Blackgates

Maths at Blackgates:

At Blackgates Primary Academy, we offer children a high quality mathematics curriculum and have adopted a mastery approach for the teaching of mathematics. Underpinning this pedagogy is the belief that all children can believe, achieve and succeed in maths. We believe in promoting sustained and deepened understanding by employing a variety of mastery strategies, with teaching for conceptual understanding at the heart of everything we do. We aim to create independent mathematicians who are well equipped to apply their learning to the wider world. We want our children to realise that mathematics has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. We want them to know that it is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. As our pupils progress, we intend for our pupils to be able to understand the world, have the ability to reason mathematically, have an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics and a sense of enjoyment about the subject. We are wanting to creature a positive culture of Maths here in Blackgates and encourage and support our children in becoming resilient mathmaticians. We support children by celebrating mistakes as vital learning opportunities and show children how mistakes help deepen understanding. We encourage effort and use positive language throughout our maths lessons to show that hard work and resilience can support their maths journey. 

Maths at Blackgates Primary Academy incorporates fluency, reasoning and problem solving and is taught using a concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) approach. It develops a deep and sustainable understanding of maths in pupils and is an essential technique of maths mastery that builds on a child’s existing understanding. The variety within the approach means the children really learn the ‘why’ behind what we do, rather than just learning to repeat routines without grasping what is happening.  Teaching for mastery links to our main school aim of ‘believe, achieve, succeed’ as it provides all children with full access to the curriculum enabling them to achieve confidence and competence in mathematics, rather than failing to develop the maths skills they need for the future. All teachers will follow the calculation policy to ensure for consistency throughout school. 

 To support this approach and the new aims and objectives of the National Curriculum, the White Rose maths schemes of learning are followed.  They:

• Have number at their heart. A large proportion of time is spent reinforcing number to build competency. 
• Ensure teachers stay in the required key stage and support the idea of depth before breadth.
• Ensure students have the opportunity to stay together as they work through the schemes as a whole group.
• Provide plenty of opportunities to build reasoning and problem solving elements into the curriculum

The White Rose schemes helps our maths lessons take the whole class through the mathematics in small steps to build deep understanding. We ask children to reason, discuss and connect their mathematics using mathematical vocabulary and a range of representations to show mathematical concepts and relationships. We expect children to develop fluency with their recall, and use of key number facts including addition pairs and multiplication facts. We challenge children by asking them to reason about and apply their mathematics, and to identify common errors and misconceptions.  

We also understand the importance of language and the significance this has in a child being able to access the Primary Maths Curriculum. We have high expectations of the language that is used, both in written work and in class discussions. To help with language development, we use stem sentences. This technique gives students the opportunity to respond in the form of a complete sentence to effectively communicate their answers whilst maintaining a reasoning approach. Sentence stems provide scaffolding to help students get started in speaking or writing without the added pressure of thinking about how to correctly formulate a response. It also allows the children to learn mathematical definitions of key concepts that can travel with them through school.

Intent:

• Children to have a strong understanding of number sense throughout school, in order to spot patterns and make connections in Maths.
• Teachers expose children to mathematical connections to improve conceptual knowledge.
• Build an enjoyment of Maths by drawing on previous knowledge
• To develop children’s factual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge to create deep thinkers who acquire the skills that can be recalled quickly and transferred and applied in different contexts.

Implementation

• Leaders of learning reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in Maths.
• Carefully planned opportunities are made to expose children to key mathematical connections across concepts.
• Teachers understand the importance of key mathematical vocabulary and teach and model this explicitly through 'thinking out loud' and the use of stem sentences.
• Opportunities to focus in on prior knowledge and understanding.
• To get appropriate pictorial representations of each mathematical concept to make the abstract concept clearer.
• To experience the concrete, pictorial and abstract journey that form the building blocks of understanding, to enable children to work successfully in the abstract form.
• To access carefully selected questions which include varied forms of fluency.
• Once both procedural and conceptual fluency has been established, to move into the stages of justification, proving and explaining their thinking in a variety of ways.
• To solve problems that demonstrate their deeper understanding.

Impact

• We have high expectations of all children at Blackgates Primary Academy in line with our ‘believe, achieve, succeed' ethod. Children will be challenged in their mathematical thinking while being supported by a coherent and consistent journey of teaching and learning. 
• Children will be able to show high quality reasoning skills. They will be more confident at being to articulate their thinking and their use of appropriate methods.
• Books will show that children have been through a mastery journey of learning and have been exposed to varied style questions. 
• Teaching will show high quality questioning and metacognition. This will give children opportunities to reason whilst also being modelled effective thinking from the teacher.
• Children will be able to recall key facts and apply these facts to given problems.

What does a typical lesson look like in Blackgates?

A typical lesson will start with a 10 / 15 minute Number Sense session (either Number Facts or Times Tables fluency depedning on the year group).  The lesson will then consist of the teachers sharing the learning objective and demonstrate explicit teaching of the strategies needed to answer the fluency questions for this objective. The children will then have a set of questions, which is in the same style as the example the teacher has just given, and the children will need to independently answer these while the teacher walks around the classroom and identifies any misconceptions or intervenes where necessary. Once the children have answered these questions, the teacher will then go through the answers on the board, highlighting a ‘juicy mistake’ they may have picked up on. The teacher will model how to apply these skills to a problem-solving or reasoning question, where again, they will explicitly show the strategies needed to answer these style questions, using ‘thinking out loud’ techniques to demonstrate the thought process needed. The children will be given a different style question for them to have a group discussion on how to tackle these. The teacher will bring the class back together for collaborative thinking. The rest of the lesson will then be time for the children to be independently answering a variety of different style questions of: fluency, problem-solving and reasoning questions. The teacher will intervene and adapt their teaching where necessary for those children who need it. It may be that some children will need more support during this time.  

 Number Sense:

As part of our daily Maths lesson in Blackgates, we have incorporated 'The Number Facts Fluency programme' and the 'Times Tables Fluency programme' from the 'Number Sense' scheme. Years 1 - 6 have a 15 minute, daily lesson to help build children's confidence and flexibility with number, and fluency in addition and subtraction facts. The systematic and structured programme ensures children develop visual models of number, a deep understanding of number and number relationships, and fluency in addition and subtraction facts.  At the core of the programme are the Addition and Subtraction Fact Grids. These essential facts are the equivalent of times tables for addition and subtraction (just as all multiplication and division calculations use root times table facts, all future addition and subtraction calculations use these root addition and subtraction facts). The core facts are taught alongside 12 calculation strategies. Learning and applying these strategies gives children a deep understanding of number and number relationships. Using these strategies children can then "use what they know to work out what they don't know". Explicit teaching of derived fact strategies is an effective route to fluency in addition and subtraction facts for all children, including lower attainers (see the set strategies below). 

Once children have completed the Number Facts fluency in Summer Term of Year 3, children will then move on to the Times Tables Flunecy programme.  The programme develops recall of 36 core multiplication facts. Fluency in these facts provides the foundation for all written and mental multiplication and division. New facts are introduced and taught visually through the conceptual lessons, and aurally through the chanting of verbal sound patterns. Facts are learned to fluency through daily practice sessions with scores tracked daily and targeted support provided where needed. In addition to the 36 essential facts, the programme teaches the 10, 11 and 12 times tables in preparation for the Y4 Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). These facts are taught in a lighter touch way, with the 10 and 11 times tables taught through patterns and the 12 times table taught well enough for MTC success.

EYFS at Blackgates: