Mathematics
At Bexton, we have a detailed, structured curriculum that is mapped out across all phases, ensuring continuity and supporting transition. Our curriculum is designed in relatively small carefully sequenced steps, which should each be mastered before pupils move to the next stage. Fundamental skills and knowledge are secured first. This often entails focusing on curriculum content in considerable depth at early stages.
A coherent programme of high quality curriculum materials is used to support classroom teaching. Bexton teachers use the NCETM guidance and the new White Rose schemes of learning to support their planning and teaching, as well as a range of other expert resources. Concrete and pictorial representations of mathematics are chosen carefully to help build procedural and conceptual knowledge together. Exercises are structured with great care to build deep conceptual knowledge alongside developing procedural fluency. The focus is on the development of deep structural knowledge and the ability to make connections. Making connections in mathematics deepens knowledge of concepts and procedures, ensures what is learnt is sustained over time, and cuts down the time required to assimilate and master later concepts and techniques.
Our lessons are crafted with similar care and have been developed over time with input from other teachers at Bexton and across Cheshires Academies Trust, drawing on evidence based research and evidence from observations of pupils in class. Lesson designs are set out in detail well-tested methods to teach a given mathematical topic. They include a variety of representations needed to introduce and explore a concept effectively and also set out related teacher explanations and questions to pupils.
Our teachers are clear that their role is to teach in a precise way which makes it possible for all pupils to engage successfully with tasks at the expected level of challenge. Pupils work on the same tasks and engage in common discussions - thi is usually in the form of a grappling problem at the start of each lesson. Concepts are often explored together to make mathematical relationships explicit and strengthen pupils’ understanding of mathematical connectivity. Precise questioning during lessons ensures that pupils develop fluent technical proficiency and think deeply about the underpinning mathematical concepts. There is no prioritisation between technical proficiency and conceptual understanding; in successful classrooms these two key aspects of mathematical learning are developed in parallel.
Taking a mastery approach, differentiation occurs in the support and intervention provided to different pupils, not in the topics taught, particularly at earlier stages. There is no differentiation in content taught, but the questioning and scaffolding individual pupils receive in class as they work through problems will differ, with higher attainers challenged through more demanding problems which deepen their knowledge of the same content. Pupils’ difficulties and misconceptions are identified through immediate formative assessment and addressed with rapid intervention – commonly through individual or small group support later the same day.
Fluency comes from deep knowledge and practice. Pupils work hard and are productive. At early stages, explicit learning of multiplication tables is important in the journey towards fluency and contributes to quick and efficient mental calculation. Practice leads to other number facts becoming second nature. The ability to recall facts from long term memory and manipulate them to work out other facts is also important.
What can parents do to support their child?
Five minutes practise a day can make a significant impact on your child's confidence to use these facts in school. Please make a note in the diary when your child practises these facts and we can reward them in school with extra house points.