Maths
Leader of Maths Mrs Hemmingway
At Balby Central Primary Academy we explore like mathematicians
At Balby Central, we aim to improve pupils’ understanding, enjoyment and attainment in mathematics, ensuring that our children can be the best mathematicians that they can be.
We recognise the importance of talk and create opportunities for children to use and apply their knowledge in a variety of ways.
How do we teach maths?
In the Early Years setting, the environment exposes our children to number, shape, space and measure through continuous provision, both inside and outside the classroom. Our children have a ‘big picture’ focus for their unit, which underpins their learning.
In Years 1 to 6, Mathematics Mastery lessons follow a clear 6-part structure: this keeps the lesson pacey, gives flow and allows more opportunities to teach creatively, give feedback and assess learning.
In addition to this, it ensures that children have the opportunity to explore maths in lots of different ways and develop their complete understanding and apply their knowledge of the subject through a range of discussion activities.
The 6-part structure:
This is a quick task all pupils can access without any teacher input as an introduction to the mathematics lesson.
The New Learning segment introduces the main mathematical concepts for the day’s lesson.
The Talk Task segment of the lesson practises the new learning by talking about maths with key vocabulary.
The Develop Learning segment builds on the new learning and develops a deeper understanding of the maths concepts of that lesson.
The Independent task practises learning independently through solving problems.
The Plenary segment recaps on the lesson, checking understanding and celebrating success.
During each unit (varying between 5-15 sessions), the children will also take part in at least one ‘consolidation lesson’, which gives the children the opportunity to apply their knowledge to a range of problems and challenges. For this, we use White Rose Maths, as well as utilising other fantastic resource pools, in order to structure consolidation so that it enables our children to master the knowledge requirements for their year group.
Additions to the Maths lesson
Maths Meetings
What are Maths Meetings? Watch the video to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwIYzsQSZpQ
From Foundation 1 to Year 6, all children take part in ‘Maths Meetings’: these are fast-paced sessions, each lasting for between 10-15 minutes, designed to consolidate children’s knowledge and understanding of various subjects.
Teachers can also use this as an opportunity for pre-teaching content that will be taught in upcoming lessons and revisiting/addressing any misconceptions from recent sessions.
Times Tables Rock Stars
It rocks!
Don't have your child's login details? Ask your teacher and they will share these with you.
All of our children from Years 2 to 6 have login details for Times Tables Rock Stars. This is an incredibly engaging resource which enables children to develop their multiplication fluency and knowledge; it also allows our teachers to assess multiplication tables that their pupils need further support with. It helps to prepare our Year 4 pupils for the ‘Multiplication Tables Check' that they will be completing in the summer term, which is a statutory assessment.
Here are a few photos from our TTRS day in 2022, it was awesome!
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