At Rowlatts Mead Primary Academy, our maths curriculum is designed to create confident, eager mathematicians who strive for more challenge. Based around the Big Maths teaching methods and structure, learning is broken down into manageable steps which celebrate children’s progress.
Across the school children have daily maths lessons in class which are taught in differentiated sets allowing for greater progress and support within groups. These groupings are fluid, decided by the use of ‘Entry Ticket’ tasks for each unit, ensuring that pupils receive the support and stretch they require in each unit. Following the completion of a unit, children are given an ‘Exit Ticket’ which then shows their progress and further gaps where they require support and more teaching.
All teaching follows the calculation policy ensuring children have a consistent and effective approach to all calculations they face. Each year group’s expectations are clearly outlined and it details how calculations should be laid out in order to avoid confusion. This teaching of calculation links in to the teaching of reasoning skills across the school with a range of approaches used. Children are encouraged to use the Answer, Prove-it, Explain (APE) strategy when working with word problems in order to ensure they are accurately carrying out what is required of them. These are taught alongside misconception alerts and error analysis where children are shown explicitly what challenges and mistakes that they may have or could make in a particular area of numeracy.
Core number skills are taught through Big Maths learn-its and the use of TT Rockstars to encourage children’s engagement and regular practice of these. With a strong recall of core number facts children’s confidence in numeracy grows leading to greater achievement.
Outside of explicit numeracy lessons, across the curriculum children are shown links to numeracy and how it can benefit their wider learning. For example within Art children consider the use of symmetry, and within Science they work with a range of data.
Subject Leader/s
Miss P Bains
Impact
Year 1 have been using all of their Numeracy skills to complete some very challenging reasoning tasks!
Year 3 have explored measurements using different apparatus to develop a better understanding of what litres and millilitres actually look like.
Year 4 have been investigating symmetry and money in a practical way.
Year 6 pupils have taken part in a cross-trust maths event working with pupils from the different schools to complete a wide range of tasks.