Maths
Welcome to the Maths area
What does Maths at The Vale look like?
At The Vale, we believe maths is an integral part of developing and enriching a child’s understanding of the world around them. It is a subject which equips all learners with real-life practical skills, enabling them to reason logically, solve problems and give them the ability to think in abstract ways. We always look for opportunities for drawing mathematical experiences out of a wide range of activities. Children will be given opportunities to explain their reasoning to ensure that they have a secure understanding.
As a school, we have adopted a maths mastery approach which focuses on developing a deep understanding of all concepts that are taught. We follow the NCETM and the White Rose scheme for maths, both of which adopt small step teaching to mathematical concepts so that all children can achieve.
Through the teaching of maths children will:
- Build upon key skills across the year.
- Develop the correct mathematical language.
- Apply their learning to problems in different contexts.
- Learn to reason and explain their understanding.
- Complete challenging independent work
- Select and use maths resources to support their learning.
Below are further details about the maths mastery approach.
The Essence of Maths Teaching for Mastery
- Maths teaching for mastery rejects the idea that a large proportion of people 'just can't do maths'.
- All pupils are encouraged by the belief that by working hard at maths they can succeed.
- Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, where the focus is on all pupils working together on the same lesson content at the same time, as happens in Shanghai and several other regions that teach maths successfully. This ensures the pupil is ready to move forward with the whole class in the next lesson.
- Lesson design identifies the new mathematics that is to be taught, the key points, the difficult points and a carefully sequenced journey through the learning. In a typical lesson, pupils sit facing the teacher and the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration and discussion.
- Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem because each supports the development of the other.
- It is recognised that practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice used is intelligent practice that both reinforces pupils' procedural fluency and develops their conceptual understanding.
- Significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning. The structure and connections within mathematics are emphasised, so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained.
- 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.
(National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics)
How can I help my child with maths?
- Talk to your child about their learning.
- Discuss numbers all around you: door numbers, bus numbers etc.
- Encourage children to predict what number will come next in a sequence of door numbers. Ask if they are odd or even?
- Cooking and shopping with your child, getting them to weigh ingredients, using mathematical language such as ‘more’ and ‘less/fewer’.
- Focus on understanding the value of a number as well as counting up and down.
- Encourage your child to read the time on analogue and digital clocks.
Useful resources:
Please find below Maths websites and resources which support extra Maths at home.
Mathletics is a fantastic resource which supports learning in the classroom. Children can work towards bronze, silver and gold certificates as they gain more points when solving different tasks and games. These are handed out during our weekly Celebration assembly.
This site has many fun and interactive maths games. ‘Hit the Button’ is a favourite with many of the children!
Interactive resources and games to support all areas of Maths
BBC Cbeebies Shows Number Blocks
Videos and songs to support children to learn and understand numbers to 20.
Nrich provides high quality mathematical problems. The difficulty is indicated by the number of stars. Some are interactive but others require printing.
