Maths
At Higham Ferrers Junior School, we aim to offer a broad and balanced maths curriculum. As passionate mathematicians ourselves, our ambition is to inspire our learners to look beyond sums and methods and instead to question their learning, to understand, to reason and to develop their critical thinking. Thus enabling our learners to ‘dive deeper’ and consolidate their learning.
To ensure thorough coverage of the National Curriculum (2014), we use White Rose as a teaching tool throughout the school. This supports teachers in delivering high quality, mastery-style lessons in a consistent way to all children. The mastery approach allows all pupils to ‘move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace’ whilst still offering support to struggling learners and providing opportunities for more able learners to deepen their understanding. In order to become well-rounded young mathematicians, our pupils also have regular opportunities to hone their calculation skills in dedicated lessons with a times table focus in years 3 & 4 and an arithmetic focus in years 5 & 6.
As we understand the importance of both the practical elements and real-life applications of mathematics, we begin each new unit of work with an experience lesson. These sessions give children the opportunity to have a practical understanding of the topic they are about to begin and helps to build links to both previous and future learning. Additionally, these experiences add context to their learning and add real-life value to their mathematical skills.
Problem Solving
Last year, we introduced problem solving lessons in which pupils were given the opportunity to develop key problem solving and reasoning skills which can then be applied to other areas of maths and in a variety of contexts. The problems that the children are presented with link to the topic their year group is working on at the time.
Finally, we love to celebrate the achievements of our wonderfully talented young mathematicians across the school. Every two weeks, each class teacher nominates a ‘Maths Marvel’ in their class. This award goes to a pupil who has really impressed their teacher during those weeks by showing an impressive mathematical advancement, attribute or attitude. We celebrate this achievement by sharing their name in the school newsletter and by displaying their picture proudly in the learning zone.
Supporting Your Child
We also look to engage with parents regarding their children’s learning where possible. To continue their learning at home, all pupils have access to Times Table Rockstars. TT Rockstars has been instrumental in engaging our pupils in their learning of times tables which supports all maths learning across the curriculum. It offers both interactive and competitive opportunities and has been a huge hit with the children over the past years. We encourage children to use this at home to become more fluent in their recall of times tables facts.
Our whole-school calculation policy is also detailed below. This document details the range of written calculation methods that are taught in school. It is broken down into year group expectations and can be used to support your child at home where necessary.
Multiplication Tables Check
Near the end of the school year, year 4 pupils will complete the ‘Multiplication Tables Check’ assessment. The purpose of this is to determine whether year 4 pupils can fluently recall their multiplication tables. Both years 3 and 4 incorporate times tables into their maths lessons and work extremely hard to improve their rapid recall of the facts throughout the year. However, we actively encourage children to practise them at home too.
As the assessment is completed online by the children, we have attached the following link to a website which has an accurate, interactive representation of what the assessment will look like when the children complete it in the summer term. Please take a look and allow your children to practise in their own time.
https://collins.co.uk/pages/primary-mathematics-times-tables-test-simulator