Mathematics
At Ashford St Mary’s School, we follow a Mastery for Maths curriculum, adapting the White Rose programme of study to best meet the needs of our children. We also utilise the Mastering Number enhanced resources provided by the Kent and Medway Maths Hub to ensure that all children are able to deepen their understanding of number, reasoning and problem-solving. This means that children are not streamed by ability because we expect all children to be given the opportunity to achieve age related expectations. Mastery teaching provides our children with the time to acquire a deep and transferable understanding of mathematical concepts.
Our Mathematics teaching is underpinned by the Five Big Ideas in Teaching for Mastery:
Coherence - Teaching is designed to enable a coherent learning progression through the curriculum, providing access for all pupils to develop a deep and connected understanding of mathematics that they can apply in a range of contexts.
Representation and Structure - Teachers carefully select representations of mathematics to expose mathematical structure. The intention is to support pupils in ‘seeing’ the mathematics, rather than using the representation as a tool to ‘do’ the mathematics. These representations become mental images that students can use to think about mathematics, supporting them to achieve a deep understanding of mathematical structures and connections.
Mathematical Thinking - Mathematical thinking is central to how pupils learn mathematics and includes looking for patterns and relationships, making connections, conjecturing, reasoning, and generalising. Pupils should actively engage in mathematical thinking in all lessons, communicating their ideas using precise mathematical language.
Fluency - Efficient, accurate recall of key number facts and procedures is essential for fluency, freeing pupils’ minds to think deeply about concepts and problems, but fluency demands more than this. It requires pupils to have the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics, to recognise relationships and make connections, and to choose appropriate methods and strategies to solve problems. We appreciate how important it is for our children to become fluent in all aspects of calculation, therefore, we offer weekly opportunities to focus on arithmetic/times tables through the use of NumBots and Times Table Rock Stars. Mastering Number sessions, 4 per week in provide the opportunity
Variation - The purpose of variation is to draw closer attention to a key feature of a mathematical concept or structure through varying some elements while keeping others constant. Conceptual variation involves varying how a concept is represented to draw attention to critical features. Often more than one representation is required to look at the concept from different perspectives and gain comprehensive knowledge. Procedural variation considers how the student will ‘proceed’ through a learning sequence. Purposeful changes are made in order that pupils’ attention is drawn to key features of mathematics, scaffolding students’ thinking to enable them to reason logically and make connections.