each challenge is then consolidated by independent practice (you do). Challenges provide pupils with different pictorial representations, as well as learning about mathematics in contexts – this shows them that mathematics can be used in their daily lives and future aspirations.
The (I do, We do, You do) approach is repeated numerous times across a lesson to ensure that children are given multiple opportunities for teacher modelling, as well as more frequent opportunities for misconceptions and barriers to be addressed.
Each challenge is pitched carefully for all pupils in the class to access but challenge and support is provided for those pupils that need it by the use of extra manipulatives, adult support/intervention or our ‘blue star’ and reasoning challenges.
Reasoning is explicitly shown in workbooks through the use of a purple reasoning pen, this allows pupils to see the importance of the following reasoning skills:
- Describing
- Explaining
- Convincing
- Justifying
- Proving
- Conjecturing
These skills are fluid and pupils will deep in and out of these reasoning skills across their mathematics experiences in each year group.
PiXL Times Tables and Other Resources
As a school we promote the use of PiXL Times Tables, as the App allows students to recognise and recall times tables quickly and efficiently from a very young age, setting high expectations straight away – by the end of Year 4 all pupils should know their times tables up 12x12 with instant recall. PiXL Times Tables App also follows a similar format as the Multiplication Check which all Year 4 pupils will complete annually, beginning June 2020.
Times Table Rock Stars
In school we are using the Times Table Rock Stars app to help children learn their times tables. Please watch our introduction for help with using the system.