Maths

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Birklands approach to teaching maths

At Birklands, a mastery approach to maths is used across school, from Reception through to Year Six. We believe that it is vital that all children are exposed to reasoning tasks and are encouraged to apply their learning to a variety of contexts and explain their thinking. All pupils have daily Maths lessons, following a CPA (concrete, pictoral, abstract) approach, which encourage independence and deeper thinking. The different strands within Maths are taught as block units of work. Each block enables pupils to build on prior learning and make the necessary connections across maths areas.

Within our Maths curriculum we aim to ensure all pupils:

• become fluent in the key aspects of mathematics, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• reason mathematically by applying mathematical knowledge and understanding ensuring they use justification or proof using correct mathematical language
• can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

At Birklands, we believe that all children should be stretched and challenged during each maths lesson. Therefore, we ensure children have opportunities to apply their learning to a range of contexts daily, ensuring deeper thinking is an expectation in each classroom.

Each lesson begins with a recall and fluency task, encouraging children to retrieve information from their long term memory. Children are then taught the new learning through an I do, we do, you do approach. During this time children take part in an interactive ping-pong style input, before moving onto independent practice. During the independent practice, children will be expected to use a range of skills and be exposed to a variety of question styles including fluency questions, comparison, spotting the mistake, explanation, greater depth thinking.

Timestables are taught across school, children are actively encourage to practise their timestables in school and at home using their Timestable Rockstar accounts.

Whole school maths coverage overview

Maths intent