Mathematics

To provide an environment where students find Mathematics intriguing, exciting, enjoyable and rewarding.

n the Mathematics faculty, we endeavour to develop students’ abilities to calculate; to reason logically, algebraically, and geometrically; to solve problems and to handle data. Mathematics is important for students in many other areas of study, particularly Science and Technology. It is also important in everyday living, in many forms of employment, and in decision-making. As a subject in its own right, Mathematics presents frequent opportunities for creativity, and can stimulate moments of pleasure and wonder when a problem is solved for the first time, or a more elegant solution to a problem is discovered, or when hidden connections suddenly manifest.

Mathematics enables students to build a secure framework of mathematical reasoning, which they can use and apply with confidence. The power of mathematical reasoning lies in its use of precise and concise forms of language, symbolism and representation to reveal and explore general relationships. These mathematical forms are widely used for modelling situations; a trend accelerated by computational technologies.

As young entrepreneurs we encourage students to be determined and take a risk to reach their true potential. The application of mathematics is a powerful tool and we aim to help relate this to the wider community to help students understand its use outside the classroom.

Many of our students lack resilience and confidence in their mathematical abilities. Through our planning and teaching we aim to instil a ‘can do’ attitude by ensuring we provide our students with the knowledge and skills to make them successful. Students come to us with a wide range of mathematical ability and prior knowledge; by our use of DDI, we can really uncover what our students do and don’t know, and close any gaps quickly ensuring that we are levelling the playing field for all students including students with SEND and disadvantaged students.  

The subject transcends cultural boundaries and its importance is universally recognised. Mathematics helps us to understand and change the World.

What we teach and when we teach it

Maths Team

Our vast range of experience and skills ensures that all students receive a quality learning experience and a supportive learning environment. Our ambition is to ensure that every student progresses to the best of their ability and achieves their potential. We have ten dedicated mathematics classrooms, each with an interactive whiteboard, enabling staff to utilise a wide range of interactive software to make lessons dynamic and exciting. The faculty also has a number of additional resources to support teaching.

Mrs Alison Brindle Director of Learning of Mathematics
Mr Christopher Houghton Assistant Director of Learning of Mathematics
Mrs Anseela Ali Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Arran Cottam Teacher of Mathematics
Mr John Flemming Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Allen France Teacher of Mathematics
Mr John Lewis Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Barry McNeill Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Ian Ramsden Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Kevin Smith Teacher of Mathematics
Mr Ryan Swailes Teacher of Mathematics & Head of PHSE
Miss Zara Zaidi Teacher of Mathematics

Aims

We aim to engender a love of learning, self-belief and aspiration through several intentions that are unpacked further. Those intentions are removing barriers to learning; developing knowledge and skills for learning in a range of subjects; developing personal attributes and to enrich students’ experiences and broaden their horizons.

Through our curriculum provision we want to develop students who:

• are confident and enthusiastic in their mathematical thinking, knowledge and application
• are fully equipped in their mathematical knowledge and skill sets to continue their learning at the next stage
• are highly successful in their GCSE outcomes and fully reach their potential in mathematical qualifications regardless of background, prior learning or individual need.
• become creative, adaptable, determined and inquisitive independent learners
• have the willingness to take risks and understand the importance of learning from mistakes
• become fluent in seeing number patterns and using increasingly complex forms of number operations
• recognise scale factors, proportionality and multiplicative relationships
• can express mathematical ideas and concepts through algebra
• can generalise when considering mathematical concepts
• can communicate and reason their ideas through mathematical language and sequences of logical steps
• actively engage in problem solving using a range of mathematical methods and techniques. 
• are able to evaluate their answers using estimation and sense checking
• strive for accuracy and take pride in their presentation

Staff who: 

• Are experts in their mathematical subject knowledge and understanding of the curriculum
• Inspire students in their love for mathematical learning and applications of mathematics beyond the classroom, developing student confidence through high standards and praise.
• Prepare students effectively, at all levels for their assessments and GCSE end goals
• Are confident in teaching through mastery techniques, equipping student to problem solve and apply their learning to a range of contexts
• Are expert classroom practitioners, delivery consistently high-level learning across all their classes
• Regularly check for understanding throughout a lesson and sequence of learning, re-teaching both in the moment and over time to close student gaps
• Work collaborative as a team to constantly develop the mathematics provision together as leaders and mathematical practitioners.

Sequencing 

Throughout their secondary education, students build their knowledge along the 6 strands of Mathematics – Number, Algebra, Ratio and Proportion, Geometry and Measures, Probability and Statistics. They develop their skills in the three aims of the National Curriculum – fluency, reasoning and problem solving.  

In the 1960s, Jerome Bruner outlined an educational approach where learners revisited the same topics, each time deepening their understanding. This approach is known as a spiral curriculum model. The White Rose Maths Curriculum which we use is built in this way.  

