Maths catch up

 As a school, we place a great emphasis on children being able to mathematical fluency and reasoning. As a result of this, during lockdown children were set daily fluency tasks using TimesTableRockstars to practice and enhance their number work, with reasoning tasks set through MyMaths, and online teaching programme. In addition to this, children were set weekly arithmetic tasks to further consolidate and learn about the four operations and formal methods of answering questions.

While school is operating as normal, children have one hour of formal mathematics a day with additional mathematics tasks being used in early morning activities to consolidate and deepen learning. It has shown that the formal number work that was set has benefitted some groups of children who before struggled, particularly with times tables, and this is now having a positive impact within class-based maths. To continue to build on this, children are now having one maths lesson a week dedicated to arithmetic skills and looking at formal calculations.

The school has also set additional small group interventions from specialist teachers to support identified children and this is something that will remain throughout the year. Further to this, the school has invested in an online teaching programme to give teachers additional access to resources from across year groups to aid in catch up teaching and interventions.

 Over the course of the year, teachers will have remote training from dedicated maths specialists to ensure maths lessons are broad, balanced and targeted to help each child achieve their very best.