Maths
Our Maths Intent
At TMA, we ensure children have transferable mathematical skills, the ability to reason and solve problems, and a well-developed vocabulary. We believe that the language of mathematics is international, the subject transcends cultural boundaries and its importance is universally recognised. We provide children with the opportunity to explore mathematics using a range of concrete, pictoral and abstract resources (CPA). This allows them to explore a variety of ways to represent a mathematical question through conceptual variation.
We base our teaching practice on a mastery approach which ensures all children gain a deep understanding, competence and confidence in all areas of the maths curriculum. A mastery approach allows teachers to really embed each aspect of the maths curriculum by first introducing it through the use of concrete (hands on) resources. We build upon this by allowing time to explore their understanding through a variety of pictoral diagrams and abstract questions. Finally, we challenge children to apply their understanding to new unknown problems, explaining their reasoning using mathematical vocabulary and therefore mastering each new skill. This mastery approach is threaded through the planning of all lessons from year 3 to year 6 meaning that all children, whatever their ability, are exposed to appropriate mathematical terminology and given the tools to tackle a challenging curriculum.
In delivering our mastery approach to maths, we follow and adapt a carefully structured scheme of work (White Rose Maths). This provides a progressive and sequential curriculum that builds on previous knowledge and skills. This kind of experiential learning helps to further commit to memory the procedures and principles taught within a lesson and also engenders within the children a love of maths and confidence with numbers.
We celebrate children who are curious, ask questions and ultimately enjoy their maths lessons. Skills for learning are a high priority. For example, being able to explain ideas and respond to feedback from teachers and peers are crucial to our curriculum. Being confident, resilient, able to persevere and show determination is at the core of what we want to achieve. After all, mathematics helps us to understand and change the world.
At TMA, we want our children to gain the skills and understanding to become confident mathematicians. We believe that the best way to achieve this is to start with a fully embedded and deep understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics, such as number bonds, times tables and other key instant recall facts. Once these basic building blocks are in place and committed to long-term memory, children can access all aspects of the maths curriculum with greater speed and agility, ensuring full coverage of the National Curriculum. We use our fluency lessons each week to practice these key skills and we encourage our children to keep up this practice at home, through the use of websites and apps such as Times Tables Rockstars.
All about me
Hello everyone! My name is Mrs Blackhurst and I am the Head of Maths at Two Mile Ash School. I have always had a love for all things logical and I can often be found completing number puzzles like Suduko, Karuko and Logic problems.
We use maths almost everyday to help us with all parts of our lives and so it is very important that we all have a good understanding of the subject. However, what you may not know is that maths can also be found in nature. If you look carefully at many of the living things on our planet, you can see symmetry, shape and even number patterns! In fact, maths is everywhere you look. This is something that truly fascinates me as it creates fantastic links with my other passion – science! No one subject at school stands alone and finding and using the links between them can really broaden our understanding of the world we live in.
Challenge in Maths
Challenge is planned throughout every stage of each lesson through our mastery approach. We ensure that the small steps of each lesson gets progressively challenging. Through adaptive teaching and on going assessment through each lesson, teachers can challenge in a variety of ways, such as asking children to teach others using their knowledge, prove and disproving mathematical theories, using concrete resources to prove calculations, applying methods to solve abstract problems, linking previous knowledge to extend new knowledge and showing their ideas through a different interpretation.
Homework and Parental Guidance
Rolling Numbers Videos
Useful Documents
Multiplication-Tables-Check-MTC-2022 (1)
Progression In Calculation Policy