Bruner recognised the benefits of certain features of a spiral curriculum: 

• Topics are revisited to consolidate understanding
• Topics increase in complexity
• New learning is related to previous learning
• Learners’ mathematical understanding increases

An example of how this knowledge is built up for sequences within our curriculum plan can be seen here:  

The blocks are sequenced as some units depend on the teaching of content prior to them, for example student need to understand algebraic notation before they can start to solve equations and inequalities. For some other areas, the order is not necessarily dependent, for example shape and statistics need to come after number but they don’t depend on each other. Ensuring that these are placed at various points throughout the years allows for a varied experience for students.  

Within units, the small steps of learning are carefully sequenced to ensure that prior knowledge is built upon and to allow the interleaving of topics to take place. The small steps are sequenced in order of difficulty and dependency.  For example, when looking and place value and the ordering of integers and decimals in Year 7, students also study the median and range, allowing to use the key skills they have just learnt and apply them to a different area of Mathematics.  

The skills students use are built into all the small steps and blocks to ensure that the skills are continually developed and refined across a large range of topics and knowledge.  

Year 7 is used to ensure that students have a solid grounding of the concepts within KS2 curriculum, whilst extending and challenging students with new knowledge. In Year 7, we start with sequences as the first unit as this provides students with some familiarity in that they have studied number patterns at KS2, but extending their knowledge to algebra of which they will have encountered very little of up to this point. We want students to be engaged and excited by looking at this relatively new area of Mathematics, we want to give students a fresh challenge with a level playing field for all students. It also incorporates the use of calculators which are not part of the KS2 SATS, so bringing in calculator skills early is important.  

Implementation

We are taking the following steps to ensure that the curriculum provision is implemented effectively: 

• The adoption of the White Rose Maths 5-year curriculum, with adaptations to support the various starting point and prior teaching of the various year groups. Year 11 have a one-year recovery curriculum in place to ensure that the interruptions of COVID-19 leaves no student behind. 
• A spiral curriculum with a deliberate interleaving, using the WRM sequencing which focusses on the repeated development and of skills and knowledge previously learnt into new concepts and contexts.
• A commitment to the mastery style of teaching, focussing primarily on this style in KS3 but with elements developing further into KS4. 
• Continual subject specific CPD for staff in the Mastery style of teaching and the use of WRM materials. 
• Using the WRM small steps to break down each topic into core knowledge and skills, allowing teaching to be bespoke to the students’ ability level, as well as prior and future learning.
• The use of bespoke Aldridge unit-plans which takes each small step and exemplifies what students are expected to know and show for that area of learning. These also enable staff to plan lessons around the highest leverage learning, whilst also developing skills over time. 
• Backwards planning formal assessments from the rigour of the GCSE end goal including 

o 2 sets of GCSE Mocks in Year 10 and 11

o Termly summative assessments in Year 7 – 9

o Units assessments

o Low Stakes Quizzing 

• Embedding Data Driven Instruction into all elements of classroom practice combining knowledge of students’ strengths and gaps from assessments with day-to-day microdata for example exit tickets, questioning, Agmo) to identify trends, reteach at the point of error and ensure any gaps have closed through retest.
• Weekly co-planning meetings which consider collaborative sharing of good practice and consideration to the pedagogy that we will be using in the following week. Alongside a discussion around the data collected in the previous week, what gaps have emerged and planning a reteach to close these. 
• Ensuring that out teaching practice is focussed around

o Mathematical Thinking

o Variation

o Representation and Structure 

o Fluency 

• The use of consistent routines and practices which help students to consolidate learning including

     Do Nows, Low Stakes Quizzing, fortnightly mini mocks for KS4 and Exit Tickets.  

• Checking for understanding through effective AfL techniques including the use of mini whiteboards, questioning, use of hinge questions and diagnostic questions.
• Developing of students literacy skills with the exploration of command words, use of longer questions which need unpacking, and the use of guided reading tasks which also develop the cultural capital of our students in relation to mathematics.  
• Ensuring that all SEND students have suitable access arrangements and that teaching is targeted to support their needs. 

Impact

The data we collect, both formative and summative helps us to identify if students have learnt what has been taught. We investigate trends across classes and cohorts of students’ but we also consider the trends across all year groups when looking at a progression of a topic. This helps us to identify where we have common issues on common topics which we then dig deeper into in co-planning time to investigate how we can develop the curriculum and our practice to improve outcomes in these areas.  

As we coach our staff we can see the impact of our curriculum. As we see our staff moving up through the phases of scope and sequence, we can see that they are able to secure their pedagogical approaches which are linked to a well-planned curriculum.  

Learning walks and temperature checks allow for time to see if the planned curriculum is being delivered in the classroom in the way it has been intended to be.  

Work Scrutiny allows to see if the progression through topics and year groups is as intended and provides sufficient challenge and scaffold as appropriate.  

Student, parent and staff voice can also provide indications of how well the curriculum is implemented.