Maths at Hensall

Mathematics is important in our everyday life, allowing us to make sense of the world around us and to manage our lives. Using mathematics enables us to model real-life situations and make connections and informed predictions. It equips us with the skills we need to interpret and analyse information, simplify and solve problems, assess risk and make informed decisions.  Being confident in mathematics gives children and young people access to the wider curriculum. Mathematics at Hensall is rich and stimulating, it engages and fascinates learners of all ages, interests and abilities.

At Hensall we want our children to relish maths and succeed. We aim to foster the values of curiosity and determination and provide all children in school with the tools required to successfully unlock the maths curriculum. The key, in order to do this, is to develop a Mastery approach. Mastery teaching addresses the needs of all pupils on a daily basis. We are aspirational - believing that everyone is capable of achieving high standards and, with very minimal exceptions, all children are taught the same age-related objective at the same time. As challenge is essential for children’s self-belief and resilience, we make sure it is part of everyday maths for all pupils; provided through depth of both planned activities and higher order questioning for those for whom concepts were well understood.

At Hensall, we aim for all children to master the maths curriculum, through becoming fluent in the basics of number and then applying these skills to problem solving and reasoning.  We do this by teaching in the following way:

Progression and Resources

Teachers use structured schemes of work that provide a coherently sequenced curriculum, pedagogical guidance and lesson resources.

Early Bird Maths

Early Bird Maths is used across KS2. This focuses purely on calculations and arithmetic strategies.  Children are exposed to this daily.  Misconceptions are addressed during these sessions, to ensure the children are becoming fluent and confident with a range of calculations. 

Fluency

We aim to ensure that all pupils become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time. Through the Mastery approach, we provide all children with the opportunity to develop procedural and conceptual fluency. Fluency is practised daily during our Fluent in Five activity and early bird maths.

Reasoning

All children are expected to respond using mathematical vocabulary in full sentences, explaining their thinking. Children are required to reason and make connections between calculations. The connections made improve their fluency.

Problem Solving

Children are given the opportunity to apply their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions. Planning ensures that problems are designed to deepen children’s understanding of essential concepts.

Fluent in Five (KS1 and KS2)

Fluent in Five provides a daily set of arithmetic practice for Years 1-6, designed to help children develop and maintain fluency in both written and mental calculations. The structure of Fluent in Five is also designed to help Key Stage 2 children distinguish between written and mental calculations.

KS2 children will also include Rapid Reasoning

Rapid Reasoning provides at least three questions a day for Years 3–6, and is designed to help children develop and practise their reasoning skills. Rapid Reasoning has been carefully structured with progression through the KS2 curriculum in mind. As you work through the activities, pupils will gradually learn new concepts whilst also revisiting content from earlier in the curriculum.

Support

Support is provided, when appropriate, through daily ‘keep-up’ intervention for those who did not grasp concepts during lessons. This ensures that children are at the same point at the start of each day.

KS2 – Arithmetic Friday (every other Friday)

This is a focused fortnightly session, which focuses on identifying a variety of strategies to answer arithmetic style questions.  Through this session, children are provided with the opportunity to develop their mathematical strategies, to make them more efficient, along with challenging each other’s concepts.  Children will complete either a half or full arithmetic paper every other Friday.  This will then be marked and gone through with the children and misconceptions will be addressed following this within the lesson and over the course of the following week.

Times Tables

A lot of maths is about multiplicative relationships and these are hard to fully grasp without fluent recall of the tables. For that reason, learning the tables is fundamental and as a school we make sure it is a focal point. As a school we use Times Table Rock Stars (TTRS) to help students master the times tables at school and at home.  

Numbots

Children in EYFS and KS1 have access to the Numbots programme which is aimed at children achieving a sound knowledge of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction. 

Working Walls

At Hensall the use of working walls facilitate independence and allow pupils to feel involved and responsible for their learning.

Key features of a maths working wall:

Focus - this will be the topic for the week or the unit, for example fractions or multiplication.

Top Tips - has correct methods or steps, written by the teacher or by pupils within a lesson.

Vocabulary - examples of mathematical language to ensure the children can explain their work precisely and fluently.

WAGOLL - ‘What a good one looks like’ will demonstrate an example of maths work produced by the children or teacher, that highlights the expected standard of learning.

Maths Vocabulary - coming soon! 

Curriculum Progression Documents

The curriculum progression document for maths shows how we map subject knowledge and skills sequentially from EYFS to Year 6. In each year group, we know the order of what our pupils have learnt, what they are learning and what they will need to learn in the future. This document enables us to identify any gaps in learning that need to be addressed to ensure that new learning makes sense to our pupils.