Bridgelea Primary School
Numicon
At Bridgelea we want our children to love Maths. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and grow up wanting to be architects, pharmacists, and accountants. We want them to make active and positive contributions to the society they grow up in and to enjoy their lives. The Maths curriculum has been carefully designed so that our children develop their Mathematical skills and understanding. Maths is taught at “stage not age.” We use the Numicon approach with a concrete, pictorial, and abstract element throughout all lessons. Staff have access to the Teacher Handbooks, Online Resources and Explorer Books. Concrete materials are an integral part of teaching and delivering Maths across our school, this supports children to visualise their Maths and then generalise to support with problem-solving.
Skills Progression
The skills progression currently is built around the Year 2 and Year 4 National Curriculum Key Objectives. These are further broken down into manageable steps to support progression and are linked to key activities from the Teacher Handbook. These activities can be found in the Year 2 and Year 4 Handbooks. The skills progression documents are differentiated to the previous and next year group to support mixed age planning. The key activities support progression alongside key teaching strategies/activities for each mathematical strand. Teachers will use the progression document to ensure that skills are taught in chronological order to promote a solid understanding of concepts.
Bridgelea Process for Teaching Maths
The LTP (below) stipulates that Mathematical Topics are covered over a 2-week process. This is currently a 12 week LTP, with 6 Mathematical Topics. The LTP will be repeated 3 times, Autumn, Spring, and Summer. This gives teachers the opportunity to cover a unit of work and to ensure that children are repeating Mathematical Topics 3 times throughout the year.
Using the Long Term Plan
Teachers will select the Mathematical focus being taught. For example in Week 3 & 4 it will be an additional focus. Using the skills progression document (attached) teachers will select the appropriate activity groups that needs to be delivered in their class. This may be a short revisit of past activities or moving on to the next activity group that is in chronological order to aid the progression of skills. It is the professional judgment of the teacher through the assessment to select the relevant activity groups that they deliver based on individual needs. Children should all access the same Mathematical Topic throughout school.
General Number Skills
It is important that teachers give children the opportunity to use and apply money skills throughout all Mathematical Topics. Therefore, where possible, money activities should be planned throughout each 2-week block of teaching.
Rapid Recall of Basic Facts
Basic facts such as recalling number bonds, times tables are taught daily through Times Tables Rockstars, Early Bird and Maths lesson starter activities. Please see the LTP above to support with the delivery of Maths Early Bird activities. Counting must be a regular part of Maths starter activities.
How is Geometry, Measure and Statistics covered?
At Bridgelea, teachers have PPA time every 2 weeks and their Level 3 TA will deliver GSM at this time. Teachers should plan opportunities around the theme of GSM using the GSM objectives and Teacher Handbooks for the appropriate Year groups. TA3s have had the training to support them to teach and deliver GSM activities with the children. This training will be consolidated in September 2020 and regularly throughout the year. Where possible, these sessions should be practical.
How will teachers assess children’s progress?
Assessment is a combination of teacher knowledge and an approach called “Big Maths”. Big Maths will be undertaken at the end of each 2-week block of teaching. Big Maths is using the “Explorer Handbook” question or activity linked to the Teaching Handbook unit. When teachers are planning the delivery of their activity groups, they should be mindful of the activity in the Explorer Handbooks. These are now online as part of the Teacher Handbook resources on Oxford Owl. This gives children the opportunity to consolidate, reason, and apply mathematical skills in a problem-solving way. Using the Explorer Books at the planning phase supports teachers to select a wide range of activities and plan to teach problem-solving opportunities throughout the fortnight to develop children’s reasoning skills within this specific mathematical theme. Some children may have the opportunity to work across two-year groups to consolidate and further their learning. Teachers will use Classroom Monitor “Bridgelea Maths” to capture progress and assess learning. Staff are encouraged to upload pictures to the children’s Markbooks to limit printing photographs in books.
The use of the Explorer Handbook activities will support the moderation process across classes. Evidence in each child’s books will look different as the journey to answering the questions in the Explorer Books will be personalised to the needs of the individual children in the class. There are standardised questions for year groups, this will support our internal moderation process.
To support with the progression of skills and transition into new classes, Teachers may want to highlight on their skills progression document, the coverage overview that they have had delivered for their children.
Where children are more than 50% of a year group, teachers should ensure that they are aware of the objectives of the year group above and ensure that children can access learning activities to ensure good progress in Maths. This will mean that children are accessing more than one year group of learning to support with progression.