Intent
At Punnetts Town, we believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for a secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through small steps through teaching for mastery. We foster positive can-do attitudes and we promote an attitude of: ‘We can all do maths!’ All pupils are encouraged to be their own leader at Punnetts Town and are encouraged by the belief that by ‘being the best they can be’ in maths they can succeed. We aim for all children to have high self-belief. Enjoyment for maths is a high priority for Punnetts Town and we promote curiosity and problem solving to foster live long learners.
Implementation
At Punnetts Town Primary & Nursery School, we are committed to providing a motivating, challenging and comprehensive maths curriculum that is accessible to all. Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of maths involves the following:
- We have a Teaching for Mastery specialist teacher within our federation who we work closely with as well as the Sussex Maths Hub to link to local schools. This ensures all staff understand and embrace the mastery approach using the ‘5 big ideas’ of mastery in their teaching. It also ensures all staff have regular continual professional development through webinars and TRGs.
- To ensure whole consistency and progression, the school uses Maths shed resources to complement the NCETM mastery professional development spines (PMPD). In addition, we use number blocks and I see Maths resources to support planning. The PMPD spines material ensure teachers are well supported with planning and unpicking of small steps to plan well sequenced lessons. It ensures significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained.
- All classes have a daily fluency session in addition to the maths lesson. This provides additional time to teach strategies for mental maths. The children learn key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are learnt to automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and enable pupils to focus on new concepts.
- ‘Keep up not Catch Up’. At Punnetts Town we assess the children’s understanding during the lesson which inform the weekly intervention groups. It allows the children who might be struggling with a concept more support to ensure they are ready for the next lesson. This ensures that we close the gap for age related expectations. In addition, we also run individual interventions for children to support their progression in fluency facts and expect parents to support these.
- Concepts are shared within the context of related problems, diagnostic questions, or misconceptions, which children are able to discuss with partners. These problem-solving activities prompt discussion and reasoning, as well as promoting an awareness of maths in relatable real-life contexts that link to other areas of learning.
- Across Punnetts Town School, we have a consistent working maths display in every classroom to ensure coherence across the school. It ensures that all classes are using the correct stem sentences and generalisations. It also ensures that children are immersed in specific mathematical vocabulary, encouraged to reason about maths and are exposed to concrete, pictorial and abstract learning.
- All children across the school have access to concrete resources to support and deepen their understanding as well as presented with the concept in a variety of ways, including different pictorial representations. Teachers use carefully crafted questions to promote discussions whilst also valuing the questions posed by the children.
Impact
The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children will have deep understanding of concepts that can be applied to a range of problems to ensure long term and sustained learning. The children will be able to demonstrate a quick and secure recall of facts and will have fluency skills to apply to a wide range of contexts. Children at Punnetts Town will enjoy learning maths and have self-belief that they can achieve. Furthermore, children will be able to articulate their reasoning and understanding of the generalisations both orally and through their written descriptions in their books. Children’s chances of success are maximised if they develop deep and lasting understanding of mathematical procedures and concepts.
Misconceptions and gaps in understanding are quickly identified and interventions are deployed so children feel confident to play an active role in the next lesson. Teachers will know the children are on track to meet the end-of-year expectations through the use of AFL strategies and summative tests
