At Altmore we want to develop children to cope with the problems life throws at them and we want children to make sense of the world around them.
Our teaching of maths provides children with a positive attitude to their learning and helps them grow into fluent, confident and competent mathematicians. They have regular opportunities to learn basic mathematical concepts collaboratively, discussing the best strategy to use and developing their reasoning and problem-solving skills.
We want to encourage a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about mathematics by providing a rich, varied and challenging curriculum to enable children make the connections to achieve greater depth in their learning. We hope to break the ‘fear’ factor surrounding Maths and show them that it can be relevant and fun even when it challenges us.
The Curriculum – what do children learn?
Our curriculum is based on the White Rose Maths programme and adapted to meet the needs of our children. This ensures that skills and concepts children are taught are fully embedded and revisited over the year. The Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach supports the teaching and learning of maths by helping children have a deeper understanding when solving problems. We make use of a variety of practical resources such as dienes, cubes, numicon, and role play (particularly in EYFS) so that children can access mathematical concepts in ways that are both appropriate and exciting. Children progressively build upon their knowledge and understanding of number as they are taught how to perform calculations by using both mental and written methods. All learners access teaching of content which matches the expectations of the new curriculum in England and be supported further, if needed, in order to access this.
How are lessons taught?
Lessons are structured to enable children to revisit aspects of prior learning as well as being introduced to new concepts and strategies and to have opportunities to work collaboratively and independently:
- At the start of the lesson, children revisit, practise and rehearse number facts and taught mental strategies.
- Where appropriate, children are introduced to an open-ended question or problem where children explore the new concept and try to come up with the method or strategies that they could use to solve it. In this part of the lesson, children are able to explore their preferred method or strategy.
- After this an anchor chart is created by the teacher, with the support and contributions from the children in the classroom. As the name implies, it ‘anchors’ the learning for the children, which means that it is something that can be referred back to throughout the learning time.
- In the next part of the lesson, children practise the taught concept or strategy. Those children who are able to select the most appropriate method for the task in hand will be given reasoning and problem solving questions to deeper their understanding. At Altmore we refer to these as ‘Build It’ Challenges.
- In last part of the lesson, learning is recapped, reflected on and summarised.
Online Resources
Numbots is an on-line Maths platform for boosting addition and subtraction skills. Playing little and often will significantly improve children’s recall and understanding of number bonds and addition and subtraction facts, which are critical foundations in Maths.
Times Table Rock Stars is an on-line learning resource we have been using in school (and at home) for over a year in Year 2. TTRS helps children to learn their times tables and related division facts.
TTRS is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice. Each week concentrates on a different times table, with a recommended consolidation week for rehearsing the tables that have recently been practised every third week or so.
We use these resources as part of our home learning offer.