Acorn Maths

Empowering Learners...Growing Minds

We aim to...

Empowering Learners

  • Provide children with essential number skills that will be lifelong and help them succeed in the wider world.
  • Encourage children to see the significance in maths and feel confident using maths skills outside of the classroom environment.

Growing Minds

  • Deliver a mastery curriculum that allows children to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts through reasoning and problem solving.
  • Encourage children to recognise links and connections between maths topics and key concepts.
  • Have high expectations of all children enabling them to achieve age related expectations at the end of KS2.

 

Implementation

The majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace.... Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on (NC, 2014, p.3).

Key Features of Our Approach:

  • The large majority of pupils progress through the curriculum content at the same pace.
  • Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in mathematics.
  • Pupils are taught through whole-class teaching, where the focus is on all pupils working together on the same lesson content at the same time.
  • Teaching is underpinned by a small-steps curriculum design philosophy and supported by carefully crafted lessons and curated resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge.
  • Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and/or through individual support and intervention.
  • If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified within the lesson structure and timely intervention ensures the pupil is best placed to move forward.
  • Key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are retained through retrieval practice to develop automaticity; this avoids cognitive overload in the working memory and enables pupils to focus on new concepts.

High Quality Resources

White Rose premium resources are used to support the implementation of our curriculum. However, to ensure that children have an enriching mathematics curriculum, teachers carefully select other resources to support their teaching. Through the use of these we ensure:

  • Teachers introduce new concepts in a logical sequence.
  • Concepts are taught through high quality mathematical models and images.
  • Mathematical models are consistently used through school.
  • Teachers are supported with their subject knowledge.
  • Our calculations policy is consistently applied.

 

Linking Curriculum and Pedagogy

We have a researched informed approach to teaching mathematics and our curriculum is implemented through a mastery approach to teaching mathematics. Therefore, our school has adopted a lesson design philosophy that links closely to Rosenshine's 'Principles of Instruction.' A large emphasis of our teaching and curriculum design is centred around ensuring children retain the concepts they have been taught. One of the ways we do this is by providing opportunities for daily retrieval practice. This is done through frequent, short burst, low stakes testing such as the Last Lesson, Last week, last Term quizzes. These quizzes recap learning from the previous lesson, previous week, last term, and preceding year.

Inclusion

At Kidsgrove, our curriculum is ambitious and has been designed to give all learners the mathematical knowledge and skills to succeed beyond the classroom. Our school strives to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs (SEND), with disabilities or high need and we use a mastery approach that ensures all children are provided with the support and challenge that they need.

Linked to Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, our lesson design ensures that children’s knowledge is recapped through retrieval practice to embed learning in to their long-term memory and to provide a ‘thread’ from previously learnt material to new learning. Information is taught in small steps and models are provided alongside new information – utilising dual coding theory. Teacher’s utilise questioning to ensure that children have acquired the knowledge whilst identifying children who require further explicit instruction and practice. Concrete manipulatives and pictorial representatives are available for all children to allow them to access new mathematical concepts and we encourage their use throughout our units of work.

Children with SEND

All children deserve a rich and challenging mathematical education and good teaching for pupils with SEND is good teaching for all (EEF, 2021). At Kidsgrove , we understand that some children may be working below or require support to allow them to prevent them from falling behind their peers, due to their learning needs. In order to support of children with SEND we:

  1. Know our children – Promote positive relationships with all pupils, without exceptions
  2. Know their needs – Understand individual pupil’s learning needs through regular assessment (retrieval) and planning and identify the gaps in their knowledge
  3. High quality teaching – We develop a repertoire of strategies to support children linked to Rosenshine’s principles of instruction
  4. Complement whole class with small group/intervention support – Children are identified through questioning, understanding and acquired knowledge and support has a more intense focus on a smaller number of learning goals.

We use our knowledge of the children in our care to find the right starting point to build successful learning from. At times, the learning may be further back in their learning journey and may require previously learnt concepts to be retaught in order to build solid foundations to work on. Where gaps have been identified, some children will also require further interventions separate from the classroom and a small number of learning goals. Despite this, at Kidsgrove, we do not place a ‘glass-ceiling,’ on our children’s learning. At all times, we foster a love of learning amongst all children and a belief that they can aspire and achieve anything they put their minds to.

 

Impact

Assessment

Formative assessment takes place daily and helps teachers decide on what should be done next with pupils, how to adjust planning accordingly to meet the needs of the class and ensure progress.  These assessments allow teachers to understand how to support and extend children appropriately. These assessments are recorded on formative assessment sheets and used as an integral part of the lesson to set targets, identify gaps in learning and celebrate achievements.

There is a difference between performance and learning. Teachers understand that pupil performance in the current lesson does not necessarily translate into the type of learning that will be evident tomorrow.  As a result, the use of low stakes tests enables teachers to regularly assess what learning has been retained by pupils over longer periods of time. This also provides pupils with the regular opportunity of retrieving information from memory, which consequently facilitates learning. These include:

  • Assessment for learning
  • Pupil voice
  • Starter activities 
  • Quizzes, multiple choice and start/ end of unit questions 
  • Standards of learning in books
  • Summative assessment takes place at the end of each term.  At the three assessment points, pupils also sit a standardised test so that gaps can be analysed. Children’s progress and attainment is discussed with senior leaders in pupil progress meetings. 
  • At the end of Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils carry out statutory assessments in maths indicating individual progress.
  • In the Foundation Stage assessment is recorded in each child’s Assessment Profile.    

 

Monitoring  

The Maths Lead and Senior Leadership team are responsible for the monitoring of maths and the standards achieved by pupils.

Monitoring takes the form of:

  • Lesson observations 
  • Resource scrutiny 
  • Book scans
  • Data analysis
  • Discussion with pupils and class teachers

As an academy trust we are fortunate to be able to call on the support of other maths leads and specialist teachers. Through moderation of planning, lessons and books, we can be sure that progress is made across all year groups. If progress is not being made, support is immediate, and steps are provided to ensure all pupils achieve and make progress.