Mathematics

At East Claydon Church of England School, we strive to help our children master Mathematics and have embedded our mastery approach in all classes. 

What does this mean for your child? 

• We utilise a wide range of concrete resources for your children to manipulate to help them solve a wide range of problems daily.  
• They access a variety of pictorial ways to work through problems and abstract representations to really secure their skills.  
• We don’t believe in given children repetitive calculation problems, this doesn’t help them learn.  

Maths is a vital life skill that is needed in everyday life and we aim to equip our children for lifelong mathematical security. To help each child develop a deep level of understanding, they are challenged and encouraged to apply their learning in real-life, purposeful ways. Every lesson sees all children having these opportunities to explore Maths and challenge their thinking.  

Daily fluency building occurs to develop times table knowledge, number facts, bonds, doubling, halving etc… This happens through a variety of songs, dances and games. This fluency enables children to access more challenging problems as less time is needed to solve rapid-fire-type problems.  

Maths can have a real negative stigma of being something that you either ‘can’ or ‘can’t’ do. However, at East Claydon we believe that ALL children can master Mathematics and can develop their thinking through intelligent practice and daily challenge – all children are given so many ways to access new concepts that they will find a way that is meaningful to them. It is true that some children find some areas more challenging but with our ‘Keep Up Not Catch Up’ interventions and pre-teaching, no child is left behind.  We mark work over the lunch break and we offer additional 1:1 sessions in the afternoons to help overcome misconceptions and to ensure that everyone feels confident to tackle the next day’s challenges.

Recovery due to Covid-19

At East Claydon C of E School, we acknowledge and understand the disruption caused by COVID-19 and the nationwide closure of schools. Despite our very best efforts with remote learning, opening our school for the most vulnerable children and those in year 1 and below, there is much we need to do to recover lost face-to-face teaching and learning time. As a result of this, we are carefully following government guidelines and guidance provided by approved bodies of education. In Mathematics, we are continuing to use White Rose to organise our planning, teaching and learning across the whole school.

White Rose have adapted their long-term planning to allow sufficient time to revise prior learning and learning that should have been taught during the national lockdown. This means that, for example, year 6 children will revise work from year 5 before moving onto the year 6 curriculum. From the White Rose overviews, teachers are adapting their planning to suit the needs of their classes and individuals within. We are continuing with our Maths Mastery approach and are hopeful that children will not suffer due to the pandemic. We do owe thanks to our parents for supporting your children whilst working from home.

However, this is not where stop needing support from parents. Recently, parents have received several documents to guide them in continuing to encourage home learning (subject to age and class).

• DoodleMaths logins
• Times Table Rock Stars logins (TTRS)
• Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs)

These three learning support opportunities are vital in ensuring good development of Mathematical education. We urge parents to ensure work is completed daily using these three tools. Additionally, children have recently brought home Maths booklets on Place Value. These documents were sent home to revise learning completed in this unit at school. We will continue to use these documents at the end of each teaching unit.

Mixed age planning

Maths is taught at least four times a week across the school. Each lesson will consist of fluency building, problem solving and reasoning. A wide range of resources are implemented in every year group. We use the highly recommended White Rose Planning to support our planning. We then supplement this with resources from NCETM (National Centre for the Excellence in Teaching Mathematics), NRich and other high quality, approved Mastery specialists. 

Our children at East Claydon School are incredibly lucky to taught in mixed age classes.  This gives them the opportunity to access the right levels of support and challenge to meet their individual needs.  It gives more gifted mathematicians the chance to act as peer tutors which deepens and enriches their own understanding.  For the younger children in the class, as well as those who need more support, mixed age plans provide access to a greater range of strategies and thinking to help them grasp new ideas. 

All children are encouraged to speak clearly about their Mathematical reasoning, using full sentences and justifying their ideas with ‘because’. Having such a range of children offering their interpretations to problem solving can only benefit more children. Furthermore, the wide range in ages allows flexibility between learning. Teachers carefully monitor each child and can offer further support or extending children as they are clear in the expectations for more than one year group. 

Not all Maths lessons can be taught collaboratively as a whole class. There are some objectives which are age-specific. If this is the case, the class will be split and be taught separately. It is down to the teacher’s discretion as to the appropriateness of whole class or year group specific teaching.  

Supporting your children at home

Every child in the school has their own account on the DoodleMaths and DoodleTables apps, which can be used as often as you’d like. DoodleMaths teaches, tracks and assesses your child’s time spent on the app, tailoring the content to the ability of your child.  Over the past year we have seen that the more time a child spends on DoodleMaths, the more fluent they become in core mathematical skills and this gives them ‘cognitive space’ to tackle increasingly challenging problems and application of their skills.  In short, it makes a BIG difference to their overall attainment and progress! 

We also have our Love to Learn books, in which we update your child’s next steps in Maths every half term. You can use these to shape your everyday discussions at home, and we will also include ideas for homework to extend and enrich learning at school.  Learning does not have to always require formal homework time or worksheets.  Make it real and relevant by: 

• Asking your child what the time is or how long it is until dinner (turn the question back to them!) 
• Allowing your child to choose the cheaper/more expensive products whilst shopping. 
• Asking your child to add up how much they’ve spent in the shop. 
• Sharing food out amongst family and friends. 

There are many ways in which everyday situations can become opportunities for mathematical learning! If you are not sure how to help, please talk to your child’s class teacher, who will be delighted to share ideas with you.