Byron Primary School

At Byron Primary School, Maths is inclusive, challenging and empowering. The teaching of mathematical skills is delivered and explored with an awareness of children’s needs and abilities.  We include all learners, providing relevant support for those with additional needs. All children are expected to succeed and make progress from their individual starting points. Children are given the opportunities to apply their mathematical skills to solve problems allowing them to develop their resilience, self-confidence and team work skills. We endeavour to provide children a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically and develop a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

Curriculum Implementation

In order to support our teachers to deliver a curriculum that allows children to build on their skills over the academic year, as well as year on year throughout school, we use the White Rose Maths Long term planning to timetable units that are explored progressively, drawing on previous learning. Lessons are personalised to address the individual needs and requirements for a class but coverage is maintained.

At Byron Primary School, teaching is highly inclusive and taught in mixed ability classes. Each unit of learning begins with a pre-learning assessment titled a ‘launch pad’ to help identify children’s starting point. A Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract-Apply (CPAA) teaching model is adopted to ensure all learners are suitably supported and challenged. Within lessons, Teachers clearly model and provide children the opportunity to practise processes and skills. Teachers & Learning Support Assistants (LSA) 'live mark' within lessons to provide instant feedback and to move learners on where necessary. Teachers constantly use assessment for learning within their Maths lessons in order to provide work at the correct level and make timely interventions when needed. Children who grasp concepts rapidly will be challenged through being offered more challenging problem solving / reasoning tasks. Those who are not sufficiently fluent will be given the opportunity consolidate their understanding through additional practice, before moving on. Interventions will be both planned for and ‘live’, meaning that misconceptions are dealt with immediately and high attaining children are challenged appropriately.

The Maths curriculum at Byron Primary School is empowering and is designed to promote independence and resilience. Each class will have appropriate numeracy resources readily available to the children and as part of the Learning Journey they will be taught how to use them. Children will then have free access to concrete materials/manipulatives to support their learning. Each class will also have a Maths ‘working wall’ including support for methods, examples of resources, points to remember and vocabulary to use, to further empower children to be independent learners.

Work within lessons is pitched to enable all learners to be stretched and challenged. Once knowledge and processes are acquired children move onto ‘apply’ activities which include reasoning activities drawn from but not limited to NCETM, Nrich and the White Rose hub. These ‘apply’ activities require children to draw on and apply multiple concepts to address or approach a challenge. The Maths curriculum at Byron Primary School is language rich and a huge emphasis is placed upon promoting oracy and developing vocabulary within lessons. Teachers clearly model correct mathematical language and mathematical vocabulary can be found in the classroom environment. Within lessons, children are given opportunities to talk using their dialogic talk threads. Teaching sequences include relevant problem-solving opportunities, where children are expected to use mathematical vocabulary to explain methods or reasoning. Peer tutoring is also adopted in order to promote oracy. While working on a problem, children are encouraged to ask questions like, ‘How am I going to approach this?’, ‘Is the approach that I’m taking, working?’, and ‘What other approaches could I try?’ Children are encouraged to work collaboratively, given opportunities to talk using their dialogic talk threads and peer tutoring is adopted.

Units of work will be assessed upon the completion of each one, with teachers asked to use those published by WRM and to look to other sources (or create their own) if the pitch is too high/low.  Summative assessments are completed at the end of each term; their results form discussions in termly Pupil Progress Meetings and update our summative school tracker. The main purpose of all assessment is to always ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child.

At Byron Primary School, the curriculum is nurturing and is designed to promote mental and physical health and well being. The Maths curriculum at Byron supports this by adopting a child led teaching approach and providing tailored intervention in a supportive environment for children who need it. Children at Byron Primary School also have the opportunity to use Maths in ‘real-life’ settings in baking clubs, running the tuck shop as well older children participating in Barclays bank ‘money-sense’ workshop equipping them with life skills such as budgeting and saving.

Maths at Byron Primary school is inspiring and designed to provide the cultural capital that many of our children do not have access to. We include whole school number days and Maths competitions to inspire and challenge our children. Previously, we have had whole school ‘Maths-termind’ competitions, dressed as digits and Times-table rockstar, designed our own Maths games and most recently held a ‘Maths at the movies’ day. In addition, we have weekly Times-table Rockstar competitions to really engage our children. For our younger children who cannot access Times-table rockstars, we encourage of the use the Numbots programme. We recognise that the ability to calculate mentally lies at the heart of numeracy. Therefore, we promote mental arithmetic skills by implementing a whole school badge reward system called ‘Byron Blue’. Children can earn different badges if they can recall various number facts at speed.

Here at Byron Primary School, we believe that working in close partnership with children’s families and the local community helps enhance the learning experience for our children further. In order to assist parents to support their children with Maths at home, we hold ‘stay and learn’ session for parents and after school parents workshops. Previously, we have held a times-table workshop to support Y4 parents to help prepare their children for the multiplication check. For parents who are unable to attend these sessions, we have created support materials and uploaded these onto our school website. We also have ‘Calculation workshops’ in which students will model and demonstrate Byron’s calculation policy. Again, for parents who can not make it to the workshops in person, videos will be uploaded on the website.

See the Progression of Skills grid below for the maths taught at Byron

Curriculum Impact

As a result of our Maths teaching at Byron primary school you will see;

• Engaged children who are all challenged.
• Confident children who can all talk about Maths and their learning and the links between Mathematical topics.
• Lessons that use a variety of resources to support learning.
• Different representations of mathematical concepts.
• Learning that is tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress. 

Evidence through pupil voice:

Children talk enthusiastically about their Maths lessons and speak about how they love learning about maths. Children show confidence and believe they can learn about a new maths area and apply the knowledge and skills they already have.

Evidence in skills

Pupils use acquired vocabulary in maths lessons. They have the skills to use methods independently and show resilience when tackling problems. The flexibility and fluidity to move between different contexts and representations of maths. Children show a high level of pride in the presentation and understanding of the work.

Outcomes

At the end of each year we expect the children to have achieved Age Related Expectations (ARE) for their year group. Some children will have progressed further and achieved greater depth (GD). Children who have gaps in their knowledge receive appropriate support and intervention. All children secure long-term, deep and adaptable understanding of maths which they can apply in different contexts.